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♪♪
>>January 17th, 1989
started as an uneventful
day in Stockton.
Then a disturbed man
walked onto the campus of
Cleveland Elementary School and
murdered five school children,
and wounded many more,
before taking his own life.
The Stockton schoolyard shooting
was in its own way a turning
point in our nation's history.
Many of us felt that one of
societies assumed havens of
safety, our children's' schools,
had been violated and
would never be the same.
Joining us today in
partnership with the
American Leadership Forum are
Roseville's Police Chief,
Daniel Hahn and,
Stu VanAirsdale,
whose account of the tragedy,
twenty-five years later,
appears in Sactown Magazine.
Why this story now?
>>Well... "this story now"
because we've seen this cycle
kind of initiated by Stockton
reoccur many times over the
last twenty-five years.
Most recently,
most galvanizingly,
in Newtown, Connecticut with
the Sandy Hook shooting.
And that anniversary-
that one year anniversary
just passed, and we thought
'How do these communities heal?
How do they recover?
What changes in a community?'
and Stockton,
twenty-five years later-
I mean the generation that
experienced this shooting
then is now raising
children of their own.
And so we wanted to kind of
look at this as a case study of
how a community recovers,
how victims recover,
and what's next.
>>The impression on society,
though, has been something
that has really changed,
not only our conversations,
but also how it is that our
children experience the world.
I want to read you both
something very quickly.
This was in yesterday's
L.A. Times: We did the math,
we did the reading, we had
a lockdown, the bolder
fourth grader replied.
The teacher froze.
When pressed, the boy
matter-of-factly explained
the protocol he had
rehearsed since kindergarten.
We hid so in case a man with
a gun came, he couldn't find us.
Chief, that is a kindergartener.
What has happened in terms of
the way that our kids
interact with the world?
>>Yeah, I think in this and in
many other ways innocence has
been lost and for- that lockdown
is a great example.
We advise schools that they
should practice lockdown just as
much as they do fire drills,
'cause the reality is they're
more likely to have to go
through a legitimate lockdown
than they will, uh,
the school burning down.
>>This is- it- it's fascinating
to me, when- when I was a child,
the big deal was nuclear war.
>>Mmhmm.
>>And so we used to do this
thing called "duck and cover"
and is lockdown like the
twenty-first century equivalent
of "duck and cover"?
>>I think it might be, actually,
in fact one of anecdotes that
comes up in the story that I
wrote for Sactown has to do with
a teacher who was present at the
Stockton schoolyard shooting,
and she was in
lockdown that day.
There was no protocol for that,
there was no rehearsal for that,
they didn't know what to do
they just kept the
class locked down.
Then, years later, she was doing
a lesson on telling time
and she asked her students
"What can you do
in five seconds?"
And one of them stood up, a
seven-year old stood up and said
"You can pop a clip
in five seconds."
>>What? Really?
>>Yes, and- and her story was
that this is the way students
are coming to school now, this
is the experience they have...
And, yes. It would- it-
innocence is absolutely lost.
>>"You can pop a clip
in five seconds."
>>That's... the anecdote
that was related to me.
>>Now I gotta tell you,
my reaction is- is that's
society, that's the changes
that've taken place.
But it always brings me back to,
y'know, what's happened in
pop-culture between videogames
and movies and television.
For- for a child of that age to
have that sort of awareness...
where does that come from?
>>It comes from everywhere in
our society right now.
Every time you turn around
you'll either see it on T.V.,
on a video, or real life.
There's a lot of neighborhoods
that see a lot of things that
they shouldn't have to see.
But in terms of the- in- in the-
back to the lockdowns...
there's a lot of times we want
them to practice lockdowns
not just because somebody
might come onto campus,
but things going on
in the neighborhood.
Officers might be
chasing somebody,
and just to make sure that if
that person runs onto campus as
they're trying to get away or
something, the kids are safe.
So there's a lot of reasons for
doing the lockdown, but yeah,
I never practiced lockdowns
when I was a kid.
>>Right...
tell us about the victims.
Who- who were these children
and- and tell us about
their families today.
>>Well, many of the children who
were wounded- in fact at
the time Cleveland
Elementary School was, uh,
predominantly Southeast Asian
and Hispanic, and, um...
>>Kind of a precursor for
the California of the
twenty-first century.
>>Correct, yes.
There was a- a- a significant,
uh, Southeast Asian population
in Stockton at the time and,
um, many of them had escaped
the Khmer Rouge regime and
the genocide of Cambodia.
>>Cambodia, right.
>>Yes, exactly. And, um,
I believe the number was 18 of
the victims who were actually
wounded and or killed.
Four of the dead were Cambodian,
one of them was Vietnamese.
And so there was a
number of hurdles to clear
in order to kind of recover.
There was the language barrier,
there was that, just kind of,
um, the- the- the tightness
of that community.
Y'know, they kind of just closed
ranks around the victims and the
families and decided to
just kind of, you know...
just hold out as long as they
could as a community and, um,
there was a lot of outreach and
there was a lot of, uh, uh,
stigmatization to mental health
at the time, too.
>>Really?
>>Among- among Cambodians, yes.
They looked at it as
a sign of weakness
which is still a stigma that
we have in the United States
today among, y'know,
all ethnicities I believe.
And it's getting better, but
at the time the stigma was
that we can't show weakness,
this community can't
show weakness.
We've come all this way.
And it was almost,
well not almost- totally
mindboggling that a community
that has been subject to such
tragedy overseas could
experience such an unprecedented
tragedy here in Am- in America.
>>Well- well, this- one of
the things that you raised,
because the primary population
affected were- were
Southeast Asian, particularly
Cambodian, and I think there
was one Vietnamese...
>>Yes.
>>...Uh, victim as well.
Um, the fact that today no one
really talks about the Stockton
shootings the way that they talk
about Columbine, or Aurora,
and we just recently had, uh,
a- another incident that took
place in Colorado as well.
>>Mmhmm.
>>What- what role does the
fact that this is an
insular community, a-
a immigrant community,
play in the fact that-
that this shooting,
which really was the first of
these horrible events that
really captivated the nature,
uh, the nation,
has been forgotten about.
>>I don't think it plays as much
of a role as the proliferation
of mass media in the
intervening period.
So, y'know, at the time that
was the dawn of cable news.
Uh, it- CNN had been around for
almost a decade by that time and
it was the first school
shooting, mass school shooting,
well ever in America,
but it was certainly the first
mass school shooting in
the cable news era,
the twenty-four hour news cycle.
And so that was also a
learning curve, too,
that I think the media was
trying to figure out
'how do we cover this?'
And... anyone who was there
will tell you that there was a
swarm of media,
international and national.
>>People and even celebrities
like Michael Jackson showed up.
>>Yes.
>>For- y'know, to this thing,
right?
>>Yes, Michael Jackson made kind
of a moral-boosting trip to
Cleveland Elementary in
February, uh, just a few weeks
after the shooting.
>>And- and Chief, one of the
questions that always
comes up is...
maybe the lack of coverage
prior to, y'know,
this proliferation of the
twenty-four hour news cycle
was a good thing,
because does the fact
that these events, y'know,
hit the national consciousness
time and time again actually
encourage this sort of behavior
among people who-
who want to do harm?
>>Yeah, I think there's a
positive and a negative to all-
all the media coverage
that we have now.
One, it brings awareness-
that's a good thing.
Um, but there is a negative side
to it, it does glorify it,
we always worry about copycats
and things like that on the
anniversary dates.
But I- I couldn't agree
more that when the
Stockton shooting happened,
the media wasn't quite the way
is now or the way it was when
Columbine happened.
And another thing is Columbine
is really the one school
incident that really
changed the way law enforcement
deals with these sort of things.
Prior to Columbine,
law enforcement, um,
typically the patrol officers
would respond and seal off the
area and wait for the
trained S.W.A.T. officers
to go in and capture
the person that's a danger.
What we saw on Columbine...
if you do that,
the person continues
shooting people,
and so it completely changed the
way law enforcement, um,
operates in those situations.
And I think this last one,
last week, you can see that
the school resource officer
that was on that
campus did not wait,
did not seal off hallways,
did not evacuate- he went
right at the source.
And I think that might be a
large reason why it was
contained to the, uh,
relatively small, uh,
area that it was.
Um, but before Columbine,
that's not the way we operated.
>>And in your community, have-
have those sorts of events
changed the nature of
the relationship that-
that your force has
with the school district.
>>Oh, absolutely.
We have officers on all of our
high school campuses, um,
and we train on the
high school campuses now.
Not just with S.W.A.T.
but patrol officers,
because those are the ones
that are responding.
And the way law enforcement
responds now is the
patrol officers are going in
towards the threat,
they're not waiting
outside anymore.
So we want our officers to be
aware of the campus setup and we
want us to have relationships
with the school sites,
and so everybody knows
what they need to do.
The other thing is when you're
dealing with schools, you're
dealing with families' most
precious thing that they have.
>>Oh, of course.
>>And so you can only imagine
how you would react,
how I would react, if my
baby is inside that school.
Well most likely, nobody can
protect my baby the way I can.
>>No.
>>And so my first instinct
is to go into that campus
and get my child,
and that is probably one of the
worst things that can happen.
>>Really?
>>So if we don't have processes
and set-up for parents to
get information and to
go to a location to
reunite with their kids,
and remove kids that are okay,
and get them reunited
with their parents, that's what
we're gonna deal with.
So that's another thing we've
learned over the years.
>>Stu, tell us a little bit
about the gunman.
Who was- who was Patrick Purdy?
>>Patrick Purdy was a
twenty-four year old vagabond,
pretty much.
Uh, he was, uh, he attended
Cleveland Elementary School
from, uh, I believe first
to third grade, or he-
when he was younger he went to
Cleveland Elementary School,
so he had a connection
to the school.
He eventually moved to
Sacramento with his mother and
he was really just beset with
mental illness and- and abuse.
He had a very abusive
relationship with his- his
mother in particular, uh,
according to a report released
by the attorney general
in October of 1989.
And, y'know, long story short,
he just was never really given
the care that he needed.
And he was- he had numerous
run-ins with the law.
>>That's something that's
so fascinating,
is that this guy had so many
interactions with law
enforcement and like...
why didn't anyone intervene?
>>Well, I think what happened
was that he had actually
stayed out of trouble
once he became an adult.
>>Right.
>>And as a- as a juvenile he was
incarcerated numerous times,
but he was never convicted of a
felony as an adult.
Therefore he was able to
A.) acquire weapons, and
B.) he was not necessarily
seen as the type of threat that
he would eventually become,
at least not in a law
enforcement setting.
If you look at the mental health
records and his intake records
of, y'know, from agencies
from San Joaquin County
to Sacramento, they all said
he is a significant threat,
mostly to other people,
not just to himself.
And those- those were, uh,
private records, y'know,
those could not be shared.
And even today there's a- um,
HIPPA laws that actually prevent
medical professionals from
sharing those types of
records with law enforcement.
>>Chief, is it the same today?
By and large...
>>Yeah, I mean a lot of
depends on- are they
an immediate threat?
Can they, uh, pose a threat
right now or they-
is it just in general?
Um, and a lot of the
school shootings you see, like
the one recently, last week,
I've read in the news that the
friends of his said they would
have never guessed he would of
done something like this.
So there's a lot
of times where...
who knew they were gonna do it?
But I can also tell you that
with officers on campus,
our officers and most officers
that work campuses are not just
there to be police officers,
they're really there to be part
of the staff and build
relationships with the kids,
'cause our goal is
to get kids educated.
Um, now granted,
a large part of that is safety
and security of the campus, but
when they build relationships,
often times kids will come to
them and tell them things.
>>Really?
>>So it's not unheard of for our
officers and officers in other
jurisdictions to have a
kid come to them and say
'such and such has a gun' or
'such and such has
access to a gun'
And we follow up on that,
and we find the gun
and we deal with it.
So a lot of that is more
on the prevention side,
that who knows what that could
prevent when you catch
those sort of things.
>>Well, the whole issue, though,
of mental health treatment
and the safety net to-
to catch these folks...
Obviously the children having a
good relationship with the
officers on campus is important,
but in fact when these types of
tells are around and you-
you have the situation back
at Newtown where those
who are pro-gun say
'well, look, he couldn't buy a
gun so he had to go get his
mother's after he killed her.'
But at the same time,
from all of the news reports...
a- a reasonable mind would have
concluded that this kid really
needed some intervention.
>>He absolutely needed
intervention and there was,
or were, numerous reports and
numerous, uh, y'know, just
specu- speculations, y'know,
from people who knew him
that he was a time bomb.
And if you read the report that
came out from the Attorney
General- the State Attorney,
I should say, in Connecticut,
came out recently about the
Sandy Hook shooting.
Uh, Adam Lanza... there were
so many red flags, y'know.
And it really, really
recalled to me the red flags
around Patrick Purdy.
>>Well yes, exactly.
And that's really where-
where I'm going with this is...
do you feel comfortable that
the state, the government,
has put- and the private
sector working with it,
has in place today what we need
to- to better identify and
intervene on individuals that
present these types of-
of warning signs?
>>Well I think we can
always get better.
The- the challenge is, um,
what do you do?
So when somebody says
this person could
potentially be a danger,
what do you do with that person?
Do you lock them up in a jail?
Um, 'cause they really haven't
committed a crime.
Um, what- that's the challenge
of balancing the freedoms of our
country with balancing safety,
and that's- that's not just
a challenge in schools,
it's a challenge in just
about everything we do.
>>It- it- it- you almost sound
like you're saying- well what
are you asking for?
For us to have a Minority Report
that Tom Cruise movie where you
commit thought crime and so
they arrest you prior to
you actually doing it.
>>Exactly. It- it's, y'know,
it's one thing to know about,
y'know, somebody analyzed
somebody and said
they were a danger,
but then what's the next step?
What do you do about it?
>>I believe actually if,
pardon me, there- there-
recently Ted Gaines
a state senator from,
uh, Roseville, he-
there were a- a- a batch of
new gun laws or, y'know,
gun related laws,
firearms related laws that
passed that the governor
recently signed...
and one of them was about any
mental health practitioner who
hears or encounters a threat
made to a specific person must
report that to authorities
within twenty-four hours
of hearing that threat.
So that kind of breaks down a
little bit of that wall
between privacy and,
y'know, and- and- and rights.
And- and- and it also, y'know,
opens the door a little bit more
to, y'know, prevention.
Firearm crime,
firearm violence prevention,
which I think is the
real issue here,
which is something that's been
raised for twenty-five
years now, since Stockton.
>>Well in fact, um, uh,
a couple of the young victims of
the Stockton shootings...
>>Mmhmm.
>>Actually take very,
very strong positions being
pro-gun and anti-gun control.
Uh, what did they have to say?
>>Uh, one of them, Rob Young,
is now a police officer in the
Bay Area and he has two
children, uh,
around the same age he
was when he was shot,
eight and six I believe,
and he is very, very pro-gun.
And he had... y'know,
he has every reassurance that
guns, the presence of guns,
prevents crime.
That if there were more
guns at schools,
or more armed officers
at schools,
that that would prevent or at
least deter school shootings.
>>And in fact you have officers
at all the high schools,
so maybe you're a proof point
for exactly that sort
of position.
>>Yeah, I think the important
thing to know, though,
is no one thing will
solve the whole issue.
For example the one last week,
the was an armed officer
at that school.
It still happened at the school.
Now, luckily it seems like it
contained it so it didn't get
larger, but it still occurred.
Same with gun laws.
So gun law- stricter gun laws
might help in certain areas,
but it won't eliminate
the problem because...
you might not be able
to legally buy a gun,
but I'm pretty sure you
can find one somehow.
Um, so it's- it's a lot of a
things working together.
Same with a- a new law of
notifying law enforcement when
somebody poses a threat, where
you get back to 'then what?'
Um, so we go and talk, there
might be some laws violated,
we might be able to arrest them,
but they're gonna get out
of jail, and they're probably
still gonna have the same mental
issues when they get out.
So again, it comes back to:
what are the things we can do
when we have these suspicions?
When we have these issues
cropping up with an individual,
what do we do about it?
>>It's been shown that
restraining orders actually
protect- like they actually stop
gun violence from happening
because, uh, when- y'know,
one of the biggest issues is
domestic violence and- and- and,
um, anyone who has been charged
with a- or I guess convicted of
a domestic violence crime,
or someone, um,
who has had a restraining order
against them in a domestic
violence case is not permitted
to own a gun. Is that correct?
>>Right.
>>Okay. So, y'know,
that's the kind of thing where,
y'know, little, again,
chipping away...
>>Right.
>>...At- at- at gun violence and
preventing gun violence.
How do we kind of find new ways?
And so if someone is, uh,
says I'm, y'know,
my wife or my girlfriend or,
y'know, the mother of my child,
I'm gonna go after her.
Y'know, and that's a
specific threat,
then that person can get a
restraining order and then the
mental health professional can
notify the police, of course.
And so you have kind of a
legal case there for
preventing gun violence,
a specific case of gun violence.
Those will grow over time and
those will actually become kind
of a surge that maybe mobilizes
other means of prevention
around the country.
>>Now in talking about
new legislative action
and new initiatives,
one of the fascinating things
in your story was that,
twenty-five years later,
the teachers came together and
they've started an effort.
And incidentally,
one of the things that was
pointed out about the difference
between the Stockton shootings
and the shootings that have
happened since that time is,
the next day those teachers
came back to work.
>>Mmhmm, yes.
>>At Newtown I believe they're-
they're- they're leveling
the school...
>>The school is leveled.
>>...And starting over.
Tell- tell us about this new
initiative with the teachers and
why it got started.
>>Well, uh,
it's about six teachers that
were at Cleveland School that
day, are all now retired,
and they formed a group called
Cleveland School Remembers.
And for years they didn't know
whether or not they should talk
to each other about what
happened that day at
Cleveland School.
They didn't know if they had any
real ground or traction that
they could kind of build
for preventing gun violence
in the future,
and especially school shootings.
And after Newtown they just-
they decided that they
had to do something.
And of course now that
they're retired,
they have more time to
kind of focus on- on
this type of activism.
And so they have gone... to bat,
just to try and initiate
new laws and other legis-
just legislation and-
and activist causes.
To not only draw attention to
the issue of gun violence,
which is really all they feel
they can do in such a, I guess,
inhospitable climate
for legal action.
Y'know, um, they-
they- but they do
eventually hope to kind of,
I guess initiate new gun laws in
California and- and abroad.
>>Alright. The- the late writer,
uh, Hannah Arendt, who wrote
about Eichmann's trial, uh,
post the end of World War II
and his involvement
in the Holocaust,
coined a phrase called "the
banality of evil" and it's been
interpreted many ways.
But one of the ways, Chief,
is that as evil continues to
perpetuate itself,
we as a society become somewhat
inured to its effects, and
we- we become kind of numbed.
Are we, because of this
succession of-
of incidences like this,
is- is the horror decreasing and
are we becoming more passive
about this subject overall,
despite the actions of- of folks
like these teachers?
>>I think some of us are,
in some corners we are.
But I- I will say in terms of
schools, and law enforcement,
and the people that
directly impact campuses,
I think they're very concerned
about that and are doing a lot
of things and are implementing
new procedures and processes to
try to prevent these things
the best they can.
So I would say to a
certain extent, yes,
but other people, no.
They are- they are trying to
prevent these sort of things
from happening on their
individual campuses.
>>And- and what do you think
that we as parents- you're-
you're so right about all of us
saying that we think we can
protect our children better
than anyone else,
and we would want to rush
in to go get our babies.
What should we as parents be
doing to support your efforts,
and those of our schools,
in order to make sure that we're
as well prepared as possible for
this sort of circumstance?
>>I think just in general be
involved in our kids' education,
and talk to our kids about
reporting things, and not,
y'know, falling into
"don't snitch" and
things like that.
So if they see something
or hear something they
should tell somebody,
because you never know when that
could be the one person on the
one day that they do something
tragic like that.
So I think all of us need to be
vigilant and pay attention to
what catches our attention and
do something about it.
>>And Stu, in our final moments,
tell us a little bit about
what's next for the survivors
and the families.
Are- are there any other
efforts that they have
going that they're
going to be involved with?
>>The survivors and the
families in Stockton?
>>Yes.
>>Well... I think on the whole
that you're seeing that these
survivors were so young when
this happened, y'know.
And most of them have moved on.
And whether it's Paul Tang,
who was featured in the story,
he's now a pharmacist in, uh,
in the- in the South Bay.
So he's moved on,
he's married, y'know,
he's going to start a family
and life is great.
Y'know, and yes,
he has a twelve inch scar
around his right side,
but life is good.
Rob Young is an activist on
behalf of, y'know,
gun right and gun ownership
rights, Second Amendment rights,
and- and that's something
he's passionate about.
>>So they're all- they've all-
moving on.
>>I think they're all moving on
and- and I think that's a
specific case, though.
In Newtown,
there's no way to know.
Because of the proliferation of
media and because of the
way gun culture is now,
there's no way to know if it's
going to reflect the
same phenomenon.
>>And we'll revisit it again.
>>Yes.
>>Thank you gentlemen.
Well that's our show.
Thanks to our guests and
thanks to you for watching
Studio Sacramento.
I'm Scott Syphax,
see you next time,
right here, on KVIE.
♪♪
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