Transcripts For CSPAN3 Senate Homeland Security Committee Hearing On Gun Violence And School... 20240714

The title of this hearing is examining state and federal recommendations for enhancing School Safety against targeted violence. First of all, i want to welcome everybody to the hearing room. I certainly want to thank our eyewitnesses for taking the time, for your testimony, and in particular, i want to shout out max and tom, and your families, and the other families of the tragedies for attending here, and for just your unbelievable dedication turning your tragedy into, hopefully, some positive action that can prevent tragedies for other families. It is just remarkable what so many of the families have done in reaction to so many of these tragedies, which really dates back to about 1998 is where we really had sort of the first directed attack. I know in your testimony, were talking about 710 shootings since columbine in 1999. In columbine, 13 people were killed 12 students, one teacher. 20 more were injured. Sandy hook in 2012. 26 killed. Two were injured. Parkland, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, 17 killed and 17 injured. The death and casualty toll was simply unbelievable, quite honestly. I grew up in the 50s and 60s. We were concerned about the nuclear holocaust. We would hold drills, and talk under our desks. We never had to worry about someone entering our school and opening fire. This is a tragedy in terms of the lives lost, people injured, the lives destroyed, but its a tragedy from the standpoint of the psychological effect on our nation, our states, our schools, our children, and our families. And so, what i am hoping this hearing will be about is take a look at the thoughtful recommendations of so many of these commissions that have been established afterwards, both state and federal government, with the help of parents and families that have experienced these tragedies. I want to ask the question, to what extent have these recommendations, these common sense, of these recommendations, to what extent have they been implemented . If they are not . And i know they are not universally implemented, whats the holdup . What can we do to make sure that we can take some of these obvious, relatively simple actions, at least as a first step, if not completely prevent these things from happening. Or at least mitigate the casualties when these attacks occur. I think, moving forward, what i want as a result from this Committee Hearing is, again lets take out all the recommendations to find out what is common. What do we agree on . That something this community does a good job of. There is all kinds of things gary is wrong about, but what this committee is pretty good at doing, identifying a problem and figuring out what we agree on. What commonsense solution do we agree on . Setting differences aside, to maybe, be brought up when it is possible to do so. I want to really examine, what are the most effective actions we can take that we agree on . What are the fastest and easiest to implement . Part of that equation is, whats the most costeffective . Lets do those things. After 9 11, i really think the most costeffective and most effective action taken after 9 11 was we just hardened the cockpit door. We have all of this other security theater, tsa. We spent billions, but the most effective thing is we just hardened the cockpit door. Lets make sure in schools, we are at least doing that. This committee doesnt have a whole lot of legislative jurisdiction, but there may be some we can consider. We certainly want to do everything we can as part of this committee in addition to holding this hearing to examine these recommendations, so that will turn it over to the senator peters. Thank you, mister chairman for holding this hearing today. This is an extremely important, and difficult conversation. There is no question that schools must be safe places for children to learn and grow. Every single life lost in a School Shooting is an unspeakable tragedy. As adults, and as policymakers, our number one responsibility is to protect our children. We are failing. I want to recognize the many survivors we have with us today, especially mister schechter and mister loya for joining us today as witnesses, and thank you for your courage, and your action. I cant even begin to grasp the incomprehensible pain of losing a child to gun violence, but i know that i must, and we must honor the memory of those who are no longer with us, by taking action to stop these preventable tragedies. I am grateful to you both, and to sheriff volterra, for helping the committee better understand how we can protect children in our schools and work towards ensuring no other families have to endure the loss of a loved one to senseless violence in schools. Strengthening safety in our schools is not a partisan issue. I look forward to a productive discussion on the actions we can take to make School Campuses more secure, improve First Responders capabilities, in an emergency, and most importantly, stop these shootings before they ever happen. Todays conversation will be about solutions. We want to leave here with a clear roadmap for addressing this problem. We cant forget exactly who we are doing this for. For alex, for luke, for the hundreds of children killed or injured in those schools, for the families, students, teachers, and staff whose worlds have been irrevocably changed. And for the millions of students who will be entering classrooms this fall. Thank you for being here. I look forward to your testimony, and your discussion. Mister chairman, office has received over 32 letters of support for our discussion today on a wide variety of topics and i would like to enter those into our official record. Without objection. I will ask for my written statement to be submitted to the opening record. We have a letter from senator rubio that will be entered, as well. I want to recognize, xmen ted deutch, the congressman in the parkland area of florida. We have the unique situation here, where your former governor, who established this commission, and appointed, and asked many of you to be involved, is here, and senator scott would like to say a few words, introduce some of the members of the audience, and i have asked him to read the list of those killed in the parkland shooting, and then we will have a moment of silence after that. Senator scott . First, i want to thanked Mister Johnson and peters for doing this. What they said is actually really true in this committee. People really do Work Together, and work hard to get things done. There is a lot of tough issues to deal with. There is probably not a more important issue than the safety of our kids, and our grandkids i have six grandchildren, and i think of their safety all the time. I want to thanked all of the witnesses for being here today. This is not an easy discussion. It wasnt easy to deal with the aftermath, but its nothing like what these families have gone through. This february marked the one Year Anniversary of the parkland shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. It claimed the lives of 17 innocent victims. There is not a day that goes by that i dont think about that day, and the amazing people that were lost at the hands of a madman. One thing that has happened since then, is ive spent a lot of time with families, and you can just every day, you still feel their pain. I would like to thank the family, students, and loved ones of the victims who are here today. Max and tom, gina, phil, devey. I think all of you for being here today. A little background. Maxs son alex, and by the way, everybody has got a copy of this. You can almost turn it. They just gave me a copy this morning, but you can go and see the pictures of these kids, and in the last year and a half, you get to know them just by all the stories you hear. Maxs son alex was 14 years old. He played trombone in the school band. He was very vocal in seeking changes that schools and served on the High School Public safety commission. Tom and ginas son luke was only 15. He was a sweet young man who loved playing sports. His parents have been leading efforts for change. When we signed the Marjory Stoneman douglas High School Public safety act into law, gina was there with me. Tonys daughter gina was 14. She was a freshman and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. She was a member of the schools winter guard team. She was known to be a great dancer with an infectious smile, who made friends everywhere she went. Tony is the president of the stand with parkland organization founded by the parents of the victims, and i attended some of their funerals. Your heart goes out to all of them. Gina, i should have had you stand up. Yeah. I should have recognized you. Gina is toms wife. They are just a sweet family. Thank you for being here. She has become a good friend of my chief of staff. Phils daughter, carmen, wanted to become a medical researcher and find a cure for als. She was just 16 years old. Both phil, his wife april, and their family have been incredible activists nationwide. Thank you for being here. Debbie hesse husband chris was a loving father in the United States veteran, and made an impact on the lives of so many students. His legacy lives on with the scholarship to help further studentathlete education, and this is a story about what chris did. He ran into danger without any ability to do anything. No weapon or anything, to try to save these kids. Thank you for being here. Let me just read off the rest of the names. This is always hard. Alicia alhadeff, scott beigel, martin decay, aaron feiss, jamie guttenberg, jared long run, joaquin olivier, ayana petty, and let me tell you a story about her. I met her family because after we had hurricane irma, her brother, who was just up here the other day, patrick. He is going on his twoyear mission. Their mormons. His dad was working in Everglades City to do cleanup. I remember meeting them before this ever happened. Meadow pollack, helena ramsay, and meadows dad, youve seen him a lot on television. And then peter wang. Every one of these families has a horrible story. Just wonderful family members. Their lives have been changed forever. Weve got to figure out how to change this. The remarkable strength and dedication you will shown in the aftermath of such an unspeakable tragedy is inspiring. As we see many times, solutions after tragedy get lost in politics. But there is a lot of reasons why this happened. We were able to cut through that, sort of, and i am hopeful that we can continue to Work Together to make our school safer. Weve got great Law Enforcement officers in our state, and sheriff bull terrier is someone i met after i got elected in 2010, but the sheriff is he is a very dedicated member of the statewide Sheriffs Association and has been very dedicated to getting good legislation to pass, but what we did was put together a group of right after it happened. It happened on wednesday. By friday, we had put together a group of people to Work Together. One group of educators, one was Mental Health, one group was Law Enforcement. By tuesday night, we came up with what we thought we should do, and by friday, we made a proposal. Fortunately, we were in session, so with three weeks, we got not exactly what we all would have passed. We would have done some things differently, but we got some good legislation passed. Hes got great family. Hes a great friend. He is a very dedicated family and social servant. He has shown incredible leadership for our state when we needed it, and its because of people like bob. We have a 48year low crime rate. I used to brag as a governor. Of course, you are supposed to brag. We did 1. 7 million jobs, the number one education and at a four hiker year low in our crime rate, but we worked to pass the s. C. O. R. E. Safety act with the goal of preventing this tragedy again. The goal is that it never, ever happens again. We established the commission to work to identify issues, and they did an incredible job. Chef, terry went is, but we had 15 people or so on it. Ryan petty, another parent served on the commission. They put out good information, and they are still doing things to have a positive impact. What youre going to hear today is you are going to here about people whove gone above and beyond to try to change things. Unfortunately, you cant bring back these lives, but i think every one of us, especially when we think about this, we think of our children, our grandchildren. We dont ever want this to happen again in our country. Its important that all of us take responsibility to do everything we can to make sure this does not happen again. I was disheartened about a recent report from the grand jury on the progress of implementation, of implementation by certain florida schools. Its unbelievably disappointing when we have talked about what we need to do, and then you see people for whatever reason, who dont take this seriously. I guess, they dont think it will happen at their school. I sent a letter to the school superintendent, Board Members and administrators, demanding action. I am deeply disappointed in the response, but i am confident when we talked about this at breakfast, we are not going to stop fighting. I think the right thing is going to happen longterm. Unfortunately, a lot of us have to be at committees. I have to go to Armed Services for a mandatory meeting. So, thank you for being here. Thank you for your testimony, and i think every senator appear cares that this doesnt ever happen again. Thank you, senator scott. I think it would be appropriate if we have a moment of silence out of respect for those who have lost their lives, and for those whose lives have been forever altered by these tragedies. Thank you. It is the tradition of this committee to swear in witnesses, so if you would all stand, and raise your hand. Do you swear that the testimony you will get before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god . Thank you. Senator scott said there are a lot of competing committee meetings. I know senator romney and others will have to go in and out. Dont take that as a sign of disrespect. Thats just how this place doesnt work. Our first witness is mister max schechter, the cofounder and ceo of safe schools for alex. Max has advocated for School Safety and security across the nation at the highest levels of federal government ever since his son, alex, was skilled at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on february 14, 2018. I was talking to max before the hearing. He has what i call a rap sheet. If you see the list of his activities since he lost his son, it is just unbelievable how much time and energy he has devoted to this. I look forward to your testimony. Thank you, senator. My name is max schechter. My son was one of 17 people brutally murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year. After i buried my son, my next priority was to make sure my other three children were safe in their schools. I traveled the country, and came to realize that in all of the 390,000 k12 schools in this country, each principal now has to become an expert in door locks, access control, cameras, etc. It made no sense to me that each school had to reinvent the wheel. The idea that crystallized for me was the need to create national School Safety best practices at the federal level. Those best practices would be housed on a clearinghouse website, so that all schools had a onestop shop for all of the most relevant, and important School Safety information. I was pleased to see this idea highlighted in president trumps federal commission on School Safety report last year, and i am extremely encouraged that the department of Homeland Security is moving forward to create this clearinghouse. In fact, they are convening their first meeting july 30 next week. We know we cannot prevent 100 of these school mass murders, but we know we can mitigate a lot of the risk to students, teachers, and staff when they do happen. Every school can do things today that can improve School Safety, and many of these things are basics that cost little or no money. Chairman johnson, i really want to commend you for your commitment to focusing on Practical Solutions that can save lives right now, and for shining a spotlight on that through this hearing that you are holding today. In my view, there were two main reasons the National School security crisis has continued with no end insight. The first is that we do not implement lessons we have been painfully learning for two decades, and two, we are not being honest with parents and communities about the real situation with safety in our schools. On the first point, we do not implement Lessons Learned from dozens of incidents that have tragically taken many, many lives. The state of virginia is a rare exception. After the Virginia Tech massacre, virginia implemented threat assessment teams in all of their schools. They used the United States secret Services National threat assessment model, and they have not had a School Shooting since. That is why i support the eagles act. Unfortunately, no other state besides florida has followed suit, and implemented threat assessment teams and all of their schools. After columbine, all responding officers were required to rapidly deploy directly to the threat, yet in parkland, eight deputies waited outside for 11 minutes while children and staff were being slaughtered in their classrooms. In parkland, First Responders had failing radios. That delayed help for victims. S. W. A. T. Teams head to room resort to hand signals to avoid shooting each other because their radios failed. As a country, we havent truly committed to solving communication problems. We cant force all agencies to use a single radio system, but we can make it possible for them to communicate no matter which system they are using. After sandy hook, each school should have trained their students and staff how to respond to active shooters. Sadly, many did not. During the 20 1720 18 school year, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did not hold a single code red drill that year. Students and staff did not know what to do when the murderer started firing an ar15 into classrooms, and killing their classmates. No staff member called a code red for three minutes. By then, all 17 people were dead. That includes my little boy, alex. The second sad reality, which most people dont realize, is schools are not being truthful about the violence on their campus. For the years 2014 through 2017, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School reported to the state, zero bullying, zero harassment, zero trespassing incidents, and many other zeros. Its not just Broward County that is inaccurately reporting these incidents. This is pervasive across the entire country. The result is a false sense of security, which leads to complacency in implementing best practices. On college campuses, the federal clery act imposes financial penalties for inaccurate reporting of campus crime statistics, but in k12, there is no such requirement. The result is that when you go online to look up school ratings, many of them, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, have an a rating. Academics are important, but if the children do not come home to their families and staff dont come home, nothing else matters. That a rating that Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School has has nothing to do with the safety of that institution. There is no School Safety Rating System to inform parents and teachers of whether or not the school has implemented the best practices to prevent and mitigate the number of casualties during the next school attack. Schools should not be able to get an a rating, like Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School did, if they never held a code red drill for the entire school year. They should not be rewarded if they did not train their teachers and their staff for what to do during an active assailant emergency. If a School Safety Rating System existed, it would influence change nationwide. The car industry Rating System has improved car safety, and reduced fatalities. Before you buy a car, you review their safety and crash test ratings, but for parents, there is nothing. No way to know if your Childs School is safe or not. It has been 20 years since columbine, and children continue to be murdered in their classrooms. We know the next school mass murderer is already out there. The next gun he will use is already out there. It is not a question of if, but when. We know what can be done to prevent it, and we know what must be done to mitigate the risks of more lives lost. I hope this committee will help get us where we need to be. Thank you for your commitment, mister chairman, and senator peters. I look forward to your questions. Thank you comics. Our next witness is mister tom boyer, the treasurer of stanford parkland, which advocates for Public Safety reforms. Stand with parkland was formed by the parents of those killed in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School attack, including tom, who lost his son, luke. Good morning, chairman johnson, Ranking Member peters and members of the committee. Thank you for having me here today. My name is tom boyer, and i am the treasurer of standard parkland. Stand with parkland was founded by the families of the children and spouses murdered in the Parkland School massacre. I am here today on behalf of our organization. We are fundamentally nonpartisan. The safety of our kids, and teachers in schools is not a political issue. We are willing to work with anyone who shares our goal for safe schools, and we appreciate your decision to hold this hearing today. I am here today because i lost my younger son, luke, on february 14, 2018. He was one of the 14 wonderful souls who was murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in parkland, florida. My son was one of the first to die. The police tell me he felt the impact of the bolts before he heard the shot. One moment, he is standing outside a classroom, looking forward to the end of the school day, carefree. The next moment, is on the floor, unable to move, and dying. Many times, i wondered what his last thoughts were. I think about my wife gina, who gave birth to luke 15 years earlier, and had to watch the casket close on him. There are 16 other stories like mine out of parkland. The murder of our beloved spouses and children is a tragedy. Our community is forever changed. The trauma that day haunts the students, the teachers, and the First Responders. Our experience has led us to conclude there is no single solution that can effectively solve this complex problem. Thats why standard parkland advocates for three kegels. Securing the school campus, improving Mental Health screening and support programs in the schools, and responsible firearms ownership. The first element of our platform is bringing people together around the idea of securing the school campus. Our school needs a clearinghouse of best practices that they can use as a tool, and our country needs minimum School Safety standards, such as a single point of entry on a school campus. We also need to explore federal funding for security enhancements through National Infrastructure bills. The next element of our platform is to improve Mental Health screening and support programs. We need funding to promote suicide intervention programs because more than two thirds of mass shooters are suicidal. We also need congressional action to relax regulations, so that schools, Law Enforcement, and Mental Health professionals can share information. My sons killer was known to the school, known to the sheriffs office, local Mental Health agencies, and the fbi. He was known as angry, violent and a potentially dangerous person. My son and 16 other innocent human beings are dead because these agencies never shared information. They never connected the dots. In order to effectively address these risks, we have to Fund Research into threat assessment tools and practices. The eagles act is bipartisan and does exactly that. We urge you to support an act on that legislation. The last component of our platform is responsible firearms ownership. We must find ways to keep firearms out of the hands of those who should not have them. This starts with enforcement of existing laws. Another important step is safe storage of firearms at home, where many School Shooters obtain their weapons. An additional tool is extreme Risk Protection orders, or red flag laws, which empower family members or Law Enforcement to get a court order, and temporarily remove firearms from a potentially dangerous situation. Finally, we need copper in the background checks, including sales that occur online. These three goals, securing the school campus, improving Mental Health screening and support programs, and responsible firearms ownership can stem the tide on School Shootings. Last year, we took important first steps on School Safety with a bipartisan passage of the stop School Violence act. Additionally, although we dont agree with all of its recommendations, the recently issued report of the federal commission on School Safety was one of our governments most comprehensive pieces on School Safety ever. However, this is not an academic discussion. Kids and teachers have been dying. School starts in less than two months. Now is the time to build on the progress we made last year. Please, dont let another anniversary of my sons death, and the deaths of 16 others, pass without concrete steps without making our kids and teachers safe in school. We appreciate your decision to hold this hearing. Thank you, tom. The next witness is sheriff gualtieri. He has served as the sheriff of Pinellas County for 14 years and serves as Vice President of the Sheriffs Association, and on the board of directors of the meijer county sheriffs of america. In 2018, then governor rick scott appointed him to serve as the chair of the Marjory Stoneman douglas High School Public safety commission. Sheriff . Good morning, mister chairman. Ranking member peters, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear today and share thoughts about School Safety. For the last 15 months, ive shared the Marjory Stoneman douglas High School Public safety commission. We submitted a 500page report of what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on february 14, 2018. We made recommendations on how to improve School Safety. Its debatable whether the incident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was entirely avoidable, but what is not debatable in my view, based on the evidence, is whether the harm could have been mitigated. Up we put, the shooting didnt have to be as bad as it was. 34 people were shot and or killed in three minutes, 51 seconds in building 12 of the Stoneman Douglas campus. 24 of those shot or killed in one minute, 44 seconds on the first floor alone. Missed intervention opportunities, and effective safety on part of the school, and an american effective Law Enforcement response contributed to the magnitude of this tragedy. At the time of the shooting, did not have an active shooter response drill. There had been only one minimal, one hour of training for school staff and that occurred a few weeks before the shooting. There had been no former training for students. Gates were left opened and unattended. Buildings in classroom doors were unlocked and teachers and staff lacked communications and infrastructure. The shooter shot and killed all of his two victims before the first staff member on the campus called a code red to alert others of the active shooting that was occurring that day. People did not know to how to do or what to do because little to no training. This was the state of School Security in Broward County ford. The Second Largest School District in the Third Largest state, 19 years after columbine and six years after sandy hook. As for the Law Enforcement response, the schools sro stood by outside, the shooter shot and killed ten people on the third floor. The sro never went to the building that day. Sheriff deputies stood by outside the School Despite hearing gunshots and they did not enter the school in an effort to save lives. The sro and several deputies have been fired and they should have been. We made improvements since School Safety but we have ways to go. As much of the talk today is unprevention which should be the goal. The meeting must be unharmed and mitigation. There must be a difference between the two. The hard thing to say but it is the reality. It will happen again and the question is when and where. For the most depressing question, what do we do differently today to drive a different outcome on february 14th, 2018. We must have a different outcome. 34 people shot and killed in three minutes is unacceptable. The best practice that make our schools safe and i dont believe this void is limited only for florida schools. I believe the non components caused in part by complacency. We are 20 careers post columbine. Ground zero for this mass killing just passed its first ever active shooter responsibility in february of 2019. It took more than a year after the Stoneman Douglas shooting for the broward School District to enact that policy, thats unacceptable. There has to be a sense of urgency, an immediate focus of mitigation and those are identifying the threat and communicating the threat and reacting to the threat. All schools Must Immediately have effective active shooter responsibility. They must train their personal and all have adequate communications so all students and staff must be regulatedly conducted drills. We cant be 20 years from now talking about the voids and the most basic concepts that should have been implemented years ago. Most if not all of these strategies caused to little or nothing. Unfortunately, that did not accr occurred across the board. I encourage you to use your power and require any School District receiving federal funding, dentist mattis thanu for the opportunity to appear before you today. I look forward on how we can do a better job and keeping our kids as safest as they can be in our schools. Parents have the right to expect when they send their kids to school in the morning they come home alive in the afternoon. We need to meet that expectation. Thank you. Thank you, sheriff. Dr. Timcan, she serves as a Senior Adviser to Technical Assistant center devoted to students safety. Prior to her work, dr. Timcan directed on bullying. Members of the committee, thank you for holding this important hearing to identify effective ways to keep students safe in school. I cant imagine the pain of losing a child or surviving a School Shooting. As a parent in addition to our researcher, i share my commitment to ensuring that our schools are safe. The tragedies at parkland and elsewhere shocked our system. We cant and we must do more. I have dedicated my career to improve Schools Health and safety. Through that i have three recommendations. Maintain decades long of School Safety initiatives encourage states and communities to stress the full spectrum that contributes to violence. Keep students safe at school. We must prioritize our overall wellbeing. Building a positive climate as well as building skills to form healthier relationships. Schools are built on research and shows significant this includes expansion under the every student succeed act to i include in students success and academic enrichment forming of grant program. School violence has gone down over the past 20 years. The percentage of 9 to 12 graders carrying weapons significantly decreased from about 7 in 1999 to under 4 in 2017. For this group over the same time period, the percentage of physical fights have decreased from 14 to 8. 5 . They are statistically rare occurrences. Although progresses have been made. There is clearly much more that we can do. No community should ever have to experience a School Shooting. Three movements are bringing us closer. First, increase awareness of Adverse Childhood Experiences and their potential for resulting trauma and second, further integration of social and academic learning and third, the bridging of school and Community Resources through integrated support. It may seems logical that adding additional Law Enforcement would prevent School Shootings. The research we have is mixed. Security measures are designed to keep the bad guys out. History shows thats the vast majority of School Shootings are perpetrated by School Shootings by schools. The effectiveness of school based Law Enforcement access control, metal detectors and other security measures on improving School Safety have not been well researched. We know many schools experienced active shooter incidents have security measures in place. Certain form of security may help includes strategies as identification procedures or basic lockdown drills which are different than active Shooter Drills. Active Shooter Drills are concerning. These drills using realistic guns and plastic bullets. We do not know whether these drills work. Rep sear researchers are raising concerns such drills may decenttize students to the seriousness of the attack. We need to know much more of these measures before risking our children wellbeing. My final recommendation is i am sure there are mechanisms to assess the impact of School Safety strategies. There are still much to learn about keeping schools safe. We retch all research allows us to understand whether resources are spent effectively. Fiscal year 2018, funds are reallocated out of the National Institution of justice. Without such research support, well continue to debate issues raised today. I will close with this. Our children go to school to learn. When they are afraid and when we tell them we should be afraid by hiring Security Officers and requiring drills, it becomes harder for them to learn. Making school safe is not about turning schools into fortresses to keep the bad guys out. Our childrens safety is paramount. That must start in the school itself. Provide the social and emotional and academic support that prevents violence and help our kids. Thank you. Thank you dr. Timcan. I am going to yield my time to representative scott. Thank you for all being here. Thst hard this is hard to talk about. One person i want to recognize is hunter polluck. He lost his sister who was 18 at the time and she died trying to saver another student. Thank you for being here, hunter. So, sheriff, what do you think is the most important take away from your commission . My remark is that it wa was there was a was. It could have been mitigated if there was not complacency. Law enforcement response was effective when you have a district in a particular school have done no drills, had done one minimal training. People didnt know what to do or how to do it was shocking to us as we uncoverer a and look at t facts and evidence. There is so much complacency. Proof is in the pudding. Until this day there is not enough being done. When i appeared this year and the last week of february, it was not until the week before that took them a year to pass an active shooter policy. You have districts that are not compliant to the law. You have schools dont have assessment teams. It is shocking and appalling to me. We got 67 School Districts in florida. And every state is set up this way. Every county has elected school board and they have a lot of autonomy and probably what happens and half of themes are elected superintendents and half are pointed by the school board. Everything that we all worked hard to pass, didnt get implemented by the state or locally. Whats your experiences so far . Whos your biggest disappointment, just forget that what everybody is trying to do is come up with the right idea. Doi doing the things we said you had to do. There are some thats doing it well. I can tell you as an example and one i think is doing well and i came from there before i came here this week was pensacola and escambia county. We have other counties, probably the ones that are problematic as we said here today we are seeing the most voids as far as compliance would be in south florida, miamidade, broward and palm beach and there are some others. Recently until al coup couple o months ago, in orange county, they were not in compliance. You think of this. Lets say we pass required there would be a Public Safety officer in every school. And what were they doing . We provided funding for this. You are correct. You provided and the legislatures provided 67 million. What the law says there has to be a sign to every charter and elementary and high School Campuses. And they interpreted the word assigned to mean assign on paper and they dont have to be there. This is a type of disengenerous. The intent was there would be a good guy with a gun and School Officers on every campus. You had lawyers who were part of a problem. I say that as a lawyer because theyre not doing a service to the people they are representing. When they interpret words and they go through these maturation, signs can be interpreted. You dont have to have somebody there. Tell it to some of these parents. Someone had to go knocking on doors because they had one deputy in six campuses and they did not follow the law. It is not right. This is the type of attitude that has to change. They had done and so if they had done an active Shooter Drill at Stoneman Douglas, where would students have gone when they know there was a shooter in the room . Where did the students go . So simple. Unfortunately, they have not identified any of the safe spaces. The teachers and the staff did not know what to do or how to do it. For those who did try and get the kids into safe spaces and the hard corners in the classroom, they with full of stuff meaning bookshelves and desks and moveable object. It is a hard thing to say. Kids die on the line because they could not get antonio the hard corners because they are being pushed out by others because they were so full. There were two kids unable to get in one of those safe areas so they were filing behind tv sets and cabinets. Both of those kids were deceased. It would not have been as bad because the shooter that day never went into any one classroom. He only shot people that he could see and stop people in hallways. When he looked through the doors and he saw people, he shot them. If they were in the hard corners, it worked, the shooter was on the second floor for 41 seconds. He didnt shoot or kill anybody in the second floor. He had an opportunity to respond appropriately. The first floor, 24 people zhot ki shot or killed. And third floor, ten people shot or killed. Boo i ty the third floor, di know there was a shooter going on . And how long had he been there . Third floor treated it as a fire drill. I showed them some of the photos and anybody sees the photo of the third floor, it was wall to wall, shoulders to shoulders. Nobody communicated to them other than a fire drill. Nobody communicated. The first floor they got caught off guards. Second floor, they heard the gunshot. If the shooter arrived on third floor, he had 200 rounds left. It was wall to wall and shoulder to shoulder. Man, it would be worse. Because of lack of communication and lack of training and policies and lack of so much that it was as bad as it is. It could have been worst. I know my time is is up. Whats frustrating is there is a lot of whether the fbi and if you want to talk about the fbi, it had two instances before this happens. So a couple of years, we lad five mass shootings. Whos been as far as you know whos been held accountable not passing on the tip to the fbi or the hotline and not passing onto the miami office . Have you heard of anybody been held accountable . No. All they had to do is pass it on. Nothing is happening far as i understand. This is disgusting. How do we know if anything is changed . Thanks for being here. Thank you. Senator peters. Thank you for all the testimonies. In your testimony, you stated that School Shootings are the extreme end of the continuum of violent. I want to talk about some of the evidence behind that statement as we try to drill down evidence based on solutions here. Whats the data tell us whos the perpetrator and likely to be . There is no one profile of a School Shooter. This is coming from the fbi having examined several of the previous School Shooting incidents. Previous School Shooters have been popular and they also have been loners and females or males. There is not one particular profiler. There are warning signs and risks and that in clucludes the individuals. We know that when communities have increase levels of trust, students are not likely to bring weapons to school. Theyre likely to report to School Officials when they suspect there is a threat from one another here. This is important for us to focus in on building a positive School Climate as a way of prevention. I am not saying we should not invest in security measures. Thats one part of a much broader effort to actually create a school and we need to make sure as we are implementing safe school measures theyre not causing harm for our children. Are these perpetrators, are they outsiders or folks in school. Vast majority of shooters have come within the school, either current or past students. These are students that know what the school is doing with security measures and if they are determined to do something in that school, they would find their way around that. It is important for us to focus on prevention as well as securing our schools. If they are from the school and they may know Safety Measures or drills is what you are saying . How do we Design Systems given that . Whats your recommendation . I think we need to continue doing things to help secure the school. But, i think we have to really invest and try to get to the root causes of the violence. We need to help identify challenges and provide support. When there is a viable threat, we need to identify what those challenges are and find support thats going to prevent those students from carrying out those threats. Mr. Shekter. You talked a great deal about that in your Opening Statement and i appreciate that. The Department Homeland security and we are reporting the next few months hopefully sooner than rather later. What are you specifically watching for as the implements are clearinghouse and specific aspect that is you believe are most critical for us to use as a tool and you are hoping to see as best practices. On july 30th, will be our first meeting and we are inviting three dozen different state holders from all different aspects and Mental Health and lau Law Enforcement and super in attendants. There are Common Sense Solutions that you know Lesson Learned that came out of columbine and sandy hook and now parkland that needs to be implemented. If we have everybody agreeing and have buy in, i am hoping that once we accomplish these best practices, it will be put up on a federal website and then thatll be implemented through all states and School Districts across the country. Thats my main concern that we need to ensure that the School Districts adopt these best practices as soon as possible and cant let another day go by where Lessons Learned thatll save and mitigate lives and prevent School Strategies dont get implemented. And hopefully once we have these best practices, theyll be tied to the grant dollar. Broward county has half a Million Dollars to implement analytic cameras last year and they did not have a formal active response policy. In marjorie Stoneman Douglas commission that i am on, we develop tiers. Tier one is low cost measures that every school could implement no matter if it is a school in iowa or miami, they should implement those and tiers two and three and four would be expensive and longer term implementations. Schools should not be implementing a tier four strategy if they have not done the basics or solve a former activist response policies. Once we have those best practices, they need to ensure compliance. You discussed the role that the u. S. Secret Services National Threat Assessment Center has played an advance research use by assessment team. You discussed that as well in your testimony. Mr. Schacter, what role should it play in the overall landscape . I think it is a central role. It is one of the prevention measures. You know our situation, shooter had around 69 interactions with the school. He had 21 calls from police and numerous sessions with the local health agency. I cant help but think if months or years before if somebody done a threat assessment on the shooter that someone may be here. It is critically important to step in and try to help those individuals but also if you cant know who they are and deal with them appropriately. All right. Thank you mr. Schacter. Would you like to add anything . It is critical. We have identified a major gap that these information silos. You had this violent individual from age three that had a tremendous amount of disciplinary actions inside the school and then you had all these Law Enforcement interactions, well, these were two silos that never connected. These threat assessment teams that were instituted after Virginia Tech and now after florida are to be sit down and be practi proactive. I will recommend it. Theyll save lives and reauthorize the National Threat Assessment Center and alsos t t act as well. Senator. Thank you member chair. First, i want to thank all of todays witnesses for taking the time to speak with us and to help ensure that our children are protected as we make our schools safer. A special thank you to mr. Hoyer and schacter for your tireless efforts to honor your children and protect and support all of our children. And all the family members who are here today who have lost their loved ones. I thank you you as well for being here and adding your voices and witness to this strategy. I share your view that we theed to acknowledge this, there are real threat that impacts communitys snagss wide. We need to focus on what we could do to protect students and prepare them for the unimaginable. I became governor of New Hampshire after the horror of the sandy hook shooting. In New Hampshire. We took action. We worked to expand a number of School Safety and initiatives including a state wade perspective activiwide initiative to improve schools and First Responders. The system reduced Law Enforcement Response Team by allowing schools computers to connect with dispatch. The sa mr. Schacter, i know you talked about some of these today. In your work to safe schools, have you found these kinds of measures are important including schools of Law Enforcement are more prepared in the industry . Senator, you are 100 correct. We did an analysis of 20 years active shooter. What we found was that, majority of the shooting are over in five or 10 minutes. As the sheriff was talking about for seconds, everyone was dead. Everyo theyre not going to get there in time. Even the campus was a courageous individual which he was not. It still took him a minute and 44 second toss get at the front of the building. By that time, her children and staff were shot and killed. Thats why a immediate notification is critical. If we look at the Safest School in america and india. Peach teacher wears a key fob on their neck. Law enforcement has access to the cameras which Broward County refused to giver Law Enforcement. They did now but Law Enforcement did not have access to the camera nsds th camera. Law enforcement can look inside the school and see where the School Shooter is and has live action intelligence and knows where to go or where. The other critical piece we need to work on as it is closer to available. It does not matter whether it is a county sheriff or municipal officers or state trooper. The fact is whoever thats closest needs to be able to get that information and respond. Thank you again for your work and i look forward to continuing to work with you and all the witnesses. Mr. Hoyer, you ever discussed we need to focus on prevention efforts. It includes in keeping schools safety and making sure that individuals who exhibit behaviors that are a threat to themselves or others do not have access to firearms or other dead lie weapon. To do this effectively, we need to make sure students know where to report suspicious activity and how to speak heeek help. Mr. Hoyer, what have you found to be best practices for building a comprehensive prevention approach that ensures student experiencing a Mental Health crisis. That was something pretty simple. One of the things we are advocating for is suicide prevention. Yeah. There are proven on the shelves. Columbia protocol, fairly simple, one card and six questions. It tells you the question and how to responds to the answer. I will sit here with you and pat you on the back and i would sit here with you until somebody comes down. I it empowers people, colleagues and family members to ask the question and get people to seek help. We are eradicating and funding and our friends at sandy hook had a program started with hello. This foreman existed for a while. The one that columbia protocol was implemented in the marines and saw a 22 in production in suicide. Yeah. I just think that starting there, starting with something so simple and easy to implement would be a first step to int improve. You have to include Mental Health. Dr. Temkin, i want to talk about a couple of points. Your expertise is critical. I am particularly concerned with trauma experienced by student and teachers during act tifr shoive shooter fran trainings. Can you share some drills you had. Obviously, we have to balance all these issues so we want to make all of our school safe. If you can help us understand what those best practices looked like and how we can avoid some trauma to students would be helpful. Many of these active Shooter Drills that are multi option or may have been referred others. These drills are realistic and such as it is recorded. They have been traumatized. By seeing them trip over each other. You know this was more trau traumatizing than training. In terms of disparity, we have to think of staffing as well as the impact of staffing. When it comes to School Resource officers. We know that School Resource officer is one day or president and especially when they are involved in the discipline of school will driver up suspension and expulsion and criminal justice for minor, nonviolent offenses. We have to be careful when we are recommended and that we consider these outline attended consequences. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your testimony. Senator rosen. Thank you, i want to thank you negotiator scott for his work and bringing you here today. As i think about how you must feel about parents and communities and members and students and children and grandchildren. The impact of what you experience and the personal level, it has an impact on all of us. I never want to imagine what you have gone through. I never want another family to go through what any of these families are going through. I hope sincerely that we can work on honoring the loss of your most precious loverd ones y our action in the future. So i agree with the panel that we have to emphasize multi motto approaches to address this issue. It is not just one thing. It is many things because each incident is going to be different. Schools have to foster safe and supportive learning environments for all students. We have to have an adequate number of schoolsbased Mental Health professionals to reach students or suicidal or angry or whatever it is. You cant learn if you dont feel safe for other students. That association of School Psychologists, they recommend a ratio of one psychologists to every 50 o 0 to 700 students. In nevada, we have one for every 3,000 students. It is a ticking time bomb. The Nevada Association really works with the schools psychologist psychologists. Psychologists and social workers and nurses and to develop an achievement plan to earn courage those proposals. And so dr. Temkin, thinking of this small approach, how do you think . I have a twopart question. How do you think schools can work to identify support that students need more intensive interventions to ensure they received the appropriate detentions before. Can you speak a little bit to the necessity of federal support both through guiding and funding to support these efforts because thats what we can do. Absolutely. In terms of identifying students, i subscribe to a Public Health model. Universal approaches can reach about 808 of our student. Five percent needed targeting interventions. While we in st while, we can help identify students wearing one thing i want to flag about pred pred r assessor. It is really grounded in support and lets find a way to help the students so they can succeed, not just to prevent our tragedy. In terms of federal support, we have seen over the course of the last 20 years starting with response to columbine and a series of investments that the federal government has made that focused on prevention. The Safety School is safetity and students of initiative. These really help school. We saw a reduction in School Safety indicatorindicators. As a result, theyre limited. We are hole to see that results. Whats going to come from that. That we invested in title four funding. The student Automatic Access and academic enrichment covers a whole host of things. Not just for silent preventions. When schools decide what to do that. They may not be investing it either. Why would those it is very important. Can you speak a little bit more about National Guidelines and standards for School Staffing and the evidence behind meeting these specialized staff . Absolutely. We know it is not just an under representation of School Psychologists and other personnel. It is a district representation. We know that majority schools are likely to have a School Resource officer then they have to a mental help professional. School researcher can only perpetuate. Thats going to be where your default lies. We have to balance our school Mental Health of professionals. We need you to increase the number of Mental Health of fregsfregpr it is frighten if you have Elementary School or the god forbid there is a strategy. Whats the impact of this drama going forward, the teachers people who remains and have to continue to maybe not go back to that school but we have to go to some school. How did we support people who had been through a horrific ercht li event like this . We need to invest trauma informed approaches. That means finding individual alized to help support that person to help them feel comfortable in their violent. There is no one side for any of us. It is going to pretend on the community as well as the individual. Not everyone responds in the same way. We talk about our childhood experience. As a driver, but not every child could experience the Adverse Child Experience is going to be experienc experiences. We have to carry this to each individual situation. I appreciate your testimony and athink approach Mental Health and School Safety and in hard and soft way as we move forward. Senator sanders, i want sto start something in the school in parkland, there was not patrol access. I visits that school all the time and there is only one point of pen vi. Thst also tr is that precommon . Plaz . Did you have 1 point renter in your schools . Jared, can you comment on that . Yes, very consistent. Theyre not across the board. I will give you an idea and how simple it is. The Stoneman Douglas campus is the campus was practiced. Here was the practice. They opened the gates for arrival time. Did 5 30 in the morning for a 7 40 school start time. They open the gate in the afternoon for 2 15. We ask the investigation why . It is just the way we have always done it. Why bothered having closed locks. Shes absolutely right that majority of these fact and the last 20 years, 43 of people were done by insiders. 94 . In the case, the shooter exploited it. He knew it is going to be open. He arrived at 2 19 p. M. And it was opened at 2 15. If they are not gay. Do you have anyone in there professor communicatiopr for communications. That would be your tone action, correct . It defends. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. Well, you brought a point about tim duncan. We have these massive schools nowadays verses a hundred years. Although things like acting mckay, you are some what will be removed in that day. I think these passive school are demonizing. So can you comment on large school sizes and is that part of the collusion that starts going for Smaller School again. We should do more research into that. The data that i have seen is not significantly different in the rates of survival. It depends on the investment each makes into School Safety and climate. As you mentioned, we know that there is not a correlation between school, size and simple things. I want to go back to parkland, whats notable that perpetrator is how well known. Shes probably had her problems worked. You talk about bod occasion to relaxation for ferpa and hymba. Sheri sheriff, did those federal laws event dig cheney information or was it intelligence . Purple has been around for 40 year and has not been updated. There is a lot of room and opportunity to update. Bow was more recently but i will say this. As far as loathe of those losses and they are overly applied by the people who are charged with and interpreted them and the exceptions are not as understood as they need to be. There is a lot of one to do more trading. So that those donts cant be connected. There are some questions of discussion of behavior of predecessor. That information sharing and having the laws. You know our system, the justice a reason to prove guilty us the bedrock vegetable. It is an issue. What do you do with them not guilty yet. Well, this is not so much and it is true. Theyre not guilty but there are things they could be done. Behave threat, i will take it a step further or a step differently and processing. I think if we wait until we have threats. Were waiting too long. We need to get it back here. We need to catch it before it man vests a threat. If something that can be done. One of the police is lacking his coordination. You have a community helped providers . Many of these kids are under multiple treatment plans. Also, again, is identifying and doing something about it. There was a campus monitor that saw the shooter walking through that gate, unfeathered. It took the shooter a minute and 30 seconds to walk into the gate. He identified them. He said to himself. The best crazy boys and hes carrying a rifle bag. He did nothing about it. So this is where the importance of our mitigation is and being able to identify the threats so others could react to it. They dont know how to identify, then there is nothing to communicate. He saw crazy boy here in the rifle bag. He did nothing about it. It was not communicated and people could not react to it. It is a combination of things. I want to follow up on senator scott in terms of schools safety, officers. I want to know more about that. Whats the School Profiles . Is it supposed to be for Law Enforcement military . On every charter elementary or schools, what is called a Safety School officer and is that person on campus who is authorized under law to work that activist assailant event. The guardian performs as a collateral. They could be Athletic Director or principal or somebody thats hired to dedicate just for that role. So allocated money. What happened to the money . What was the use for if it is not used for safe School Officers . It is still sitting there. Last years budget was 67 million. This year, it is rolling over again. The 67 million that was allocated originally, probably at least 50 million of it and probably more still sitting there thats available. They have it at the guardian program. Schools are going to take money and reallocate to some where else. No. Was there that political argument there . The resistance is whats in the guardians. Too Many School Board and district one is what they cant have. They wanted only cops. The real is that cant happen. First and foremost and Law Enforcement probably one of the most challenging person we had. The state of florida alone, 1500 openings for police officers. There are 4,000 schools in the state of florida and only half of them have cops. What are we going to get . 3500 cops . It does not work. You have to use alternatives. The cougguardians provide a goo alternative. They didnt like it and didnt want it. And so we are not going to do it. That resulted in where we are. We have a real shortage of Health Professionals as well. I have more question. The other thing thats highlighted in the report was the problems of the Communications System and now these are not new, we hear about across all sorts of Law Enforcement agencies now. This is critical because the speed is a matter of life and death and you can communicate and be able to find out where that shooter is. My question to you is what is your recommendation . What could we be doing today to help the Community System or invest in the communication system, what sort of actions should we be doing to deal with that problem across agencies and across the country . Two issues, one is ensuring radio communications. All Law Enforcements and deputies can speak to each other. That was not the case in parkland. Corral spring polices and police in parkland could not communicate. They did not have each others radio channels and they were patching the two channels but you cant patch what you dont have. Nobody installed the corral spring channels in the broward channels. We have two separate operations. Thats not acceptable ocbviousl. Those types of things need to be fixed. Second is in the 911 center. Way too many counties in florida and across the country have multiple 911 centers in their counties. Most people think and theyre wrong. When you pick up the phone and you call 911, the person whos answering your call is going to dispatch help for you. That was not true. That was not the case in this situation. The first girl who called 911 on the first floor in building 1. Her 911 call was answered by the Corral Springs police departments. They sdepartmen department. They set up 991 calls went to Corral Springs. The first call came in was answered by Corral Springs. That call taker waited 28 seconds before he is transferred over to the Broward County sheriffs office. It took 57 seconds to process the Broward County where the story had to be told again. It was a 1 and 24 seconds, on the first floor, 24 people were shot in 1 minute and 44. As soon as somebody calls 911, that call needs to go out immediately. An irony here is when finally they dispatch to Corral Springs officer, he arrived in 19 seconds. Had it been known properly or set up differently, maybe someone would have gotten there earlier and could have helped. Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Timkan. My state of michigan is a state of rich in diversity including folks in rural areas or urban area or students of various racials and ethic background. I know there are no one side fits all approach to School Safety. We need to be thinking about that as we are looking at putting together national policies. Wh what are some of the intended consequences we should be aware of when discussing School Safety measures that may not look the same across Diverse Community . I think it is important that we recognize it. It is not a one size fits all solution. The high school that i attended in arizona was not laid out as a traditional high school. We had multiple buildings, something similar to marjorie Stoneman Douglas. The security measure would have been different with the school here in d. C. We have no not restrict the solutions that we can give schools and we recognize that every context is different, our rur ru rural area may take you longer. We have to recognize that in developing whatever recommendations that we give for school thank you. I dont know if there is a sense of urgency . Colorado. I know the sense of urgency in florida. A high sense of urgency in connecticut. Question i have is how do we create a sense of urgency exists right now in florida after these strategies . How do we find champions in states where treasures have not already occurred . How do we do that . We have the information we still need and well still need within the states. It should be incumbent on every senate to do that. You need people there fulltime driv driving the process. Are there any suggestions . It is the mindset that needs to change that we had in parkland and sandy hook thats not going to happen here. If you had that mindset and prevents you from having a security mindset. The principal principal at marj Stoneman Douglas was interviewed, if there is a threat at your school, were you supposed to know about it . His answer was no. That needs to be changed and it is not an easy answer. Part of the way we do that is number one having that School Safety Rating System to show the public whether or not your school is safe. Right now there is no way for a parent to go online to see if their school is safe and if we can take that information and push out to the public, i think that it will put nationwide pressure on School Districts to implement the best practices theyre going to be developing in the clearinghouse and i think thats one of the major ways and also it is the best practices as we travel around schools, they ask us what can i do . Show me where to go. The clearinghouse is going to develop those best practices and theyre going to be up on schoolsafety. Gov very soon. Whats the criteria you are setting as you are setting those tier levels . You had multiple criteria of low cost and people agreed on it and most effective. What do you use as your criteria . Tier one is no cost or low cost, for instance, the response policies, we are not talking about implementing massive amount of technology and it would cost a lot of money and a short time to implement. Another examples is locking doors. We lock our doors when we leave our house. Every teacher should be teaching with a locked door. Tier two and three and four, tier four is long time implement be long time to implement and very costly. So implementing those, the marjorie Stoneman Douglas commission laid that out here, 123 and four and i think that the commission, the clearinghouse is going to be hopefully doing that as well. In my briefing, this was a relatively thick briefing packet that i got and i saw summer recommendations from your commission from sandy hook and columbine and the federal commission, and they set up a matrix for me in terms of here are the four columns and recommendations, which commission was recommending which. There are a fair amount of differences, a lot of commonality but a lot of differences but there were a lot of recommendations. There are things that every school can do no matter if you are in indiana, rural indiana or in miami, every school should be doing these nocost lowcost things. And again that is what i appreciate about the structure you brought to this. The priority in terms of what we need to be doing and the National Clearinghouse, it doesnt require a big old Government Program but it requires the government to be the clearinghouse and do it thoughtfully and highlight it and for my standpoint legislation not to be action inducing to create that pressure to find those champions in the state so that it is driven at a state and even more important at the local level. Because schools are local issue, it just really is. You mentioned indiana, either i know ive met with so many people on this issue, i think i met with folks who really hardened, kind of an exhibit one of a hardened school. Its 300,000, can you tell me more about that and talk about the things theyve done . The reason there was such a high cost is because they have a bulletproof glass in that school. Obviously that is not scalable but the things that school does do, number one you would never know that it has the best security. It does not look like a prison at all. You wouldnt even notice that, it doesnt even have metal detectors but what it does have is that immediate notification to Law Enforcement and it has a drill. They practice because if you dont train your teachers and your staff you see what happens, like my son was murdered. Thats what happens if you dont drill and you dont train. And when i went to that school i arranged a private tour right after the tragedy in parkland and one thing that i thought was very illuminating was we talked to teachers, we talked to children in that school and they felt safer knowing that they knew what to do in an emergency. They know that if there is an active shooter they know exactly where to go in that classroom and another tear one measure would be they have a redline and that classroom in the corner of the classroom so that every child knows where to go. He is out of the sight line of that window, alex was murdered because the murderer targeted him through that window. And the kids on the second floor like the sheriff talked about a lot of them were in those corners. That is another thing, it is lowcost, no cost and the training is very very important. Training for Law Enforcement officers, in the marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooting, the training that Law Enforcement had, they only trained every three years. So active Shooter Training whether it is Law Enforcement or staff and children, it is muscle memory. You need to know what to do in these are life skills. We dont live in kansas anymore. This is happening around our country, children and staff need to be trained no matter if they are in a Movie Theater or school, they need to know, they need to be equipped with life lessons to be able to protect themselves in case of an emergency. I should know this, did you all see each others testimony before today . Negative. So you havent seen dr. Temkins testimony . Negative. You mentioned about you mentioned about drilling , do you have problems with what max was talking about in terms of, like do we crawl under our desk, i didnt really feel particularly traumatized for that and i realize it was pretty stupid. We do need to prepare like you have to do fire drills, you see a problem with that . I absolutely agree we need to prepare but i think it is how we frame how we are doing the training as well as the types of training we are doing. I think we have to be careful that these dont become so routine that when an incident unfortunately happens, that students dont feel complacent or oh, this is just another drill. That is a risk of overdoing some of these things. I also think that we have to make it clear that we are not doing this because there is an imminent threat. I think that is where kids get scared. When they think that the community they are in and the community of peers, the teachers they are around are going to in some way harm them, they become scared to come to school and we need to prevent that option as well. I think there has to be that balance. So in preparing and listening to testimony and that type of thing i am thinking about another issue we are dealing with all the time, the problem at the border. And before sen. Peters starts rolling his eyes on this one, i see a similarity in terms of what we are dealing with here because right now weve got a crisis at the border. There is a specific problem in here now and often times the solution, which by the way is a solution, if we could develop those countries and get rid of the drug cartels and the extortion rackets and provide opportunity you would not have a migrant flow out of central america. But that is a very longterm solution. And again, with all respect, an awful lot of things youre talking about , Mental Health treatment, we dont have enough Mental Health practitioners now. So how do we separate out and how do we make sure that the kind of longerterm solutions which are completely valid and we would all love to do them, dont get in the way of the tier 1 things that we must do right now. And really take that long term viewpoint because the next thing im going to ask is somewhat controversial, the proposals as well that dont get locked up or included in these things and prevent action. So i think that the main issue is that there is a limited amount of resources, so we have to balance our investments and what we do to defend our schools with what we are doing to actually prevent School Violence and build our students up. When we are given such a limited amount of resources, our schools systematic prevention efforts that are really necessary to create safe schools. We have to incentivize both. Im a big proponent of the kiss principle. Keep it simple stupid. So what im asking, i hate to give folks like you a homework assignment but again ive seen the recommendations. And i know youve done the tearing but work with this committee to design the most simple but most effective piece of legislation under our jurisdiction that can grab peoples attention and create that sense of urgency, that can have the federal government do what it can do so that we are actually taking action as opposed to what often happens around here which is we just need more funding for x, y, and z. I think that there are the most important things that we need to do here, and they dont require a whole lot of funding. So lets concentrate first on that because to me, the number one thing we have to do is create that sense of urgency so that every community, every school, and every state is implementing at least those tier 1. If we can get their attention on that and get them active, you take that first step, i come from a manufacturing background, continuous improvement. If we can make that incremental improvement and take the first step you can get peoples attention and theyll be looking at tier 2 and tier 3. And tier 4. Without arguing over the more controversial things. Okay . One final question that i have, i do want to address the controversial issues. We talked about red flag laws, i would say 15 states have enacted those, whats always frustrated me about the gun control debate is i really do think there is Common Ground but what ends up happening is youve got to take it all mine are all mine. So what we agree on . Lets at least enact what we agree on. It makes a lot of sense to me that you want to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, so if people have serious Mental Health problems. But at the same time i fully expect, respect due process, but what do you do if they are not guilty yet. That is probably one of the more controversial aspects of this thing, the gun control debate. How do we get by that . Any suggestions, anyone want to comment on that at all . Im pretty sure you brought it up but i was advised not to have this hearing. We have in florida as a result of legislation last year, passed a red flag law, a Risk Protection order law. It is extremely effective. It has a lot of process and due process built into it. Where Law Enforcement has the ability to seek an order immediately from a judge and then a final hearing has to be held within 14 days and they are good for a year and can be renewed and its a full adversarial hearing. Finally we also have now authority when we take somebody into custody under what we call the states a correct law, every state has their version which is an involuntarily commitment for Mental Health evaluation. Up until last year we didnt have authority and when we take someone into custody because they threaten someone with a firearm we couldnt even seize a firearm but we can do that now. So theres are very important and effective but they also have a lot of process built in so that is being done with the right people. Its not just blanket and sweeping across the board. Obviously because a parkland, it was easier to pass that. Was it designed and was it it was controversial. But how controversial . Id say moderate to very. Controversial. There had to be a lot of discussions and negotiations as we all know, you all know better than i in the legislative process, its all about compromise and getting to a place where we can get something through. Its not perfect and its better than where we were. And we all, i just want to add, i think that there are a number of things that can be done across the board that are low cost nocost and probably the best thing is to set minimums on what should be done but recognize that we are very very diverse, and there has to be local control over communities and we tell and you tell others in position to tell people, tell them what to do but not necessarily how to do it. To allow for local control. Like withdrawals as an example. You have to have drills but dont get into telling them the specifics of it, because they need to be ageappropriate and they are going to be different in different places. You have to have an active shooter response policy, if we could just get to a place where every School District in this country had five, six, seven basic core security competencies in place we would be much further ahead than where we are. So we need to make it so that its palatable and the noncontroversial things that they will take and do. So im a big advocate of telling them here are the five, six or maybe even 10 things you have to do and let them figure out how to do it. If we can get there we would move the needle. Im not a real fan of the federal government here, im all about local and state control, so i really dont want to create mandates but i realized the federal government can play a role but i wanted to be constructive. Do you have anything you want to add . I will give you one last chance, i will start with you dr. If theres something you want to add to this. Not necessarily what we talked about that to close out the hearing. There are a few points that i think are really important to consider here. One is what is our definition of safety. If our definition of safety is only about preventing School Shootings i think that security is clearly the way we want to go but if we want our kids to actually feel safe in schools, if we want them to be protected against all forms of School Violence ranging from bullying on up, we have to do more than just security. We have to make sure we are thinking more broadly. We have to be thinking about School Climate. To mr. Schachters point , we know that a lot of schools are including School Climate surveys and these are movements that i think could be helpful to take a much broader view of what School Safety means. I think we also need to build on things that are already happening. One piece i want to make sure is known to the community is that there are several clearinghouses already in existence around School Safety that are from the federal government. And they are available as well as Technical Assistance centers so i would encourage you to look at them and see what might be improved upon them. So is a federal website maintained by the National Institute of justice that has many of the practices and programs available around School Safety and their valuations too. Including those that have shown to both not work and have the potential unintended consequences. We have to consider that as we are thinking through these. There are also several Technical Assistance centers from the department of education including the readiness and Emergency Management pa center which does a lot of this work as well and i encourages you are thinking about the National Clearinghouse to look at what has already been funded and what is in existence. Thank you dock. Ill start with safe schools when kids dont get shot in them. Sheriff . I appreciate the opportunity and thank you chairman for shining the light on the problem. And letting people know that we have a lot of work to do. The needle needs to move further and in some cases it needs to move to begin with. People need to know, its going to happen again. And we have to do things differently. So i appreciate the opportunity. Tom . I would like to restate how much we believe this is such a complex problem there is no single answer to this. A lot of School Safety lies outside of the school way before shooting happens. We think about these in layers of protection so Mental Health is the first layer where you try to detect the kids who need the help, if they fall through the cracks there, we have to keep the firearm out of their hands. If they fall through the cracks there, we have to have schools that are safe. You have to think about it that way, its a much broader problem than just one thing. Max . I want to address the mindset the last 20 years that School Safety is a local issue and not really a federal government, the federal government shouldnt have a lot to do with it. In my opinion schools have failed to protect their children since columbine and when those National Crises happen i think the federal government has a larger role to take and i think should take a larger role in protecting its schools and its children. And as far as the federal governments role they have the power of the purse. Most schools receive money in some form or fashion from the federal government, there are many Grant Programs in the department of justice that give out money to schools and once we develop these best practices and, for instance, the tier 1 levels, i would advocate that no school gets money unless theyve implemented these tier 1 lowcost nocost measures, i think that would move the needle just to give you an example. Colorado just signed its law 20 years post parkland, post columbine to lock all doors when they teach. It has taken 20 years for that to happen. Florida has done that as well, recommending that but it needs to be nationwide and as the sheriff talked about or was talking about to move the needle here to protect our children. Max ive always been impressed with just your basic common sense and the way youve taken your tragedy and turned it into a practical approach. Thank you sir. Again i truly appreciate that and again our sincere condolences, thank you for participating. The hearing record remain open until august 9 for statements and questions for the record, this hearing is adjourned. Cspans washington journal live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. Coming up tuesday morning, marilyn democratic congressman jamie wrapped and will join us to discuss the latest on his committees investigation of resident trump. And firearms policy director matthew turow see a will talk about gun violence prevention measures. Also author and tv critic james potter wasik on his book about Donald Trumps use of television in his business and political career. Watch cspans washington journal live at seven eastern tuesday morning, join the discussion on tuesday testimony from pres. Trumps former Campaign Manager corey malinowski on the possible obstruction of Robert Muellers investigation by pres. Trump. He will speak before the House Judiciary Committee and it gets underway live at 1 pm eastern on cspan three. And wednesday a hearing on the Mental Health of migrant children, we hear about the mental needs of those children currently being held in the care of the health and Human Services Refugee Resettlement office. You can see that live at 10 am eastern on cspan three. And coming up thursday Eugene Scalia the son of the Late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia will testify before the Senate Health education and labor that starts live thursday at 9 am eastern also on cspan three. Pres. Trump and first lady manon you trump will host the second state dinner of his administration as he welcomes australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his wife jenny morrison. Watch guest arrivals, it begins friday at 6 30 pm eastern on c span. Online cspan. Org or listen on the free cspan radio app. Cspan is back into wine iowa for Live Campaign 2020 coverage of the polk county democrats annual steak fry beginning at 2 pm eastern where 18 president ial candidates will take the stage for speeches. Watchhe polk county iowa state fry, or listen live on the go using the free cspan radio app. Up next sen. Ted cruz talks about us Foreign Policy and National Security including threats from china and russia, he also shared his views on iran at this event at the hudson institute. Thank you very much john and thank you to hudson for hosting me, thank you for the terrific work you are doing. These are challenging times, in the United States and across the world. We have to be candid that we have enemies in the world. I have categorized the countries we face in the wo