Atlanta, nashville and other cities talked about Lessons Learned from Mass Shootings and the longterm effects on communities. The discussion held at the u. S. Conference of mayors 2023 meeting in columbus, ohio. Hi. Thank you, tom. When a Mass Shootings occurs, particularly one that makes national news. People across the country recoil in horror at the tragedy and at the senseless taking of innocent lives. People are gunnened down, going about their business, work, school, shooting or to a medical appointment or spending a night out in their town and in the city where it happens, its local police and other Emergency Personnel who are first on the scene and generally right behind them is the mayor. I think most of us feel this is the hardest part of what we do, from the initial shock, to sorting out facts of what happened. Making sure the suspect or suspects have been apprehended and they are still alive. And the victims and providing information and comfort to their families and information and reassurance to the community at large and one other step, is actually grieving yourselves as you address your situations long after. With us today are five exceptional mayors, who do great work each day and every realm of leading in their cities, but theyre also five mayors who dealt with high profile Mass Shootings, three of whom just in the last 10 weeks. Atlanta mayor andre dickens, on may 3rd, one person was killed and our others wounded while waiting for appointments at a medical building in midtown atlanta. Louisville mayor, craig greenberg, on april 10th, five People Killed and wounded in the National Bank building in the downtown area. Since then three other Mass Shootings in louisville in which three more people were killed and 12 more were injured. From nashville, mayor john cooper, on march 27th, six people, three of them 9yearolds were gunned down at coventry school. The other two mayors with us this morning, coped with Mass Shootings, and had time to reflect on both the immediate and longer term aftermath of those shootings. What they learned from them and both have made it a practice to reach out to mayors when a mass shooting occurs to console them and to help them manage the aftermath. Former dayton mayor dan whaley august 4th, 2019, nine People Killed and 17 wounded near the entrance to a bar on the citys oregon district and orlando mayor buddy dyer. On june 12th, 2016, in an incident many of us remember and about which many of us still grieve, 49 people were killed and 53 more were wounded in the pulse nightclub shooting. Lets hear from them now. Our first question today for mayors, what is your biggest takeaway from your experience and what advice for other mayors. Mayor dickens, start with you. Thank you for that question. This is the panel that none of us wanted to be on. Unfortunately, violence struck our communities and the first thing that to answer your question, it can happen anywhere, you realize once it happens in your city and it can happen anywhere, this is a National Issue and it happens almost 200 times already this year as tom said once per day and the grieving that happens with the families and the conversations that you have to have with people that witness the incident and Overall Community fear as youre trying to make sure that you apprehend the suspect and then bring them to Justice Without violence to them on all in all, its a complicated issue and there are answers that everybody throws at you. But you know, we know that Mental Health is a big part of that, being able to make sure that we invest more in Mental Health, you know, stabilization and support, across this country. And more guns in the hands of people, in my opinion, is not the answer, to lead to reduction in gun violence. Even though Violent Crime in atlanta is down this year significantly, this incident happened and it puts everybody at fear. So, one incidents makes overcomes the other good work thats done in a city that crime has been going down, and so, again, it can happen anywhere at anytime in this nation, a grocery store. Ours is a medical facility and so, you know, its a sad situation. Mayor greenberg . Some of the things ive dealt with a couple times as mayor and also before i was elected mayor, while it wasnt a mass shooting, fortunately, an individual talked into my Campaign Office on valentines day of last year, and fired six gunshots directly at me. And so, im the most fortunate person in this room and country to still be with you all here today and that was a similar situation in hindsight to dealing with the aftermath of the april 10th mass shooting that we had at old National Bank building. And some of my reflections on that are the importance of communication and transparency in the immediate aftermath for the reasons that you were just talking about, the fear, the concern, what else is happening next. The Community Wants to know and nothing i have experienced focuses people attention on a local issue more than Something Like this. And so being, communicating as much as possible, even when you dont have the answers be willing to stand in front of the cameras and talk and say what you do know, say what you cant tell people, but be accessible, i think, is critically important. We did two press conferences on the day of the old National Bank shooting and four or five days later we had another, unfortunately two individuals were killed in a park on a saturday night. At 11 00 on a saturday night we did one as well just to keep the communication going and that said, youve got to let the police do their job first and i purposely did not rush to the scene too quickly and theres nothing i could have done at the time. Need to make sure that everyone is safe, that the situation is secured that hopefully theyve apprehended the suspect or at least preserving the crime scene so that they can. Thats some in the immediate aftermath has proven to be effective. One other thing that i did not think of before becoming mayor is critically important for everyone to think about, ensuring that you have the relationship if you have a Level One Trauma Center in your city, make sure your Police Department, Emergency Services and hospital are all on the same page and are wellpracticed in the event that this happens because that they save lives. Theres no doubt. Our police officers, our e. M. S. Responders save lives and so do the doctors and medical profession save lives. Finally, i would say keep talking about it. Dont stop. We all know, were all here because we care about the issues. Everyone in this room and everyone in our cities, want to reduce the amount of Violent Crime in our cities and if Something Like this happens in our city, do not stop and it might be appropriate to talk about what happens, and ive found at stories yet to be written to talk with you for the state when they reconvene each year and hopeful with the local nature of what happened, it might change things, it might give us an opportunity to get some legal changes in our state law that will help us reduce the amount of Violent Crime. Mayor cooper. Well, im grateful to nan, i was on a panel like this two years ago and she was very helpful. That play book is really helpful. If terms of the shooting in nashville, weve had tornados, terrorists and this is unique in with the intensity of the community, murdering 9yearolds really can bring your city together. What did i learn learn in this incident if you go home and practice. Actually last fall we had an incident, this is not actually, i think ever really been reported. In nashville, somebody broke into a school, not a high school, and the principals arm was broken in getting them out of the building and revealed a relatively large respondent, not the perfect response that people saw on our body cam footage. The 911 operator didnt prioritize it and the Fire Department came and they werent able to get on the site until the police came late and others rallied to the principal. So, it led to me and our extremely fine police chief, which is the second part of this. Get a great chief. Get a great chief. No, no, get a great chief in practice. And so we actually had in response to that, a little bit driven by the mayors concern, 26 exercises. School shooting exercises. 16 of them in one particular middle school prior to the covenant response, so that when you saw the body cam footage of the officers who never met each other role playing perfectly into the building, thats a product of a huge amount of work that went on before. My other advice, again, it comes from nans work is, youve got to immediately be involved in things like the Reunification Center, take control of the space and a lot of bad actors like to get near that space, the bright spot lights kind of change everything, and then, and then have a community vigil. Understand that the power of the community has to be expressed in some constructive way and go do that. Do that as soon as you can. Have it be a big event because the community actually needs it for healing. But nothing replaces the Police Department, i mean, not every shooting is going to go as well. I mean, its not a terrible sentence. In terms of the Police Response being almost perfect, and each school has the practice as well. Covenant was deeply practiced and the result there will await after action reports. Almost everybody did a perfect job and you still had six deaths. Right . So, i mean, the thing about covenant that everybody realizes is that it could have been 50, it could have been 100 with no problem, with that level of fire power being easily available in the public and the last three Mass Shootings in nashville all, even a vague Mental Health prohibition from restricted access could prevent them from having guns, if not, its a gun violence safety measure, its not really gun control from that. But my its going to happen to you in practice and we had a bad incident and it made us really practiced, but it was part of a very good response that happened in the covenant shooting. Mayor whalen. Yes, its so tough to hear these stories because you hope its the last mass shooting. That what happened in your community continues to happen again and again and again, and i was looking at buddy when you were talking about the Reunification Center thats something, and buddy taught me from his shooting that we pass on and the reason that we decide to do the mass shooting playbook, the tree of life shooting nine minutes before in dayton and said i dont know what my job is for this whole and so that made us put together the nas shooting mass shooting protocol, you should get it now. You shouldnt wait for something to happen and ask me to send the protocol. Because to mayor coopers point, we need to practice. We practice for National Disasters and all kinds of things. And you need to be prepared and make sure that your police chief that has to be great and youre on the same page. And when the crisis happens, the mayor is communicator in chief so you need to make sure that youre communicating. Even if you because you want to protect the victims identity until the families get told and thats going to refire you require you to look at the media, and thats the job during the process, you let the police do your great job and youre the communicator sometimes to the na i gos nation whats going on. I encourage the mayors, this is a vulnerable time. People need to see that their leaders are feeling what theyre feeling. How could this happen to the community, what my daughter was there, my son was there. They need to see what youre feeling. In dayton, a month before we had 14 tornados that rolled through. When you have a National Disaster you can tell people to go pick up the stuff, oh, lets go get your chain saws out, we can help clean up. In a mass shooting, you cant do anything. And the helplessness that your community feelings during that time is palpable. So, to mayor coopers point, make sure you have your event planner staff ready to do a really strong vigil. If the city doesnt do it, its probably not as well done as if you did it with your leadership. So, these are the actions that you have to take in the first 24 hours. Now, one mayor told me i had to get through the first 24 hours and i have to say this organization got me through my mass shooting. I think over 50 mayors texted or called me that day, it was a sunday. And particularly buddy and bill paduto were the key folks. They had gone through this and gave me great advice that i took. Reminding me the first 24 hours are about the victims and you must protect the families so they can get to know who the victims arement because its terrifying, a lot of times, if you can imagine, you dont know where your loved one is, and you want to make sure that they hear that from professionals rather than the media. So thats your work in those 24 hours, but its longer than 24 hours. And dayton, im no longer mayor. Jeff mims is here and hes dealing with the aftermath of a shooting of nine people dead and 17 injuries in 32 seconds where our Police Department was perfect, too. And weve got to make some changes because its completely bull that were having this conversation right now. [applause] mayor dyer. So were coming up on the seventh year and i dont like to call it anniversary, but walking the seventh year of pulse. And when pulse happened, i bet you could reflect on and remember all of the Mass Shootings that occurred in the 10 years prior to that and i couldnt tell you all the Mass Shootings that have occurred this year or maybe not in the last month for that matter and the world has changed. So, the message i just think every one of the mayors has given thats important to other mayors is, its going to happen. Its not a matter of is it going to happen. Its a matter of when its going to happen and how its going to happen and are you going to be prepared for it and every mayor, i think, in the first week in office should start thinking about what if this happens to my city . How am i going to respond . So its been reiterated that planning for and practicing for and probably in most cases a good Law Enforcement response because they practice all the time on that piece of it. Its the piece after they finished what theyre doing that you have to prepare for and your role is going to be communicator in chief. One of the things ive learned after the fact, your community is going to respond generally in two way, thats with either fear or for not knowing whats going on, or hatred toward the group and individual that has caused the event. In our case not even knowing that, we try to redirect our response from the very First Press Conference after that. And we have a particular couple of communities, the Lgbtq Community and our latinx community, but we talked about responding not with hatred, but with love and compassion, and unity, and our community really took that to heart. As did, really, the country and the world. It was two weeks, i guess, before the u. S. Conference of mayors in indianapolis and i wasnt going to go and asked me to come up and speak to the conference as a whole and it was an opportunity for me, because i, like all of you, had gotten 100 Text Messages and voice mails from messages that you really dont have that much time to respond to, but gave me an opportunity to speak to the mayors and thank them for what they had done to support our community and our city and everybody came up with a screen shot of their rainbow color lit up city monument or whatever and took that back home and showed the eiffel tower was doing that and the outpouring of love and support and youre the leader. The mayor sets the town for what that response is going to be. And just a couple of things, really going through how to be prepared, where is your victim assistance going to be, where is your family going to be . Do you have a not for profit if people want to have the money for victims and distribute that. Have that set up because if you start getting checks the next day and dont have somewhere to make it, but theres Little Things like that and the one that i learned most is as we set up our original family Reunification Center in a place that was not secure, that the press had access and i wouldnt have thought about that before and the families were getting hounded by the press, trying to go in and figure out whether their loved one was alive or not. So, thats another lesson learned. So, practice, practice, practice, and think about how theyre going to communicate. So, i got this question yesterday from the mayor of cincinnati, and im going to change up the order and ask this of all of you. Mayor whaley mentioned, how do you deal with the tragedy not just the day, but after. Youre a community, strong, talking to the Police Department and others, but theres a traumatic situation in a city that you all love. How do you process that . How do you continue to, even if were seven years out and well start with you, mayor dyer. So im probably going to take a little bit on the other side of that, about a week in, i got a call from a counselor that i know and she asked me how youre doing and i said, you know, im doing fine, but i dont feel like im as sad or recognizing the tragedy as i should, im not being affected that way. And she said well, you cant be. She said you have a role you have to lead so you cant break down. You can show empathy, but you cant be the one thats crying on stage or behind the mic, you have to show some strength and some leadership through the whole process, and i say that also about getting help for your staff. Because your members of your city team are going to take on roles that they hadnt thought of and they were being affected by that, but we had a joint counseling session about two weeks in after that, where all of our staff that were people doing jobs that they had never thought they might be involved in, we brought counselors in so we could do it as a group and i told that story that i just did and three of my Staff Members raised their hand and said, thank you for sharing that, mayor, we feel the same way, im not feeling as bad as i think i should have and they were people that were involved in helping other people. Mayor whaley. And i think that somebodys points of perverse situation. So youre completely in the spotlight over such sad loss. For me, i did that 2019 was just a wild year in dayton, dayton is not big as any of these cities so i was like whats happening. I went to see a therapist earlier that year and on the fourth day of the shooting, im worried about everything, theyve seen terrible things in a place with happy memories. Im worried about the bar staff and hundreds into the district. Im going to announce that i see a therapist and announced it. Look, if shes standing here and going through this and seeing somebody made i should see somebody, too. I think for me its about every one of us are different and we lead differently and you know, your folks know when youre full of it or not. And showing who you authentically are in these very vulnerable times is what im talking about and being vulnerable. The other thing we did, okay, we did that last week and its done, we did an event with dave chapelle, we did a vigil and we had people could walk in and have services. And it lasted for a while and used this terrible situation to utilize Mental Health support i think its an important opportunity for your community, too. Look, this is to your point, its getting really hard over and over, because if youre in a bigger shooting, youre dealing with a mass shooting every day. So for me, i took that pain and have been dogged about supporting other mayors that go through this and working as much as i can to get an assault weapons ban, to change the policies so mayors of the future will not have to have this conversation and this will be a part of our history that was once was and is no more. Thats how i keep on going. If it keeps happening, get so down, i cant read the stories in nashville, i call the mayors, but i cannot read the pain because it keeps going over and over again. Until we get change so we dont have to have this conversation, i will drive for that every day, it helps my Mental Health. Mayor cooper . Im just, i am i want to thank the mayor for her honesty. I think its not only important for the people of dayton to say you went to a therapist, i think its probably useful for us to recognize that its more challenging than we are ever allowed to let on. I mean, listening to your question, i was going, what did i do . And even the funerals were okay, is that really helping you . Youve become a bit of an actor in this whole tragic scene and in our case, the funerals, which were also kind of mass events, were very helpful to the community, but what could be more devastating than the pastor of Covenant Church who lost his daughter conducting the eulogy for his daughter. . You have the full support of the community in nashville so the music of the events of each funeral was remarkable. And the courage of the family members is so inspirational it makes a mayor going like i cannot claim any extra with but the truth is you probably do in your and your community sure does, and i dont know what the journey is. Were only a month or two in it, and its clearly a longterm scar. And the confronting the reality of evil that people would break into a school and murder 9yearolds, i mean, just as a goal, are we really in a society that that isoa that, you know, that has evil so present . And then the ongoing challenge in our state, all of this is being pushed into efforts on gun violence mediation. And because the governor himself lost two Close Friends in this, he sponsored a special session, does not seem theyre going to include even the senate improvements in the legal situation. But its not a bad way of putting energy in trying to commemorate the victims. But im grateful for the honesty by the leaders who say, hey, we get scarred a little bit too along the way. Mayor greenberg, youre a newer mayoror comparatively but alreadypa dealing with these situations. How would you address the question . I agree with the others. Its important just to be yourself. And can trying to play some tough guy role because you think thats what, you know, the hollywood movie would have you portraying in that situation, if thats not authentically you, dont by yourself. You need be yourself. You need the preparation. You need a great team that is going to be executing so everyone can focus on what they need to do in the aftermath. But the night of it wasnt a mass shooting, but the night of the shooting on my, when i did that at, like, 5 00, it happened at 10 in the morning, i was physically numb. I shed tears during that event. It wasnt planned, i just the emotions of the experiences, thats where i went. In the old National Bank shooting, i lost a very close friend. One of the five victims was a close friend of mine. If my wife happened to be with my that morning when it happened, and so she had gone off to the hospital and was with his wife at the time we were doing our First Press Conference. So the personal emotions on top of what i was dealing with as mayor were overwhelming for myself and the governor of kentucky can who was even a closer friend with tommy. And so i think being a normal person is okay, but to your point, you know, you need to make sure that were executing on the plan as well. And i think thats what people want to see, and i think thats what makes everyone this this room the leader that they are. And so i i would encourage you o keep thatt this mind in mind but then also keep talking about it. As you just said, its not just massbo shootings. In louisville already this year weve had approximately 70 homicides. Under 10 of those are the result of Mass Shootings. The other 60 well leave this hearing here. You can watch more if you go to our website, cspan. Org. 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