Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. Test. I want to know if the flb will work with us. As you know were working on a trust and integrity bill that i believe is a hand of friendship. It also includes a collection of data, and that is numbers. Youve just cited the fbi report, but i view it as science that helps drive us toward providing the funding that youre interested in. I was on the beat program. I want to make sure its Going Forward and helping programs as much as possible. Would you comment briefly because i want to get to sheriff acevedo for him to further emphasize invest tactics weve used in houston and i want to thank mayor turner for emphasizing in terms of Community Outreach who youve engaged in and who you would answer the question just this past monday. Secretary kelly, and i know that you have gotten this notice and working with our joint terrorism indicated that we may be in one of the most serious terrorist threat atmosphere since 9 11. This falls to local police, what kind of resources and what you need dealing with that question. And i thank you, mr. Kanterberry. Im really interested in your comments about Mental Health to ask and answer the question are you saying that some of these people who come to you, theyre not criminals. They need Mental Health help, thank you. Mr. Chief thompson if you want to jump in, please do. Mr. Kanterberry. I think the walter scott case is the city of charleston handled the entire investigation and the prework that chief thompson was talking about in the city of charleston if you look after the Emmanuel Church shooting, as well. Im a proud south carolinian. We did not go to the streets in South Carolina we walked arm in arm on king street and charleston demanding the end to the violence and its the prework that happened there, but on a National Level weve always been committed to data gathering. What wed also like to see, though, is a mandatory collection of assault on Police Officers as well so that we can demonstrate the total number. Thats voluntary reporting currently, so yes, we will work with you in any way possible to increase the amount of data. Scientific data is a basis for asset allocation, policing strategies, but on the other side we also want to collect the data on the number of Police Officers that are being assaulted. I am going to take you up on that offer. Thank you, chief. Thank you. Good morning again. Were focusing on building relationships, building trust. Mayor turner sets the tone and we all follow including yourself and the Police Department. We dont paint people with broad brushes. Black lives matter will paint them with broad brushes when we know the vast majority in the movement are neighbors, friends and people who just want to see good policing and so what were doing in houston is engaging one another, building those bridges. When sb4 is trying to marginalize immigrants and paint them as thugs, rapists and drug dealers, were painting them as day laborers and cooks and nannies and people building our homes and our bridges and roadways. So i think that we need to put down our brushes and Start Talking to each other instead of yelling at each other and actually instead of running away from activists i run towards them and because of that we have built, i think, trust and we called each other on the carpet and have i think sheriff was saying. Honest, open, blunt discussions, but respectful. Sheriff. Thank you. Thank you, maecam. On the issue of Mental Health. Of that number 4,000 to 5,000 are seriously mentally ill. If you were to look at the remainder of them and you look at issues such as ptsd the number would probably be in the range of 90 . So we have a population thats very, very challenged that needs a different kind of care than traditionally weve been used to providing and many of our folks are in custody because theyre acting out on their Mental Illness and theres a cycle of dysfunction that continues. They come into our custody and we try to stabilize them on medication and be able to get them functioning and only to be released from the system back out on to the street and many are homeless and they go back to skid row or living under a bridge or a freeway, and then reoffend and find themselves back in custody, a very expensive cycle, a very inhumane cycle of this function that we need to break. What we need is additional funding and focus on communitybased Mental Health care and treatment to be able to provide alternatives to incarceration for people who can be better treated outside in a medical setting than in a custody environment. Chief . I would just briefly ad d that we have a lot of veterans coming back with ptsd that were having to deal with. We also have citizens like my son who has autism and were finding more and more situations where the actions, although they appear to be criminal in nature will be better served if we were to defer or get the people the type of help they need and we try to identify resources within our community and leverage the resources to a sft those that are having some of this Behavioral Health issues and one last word on autism. Its a growing epidemic. One in every 62 children born on the spectrum and board 148. So this is not a situation thats going to go away any time soon so we need to put effort into dealing with our fellow citizens as they grow older. Our little boy is only 12, but as a Police Officer and having him as a young black male who is not going to understand some of the orders of police i think im in a unique position to try to low pressure on both sides of this equation of how to respond and also how to give parents some assurance that well do all we can do. We really appreciate. Thank you, chief. If i could just to add on to the interaction of the police with the public as it relates to autism and other cognitive disorders. If we can find the way to be able to provide crisis intervention training to all of our Police Officers and deputy sheriff. Thats another tool in the tool box. We train in the Academy Command presence how to be authoritative and take control of the situation thats dynamic and chaotic. If we do that with someone who is autistic, we guarantee it will set them off based on their illness and it will have a bad outcome. If people know what to look for and cues in the environment and recognize symptoms and come off with a different approach, we get a different result and everybody benefits. Can i just acknowledge a person in the audience, mr. Chairman that has police and community relations. Mr. Womack is here from houston, texas, who has worked with the chief and came here to acknowledge National Police week. Thank you so very much. The chair will recognize the gentleman from texas, judge poe. Thank you all for being here. I assume all of you are here this week along with thousands of other peace officers and families of the slain officers to honor the fallen and not just from last year, but the previous years, as well. Chief acevedo, as you know, in texas last year we had 21 peace officers killed, numerous others wounded. More killed in the state of texas last year than any other state in the united states. Five of them were in the dallas area that were ambushed by a sniper while a demonstration was taking place in the city of houston or the city of dallas. Ironically, the officers were protecting the demonstrators and the crowd and then the sniper opens fire, took place over quite a long period of time. Five officers killed and several others wounded, citizens killed and finally the sniper was taken out as he should have been by Law Enforcement. So as a member of this committee along with the others, we mourn the loss of all of those officers plus the over 130 that were killed throughout the nation and thank you for being the head guy for your department. Chief acevedo, i want to talk a little bit about the justice of victims of trafficking act that has been implemented. As you know the bill that passed overwhelmingly in the house and the senate and signed by the president goes after the trafficker, and i call that person the slave master, goes after the buyer who is the consumer and then is helps the victim and treats the victim like a victim of crime and not a criminal. The city of houston recently had the super bubble and the city of Houston Police department was in charge and correct me if im wrong, but chief, i believe the city of houston was in charge of the entire process on trafficking and making sure that those outlaws stayed out of our town during the super bowl. You worked with federal, state, the nfl and other organizations. My question to you is specifically on the bill goes after the buyer and the consumer. The person who buys sex primarily with Young Children and for years that person seemed to always get away with that conduct in our criminal Justice System. Can you give me some success or not success of the law in going after the buyers for justice of victims of trafficking act in our city of houston . Good morning. Thank you so much. Unfortunately, the city of houston is actually the epicenter for Human Trafficking and sex trafficking. Its nothing were proud of, but its something that were com t combatting. Two things that err wwere doin very important. The war on drug, you can focus the people selling the dope or we can focus on treatment and going after the people buying it. In term of this scourge we do need and we are thankful of the fact that were starting to focus what we really need to be focusing on which is the consumer. In the city of houston with the District Attorneys Office and the leadership of kim and mayor turner and the Police Department we are now treating the victims as they are. These women are victim. These boy, these children, these girls are victims, and were treatinging them as such and consequently what were doing is theyre helping us identify the bad guys that are taking advantage of these folks whether its the travenlgfficker or the and were publishing the photos of these people and put them on notice first, publishing the photos. Thats something i would have done as a former judge in the city. There were people that ended up in those pictures and were very grateful for that bill and were hopeful that it will help us fight that. The last thing is a lot of these folks are so traumatized that when they are stopped by Law Enforcement with the pimp, with the trafficker theyre afraid to say anything, so actually training Police Officers on what the indicators are, how to investigate somebody on the side of the road has gone a long way and i would encourage our Police Departments across the country to be required to have training in that area. Thank you, chief. I think the Mayors Office has a tremendously adequate and excellent protocol on dealing with the issue of Human Trafficking. I hope more cities take it in the future and will make us not the hub of trafficking, but the answer to of course troising. The last comment i wanted to make was the chief or mr. Canterbury. I want to thank you for supporting the bill that i have introduced back to blue account which punishes outlaws more that commits crimes against Police Officers across the country and with that i yield back. The chair would recognize the gentleman from louisiana, mr. Richmond. Let me thank all of you for being here. Ill start with mr. Canterbury since you represent so many people and these are not gotcha questions and if we can answer them quickly it would help to get to where i want to go. Would you agree that so many municipalities and local leaders and states and cities and counties are so cash strapped that theyre using the Police Departments as a revenue generator from fines, fees, citations, traffic tickets, et cetera. Do you think that policy fosters or hampers communitypolice relations. It hampers communitypolice relations. In st. Louis there were 68 issuing tickets and the fop brought that to the forefront. We should never be used to generate revenue. Let me ask you another question. You would agree that the street code of no snitching erodes the safety of those communities and it hampers Law Enforcements ability to identify and convict criminals that are terrorizing those same communities . Absolutely. And on the converse with the blue code which has been termed in terms of Police Officers unwillingness or reluctance to do the same to other Police Officers that the fact that its out there and people talk about it erodes the communitys confidence in their Police Departments . I believe that that that the discussion of it erodes it. I personally dont think that the blue code exists to the extent that its meant to be. I have seen officers that might turn a blind eye to a policy vileation and ive never seen anybody turn a blind eye to a voolation. The other thing is and you mentioned and i was glad to hear you say that you dont think, you know the real bias is what you think some officers comes in with their own personal implicit bias and to the extent that chiefs and others have the ability to root that out and most often i see it least in Civil Service or others that the union will always come to the defense no matter how much evidence, and i think that that also erodes some community confidence, but let me ask you another question because you mentioned 18 officers and this year you talked about baton rouge in our district and you did mention st. John a couple of years ago in my district and you talked about officers being gunned down which is what i was concerneded about and you mentioned homegrown terrorism. What i have not heard here today is the Group Sovereign citizen who has killed more Police Officers than anybody else so when we dont mention them i think it gives the perception to the public that you have some outlaw urban kids or other people targeting police which is an unfair depiction when we know who sovereign citizen, who they are, and we never, ever talk about them or call them by name and my Law Enforcement officers tell me theyre more concerned about stopping a car thats a sovereign citizen than any other thing on the job. Would you agree on that . I think sovereign citizen is a scourge in this country and its not covered by the media, and Law Enforcement is extremely concerned about sovereign citizens. There were a number of incidents, baton rouge and the assailant professed to be a sovereign citizen and st. John parish where we lost deputies and both in my district were sovereign citizens and im in homeland and im the only one who talks about sovereign citizen and that concerns me. I think if we can talk about it with my colleagues it will help us because it will get to my last point which is, you all are outgunned. They have better ammunition. They have higher capacity cartridges. They have better bullets that go through the body armor that you have and they have better body armor. So if we talk about baton rouge, specifically, those officers got out of those cars with handguns and he had a long gun with a vest on and a vest that he invested 5,000 in, was there nothing that could save them. Not their helmet and their shield and their car door. His bullet would have went through anything. So we have to have an honest conversation about what people on the streets can buy and whether there is a need for it because our officers are walking into situations where its iraq except theyre armed as a crossing guard and the bad guys are armed as terrorists, and so if you could help us and were not talking about taking peoples guns. We just want the police to be on a fair footing with the criminals. Could you respond to that . Mr. Richmond, in the last ten or 15 years ive seen a shift on the Second Amendment and our position has been that better background checks, Mental Health records being available to conduct those background checks would go a long way. The Assault Rifle bill that was signed in by president clinton. The numbers did not prove at the conclusion that that bill had any success in reducing the number of guns that were sold or number of guns committed. So i think preventing those people preventing the guns can i make a comment . Sure. The handgun which will go through body armor has no knockdown power so it cant be selfdefense. It is sold in cabelas and everywhere else, it is sold as a killing gun. So the question is do we have the need for that and just anecdotally on the weapons ban. I was a kid during those time and i dont know what the data shows, but i know the street cost of an ak47 at the time went from 400 to 500 in the streets to 1500 so it made it harder for someone to buy that gun and hopefully calmer heads prevail before they were able to purchase it. Thats just my life experience, but thank you for letting me go. Thank you, gentleman from louisiana. The chair will recognize the gentleman from texas. Mr. Ratcliffe . Thank you. Over the course of this week, police week youre going to receive a lot of kind words and praise and it is certainly richly deserved. As u. S. Attorney under president bush the opportunity to service the top federal Law Enforcement official in the Eastern District of texas gave me the opportunity to stand shoulder to shoulder with so many officers an