On the heels of a mass shooting that took the lives of four Oklahomans, local law enforcement and emergency response officials on Tuesday discussed law enforcement’s role in active shootings in a panel hosted by Tulsa Crime Stoppers.
Mass shooting prevention, school preparedness, active shooter training and education on the issues were discussed, but one topic was “off the table” for attendees to ask the panelists: gun policy.
Karen Gilbert, executive director of Tulsa Crime Stoppers and a Republican candidate for State House District 79, prefaced the forum by saying, “I’m sorry, but we are not going to talk about gun policy or gun control tonight. That’s off the table. This is all about response for an active shooter.”
The panelists then gave their opening thoughts on active and mass shootings and talked about their agencies’ roles in those situations.
Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado began by commending the Tulsa Police Department for its response to the June 1 Saint Francis shooting and then turned to preventing mass shootings.
“We have a responsibility as citizens,” he said, when there are signs that a mass shooting could happen — such as posts from a person on social media or erratic behavior — to report those and let law enforcement determine whether an actual threat exists.
The Tulsa Police Department’s Special Operations Division commander, Capt. Mike Eckert, who was a lead supervisor during the Saint Francis response, said that shooting was “not an isolated incident.”
“We knew, by statistical analysis, that it was coming,” Eckert said. “Even in the training we do on a yearly basis, we don’t talk about an active shooter as ‘if’ it’s going to happen. We talk about ‘when’ it happens.”
Police departments have to prepare themselves for those situations, even though they don’t like the fact that they are possible, Eckert said, adding that he was proud of how Tulsa officers responded on June 1.
Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler said his office deals with the aftereffects of events such as the Saint Francis shooting and has a lot of victim advocates who work directly with people affected by traumatic events.
He said he also worries about his children and family being victimized in active-shooter situations and turned the attention to schools.
“We need to have a plan,” he said. “The community needs to help us in identifying who these people are, and I think a lot of us kind of know who they are, but we’ve been sitting back waiting for tragedies to happen. It’s past that point.
“Our schools, I know it’s summer time now, but we can’t afford to wait until people get back to school and teachers and educators and administrators decide in August or September, ‘Let’s start talking about it.’”
He said there are four questions to ask “those people who you view as being responsible for your children: ‘What do you know about this problem? What have you done about this problem? What are you doing about this problem? When are you going to solve this problem?’”
Parents and others should be having conversations with “those people” about how they solve those issues, he said.
When later asked by an attendee if those questions should only be asked of educators and school administrators or if lawmakers and law enforcement should also be challenged with them, Kunzweiler said those questions should be asked of anyone who has been hired to “do a job on your behalf.”
Law enforcement can talk all they want about response, but conversations about proactive measures should be had before active shooter situations happen, he said.
“It shouldn’t take the U.S. attorney or the sheriff or the DA to be telling those organizations what to do,” Kunzweiler said. “They already have the ability and the capability to get it done if the public will put the pressure on them.”
Some of the proactive solutions brought up by Kunzweiler and Regalado were single-point entry in schools, “fortifying” school buildings with bullet-resistant glass, and placing more resource officers in schools.
“Really, what we’re talking is, ‘How do we fortify a school?,’” Regalado said. “Well, that can be done, and it’s going to take funding. Police, deputies, law enforcement in the schools is the No. 1 way of keeping” schools safe.
The group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, which had the largest presence in the audience and a table front and center, said many of its members’ questions were left unanswered because gun policy was off the table.
Kay Malan, the public education and outreach lead for the nonprofit group, said she was angry that this event turned out to be a “PR situation” rather than an actual town hall event since the questions were censored.
“I feel like while these agencies are very important and we need them in a time of crisis, we need much more proactive work on the front end to prevent these crises from happening in the first place,” Malan said.
“Kunzweiler talked about parents contacting schools to demand to know what they are doing to protect students in schools, but what are these agencies doing to ensure that schools are protected?”
Schools and educators exist to educate, Malan said, not to protect children from gun violence. That job is for law enforcement and lawmakers, she said.
“This is not all on the schools and not all on the parents,” she said. “These agencies have power, and they should be using that power to influence lawmakers to do more to protect public safety. We cannot be talking about protecting our schools and our workplaces and shopping centers without dealing with laws at the state and federal level.”