Mayor Pretem Castax Tatum, Carter, and Martinez's office.

Thank you everyone for being here today.

We have two presentations.

The first will be about the Houston Forensic Science Center, and the second will be SafeWatch.

Dr.

Stout, would you like to come up, please?

And anyone else who's joining you today.

Good morning, y'all.

Good morning.

So I know met most of you.

I'm Dr.

Peter Stout.

I am head nerd of the forensic laboratory.

This is Dr.

Amy Castillo, who is our chief operations officer.

She is head data nerd, I think.

So if we have questions on detailed stuff, Amy's always a good one for those answers.

Sorry.

We got this all set up so that I can share something else here.

And Dr.

Stout, while you're working on that, we were also joined by Councilmember Alcorn.

Let me make sure I've got this in.

And I think we're running the slides from yours, or do you need to mean run from mine?

Okay.

Let's let's go with slides then.

All right, so first slide there.

Next slide.

Um first thing I wanted to give you some update on.

We've talked a lot over the years about the transition of the property division from HPD over to HFSC.

So this this is the items that are evidentiary or that actually are in the custody of HPD.

Next slide, please.

Um this has been a years-long discussion, and we are now actively in the process of this transition.

But to remind everybody of where we've started with this, what the idea is is to take the intake and preservation components of property and move that to HFSC.

So how things come into evidence, how they're maintained in evidence, you can think of it as we become the closet where it's stored, we take care of it while it's there, but the evidence still is HPD's evidence.

So their investigations, they're the ones that have to make the decisions about the ultimate disposition of the evidence, so that disposition function stays with HPD.

What this does ultimately is it reduces the risk.

Um property world over is a high-risk proposition.

It's detail-oriented, it is heavy on documentation, it is very long timelines, usually decades, is what we're thinking about on these things.

These are things that are difficult for law enforcement agencies everywhere.

So move this to an organization lab that basically specializes in documentation details, data, and decades-long processes.

What I think overall and all the conversations we've had for years about this, it gives us an opportunity to work on standardizing how evidence gets collected, works on how we can improve the quality of evidence for the entire system, not just law enforcement, not just the labs, but it all ends up in the same courts.

It all ends up with the same adjudication at the other end.

And ultimately, and this is the same all over the world, nobody really pays attention to making evidence easy for officers to collect.

Nobody's really spent time on trying to engineer and deal with forms and collection devices and things like that to make it easy for officers.

Ultimately, what we're hoping to do with this is make that easier.

So then ultimately that yields efficiencies for the entire system.

Next slide, please.

Nothing about this is small, but we've started moving items over into the new space.

Uh that's what we plan on finishing up here in FY26.

FY27 will be adding some staff into HFSC to continue policy changes we need to make, continue moving items of evidence, particularly frozen storage.

And then in FY28 is when we're sketching out, so as we deal with all of the ILA changes and ICAs that we'll need to do with HPD.

Next slide, please.

So just a couple pictures to give you an idea.

These are evidence items that we've already started moving over.

We're taking the opportunity in this to reorganize, validate, repackage, take care of things, understand where we've got issues, resolve those issues as we're moving them over.

And the team that's doing this has already moved a lot.

I mean, this is tens of thousands of items already.

The last corner in the picture down there is what will ultimately replace the frozen storage at the 500 at the 1200 uh Washington facility with biological evidence that needs to be maintained frozen.

Next slide, please.

In this, we also took the opportunity to upgrade some space for both firearms and crime scene.

So a couple of shots of the new crime scene space there, gives them a lot more places to lay out evidence while they're processing and packaging evidence.

They've really enjoyed having that.

It's worked out nicely in this that we've been able to do that.

Next slide, please.

All right.

Next update is more around laboratory operation site.

So set aside property for the moment.

That's kind of the front end.

Next slide, please.

Biggest things we get asked about all the time, backlogs.

Really, right now, we almost effectively don't have any backlogs in biology.

Um sexual assault kits are largely under the state mandated 90 days.

And so that that's the green line on the bottom, left one over there, and then the blue line are biology requests that are other than sexual assault kits.

We get roughly 1200 sexual assault kits that come in every year.

We get about another 1,200, 1500 requests that are everything else from property crime to homicides.

Um that has come down a lot.

I will point out where that line started coming down, was where this body helped provide some resources for us, and it made a huge difference.

We thank you for that.

Uh CS Drugs is another one of the backlogs we've had for quite a while.

Remember, this really started when HB 1325 turned the world upside down on us on hemp and marijuana.

Uh we also lost some staff in there, and that backlog we before 2019, our turnaround time in C's drugs was seven days.

Uh this is a backlog that came subsequent to that, and now we have been working on reducing that.

We're again making good progress on that.

Um I'll talk in a minute about budget stuff.

If we come anywhere where we're talking about on budget, we would expect this backlog to be gone within about another nine to twelve months.

Firearms is the single biggest pain point in the system, and we have been talking about firearms since 2019.

This is a backlog that started back then, and we have wrestled with this one since.

Uh I point out to many people.

That's it for the entire state.

This is a nationwide problem in firearms.

Um, and yeah, the backlog has been slowly increasing.

The fact that it has been slowly increasing is a pretty Herculean effort right there.

We work regularly with both HPD and the DA's office on trying to keep court priorities in place so that we don't disrupt court cases.

But yes, there is a significant issue in firearms.

Now we talk here in just a minute about budget stuff.

We've got a lot of plans in place.

We have people that we are recruiting.

Amy was telling me just yesterday that we may be actually have found an experienced firearms examiner, which is the proverbial rare as hens teeth.

Um, that we actually have somebody that's experienced basically cuts the training arc from two to two and a half years down to about six months.

So we are really excited if that one works out for us.

Next slide, please.

Wanted to give you an update on a few things that are in the pipeline to show up here uh shortly because these are a number of different technologies and things that address a variety of things that have been in discussion.

So, first that is going to launch here imminently, and I've got some things to demonstrate to you about this is a new mechanism for 3D mapping and basically classifying everything that's on a crime scene.

We have used what are called LIDAR tools.

So LIDAR is laser distance and ranging, is what that stands for.

There are tools that are used to create a complete 3D map of any kind of location with millimeter-like precision.

Uh we are shifting to a different version of this that has whole lot better software that makes it easier for both our crime scene investigators and for the end users.

I will show you what that looks like here in a minute.

We are on the cusp of implementing what is called rapid DNA.

These are highly automated systems that are really engineered around doing DNA analyses on high concentration, single source kinds of samples really quick when you need something done very quickly, like a high profile reference sample or some kind of high profile high urgency kind of sample.

They are quite expensive per sample, but they're very fast per sample.

Does typically they'll produce a result in about 90 minutes.

So we will have to do a scope expansion on our accreditation that is slated to happen here in May.

So we expect to have these instruments online and available in June for what are called reference swaps.

So that's a swab that say you've got an arrestee, the take a swab of the inside of their mouth.

That's what we're targeting first.

The kind of evidentiary stuff will actually be out probably early in 2027, and that's in part because of our validation needs, but also because the statewide working group is looking at what are the rules and what types of evidence will ultimately be allowable at the what's called estus level, the state DNA database level.

So there is a whole lot of work that the whole state is doing on how to shift those in.

Between then and there, we expect to have what are called YSTRs.

That is a marketing.

So explain those better than I can.

Hold on one second.

What a technical difficulty on a meeting.

How about that?

Um as a reminder, anyone uh watching virtually, please mute your computers.

Thank you.

Okay, go ahead.

I think we're good now.

So YSTRs actually only test the male DNA.

Um, and that male DNA is shared in a holding.

So you have the same YSDR profile as your dad.

Um a brother has sorry, I forgot to turn on the microphone.

Um where we find he's very useful is say in a sexual assault case that um uh we didn't get quite enough male DNA to develop a normal STR profile.

If a reference or a suspect is developed down the road, we may be able to still do YSTRs on that kit and still get some kind of investigative lead.

We had them online quite a while ago.

We weren't seeing a huge demand, and so we had decided to start outsourcing it because it was more cost effective than keeping people signed off in-house.

Now we're seeing with forensic genetic genealogy and just an uptick in cases that were getting more requests for those YSTs.

So we made the decision that it was now more cost effective to have people sign off in-house.

So it was um we've been working in the past year to re-rebring that in online.

So that'll be happening in September.

And again, we have to do a scope expansion to our accreditation that is scheduled to happen in August when we have a reaccreditation of the laboratory.

Um last on that list, since I already mentioned rapid DNA about evidentiary items, is okay, and I'm the chemist, so these are my toys.

Uh, what's called liquid chromatography tandem, time of flight mass spectrometry.

Um it is equipment that we use in both toxicology and in seas drugs, so the identification of drug molecules in human samples as well as solid dosage forms.

These are highly specialized pieces of equipment that give us better ability to detect all of the weird drugs that we are now confronted with.

When I first started my career, the world of drugs was about 200 compounds.

Now it is tens of thousands, and being able to efficiently detect two OXO3 weird is a consistent challenge for us.

So we've got um part of this was on federal grant money.

We were able to leverage that into two instruments, one for seized drugs, one for toxicology.

Same type of technology, different ways that you use it.

But we've got those in and are now uh working on the validations of those.

Next slide, please.

And to give you just kind of the visual I haven't, the one on the left there is one of these LCQ-TOF instruments.

Um they're pretty slick.

It's it basically it allows us to identify compounds at the subatomic level.

It they're they're pretty slick what these things do.

And then on the right there is one of the rapid DNA units.

Um we have two of those that we've got sitting in our biology laboratory.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

Now this is a spot.

Well, I will try and share my screen here and run this because this is the um 3D technology for crime scene.

If I can get this.

All right.

Is that Sharon all right there?

Looks like.

So let me put this up so you can see it.

So I've got one of the scanners here, show you some of that and other ways of looking at this, but um wanted to just give you a picture of what this can do.

So this is a scene that we actually created over uh with the help of HPD at their tactical center, because it was a really nice place to do mock crime scenes.

I get asked a lot of questions about AIs, and we could waste the rest of your day talking about the challenges of AIs in forensics.

But this is one of the spots where AI is really, really helpful because this makes the crime scene investigator's life a whole lot easier.

You see, this identifies the living room and the bedroom.

It's identifying those because it knows there's a bed there and there's a couch there and things like that.

So this saves the crime scene investigators a whole lot of time doing a lot of this mapping.

If you go in here, it also has effectively all of the measurements that it knows where walls are, it knows where corners are, it knows what doors are and can provide all those measurements.

Are they completely accurate?

No.

But we put a control into the scan so that you can cross-reference a traceable control that's in the model.

Um these are pretty slick that you can go into this and it is a complete three-dimensional model of what's going on.

So I can look at all of the perspectives in this of if I were sitting on the couch, what might I be able to see across into the bedroom?

Um we can put into this where evidentiary items are, hang photos into it that are full resolution photos of items, and it's all tied together so that somebody, an investigator, prosecutor, defense, all can look at the scene.

Since time immemorial, mostly crime scenes get documented with hand-drawn sketch and lack all of this.

So this is the ease of use, the ability, the fact that I can do a demonstration on City of Houston Wi-Fi on the fly in here, gives you some idea of the robustness of this.

We've been working, and if you if you have, you might recognize this.

Um if you have ever done a virtual tour that you're looking for a house, some of these things may look familiar because this is the same tool.

About six years ago, we realized hey, wait a second, this could be really useful for crime scene, and worked with the company called Matterport.

Um they have stood up an entire public sector business on their business that they didn't have before we started talking with them.

They moved and replicated the entire thing over in the government uh AWS clouds so that we've got a secure compliant cloud to be able to do this for evidentiary purposes.

It's taken us about four years to get all of that built, but this is now going to start going on reports here later this month.

So you can go around and like I say, I've got more I can demonstrate for you.

Um it's pretty remarkable, and I think we'll make our crime scene investigators' lives a whole lot easier.

Uh okay, you can go back to the slides now.

Because the last bit I have when you've got those is just to give you an idea around where we're at on our budget, because I don't get very many chances to chat with y'all.

So just so you know what our board, because remember, we're an LGC, we're an element of city government, but we sit slightly separate, so my board has to consider a budget that then we give you all to have to work through.

We all usually know we have to come back and make revisions.

So the best I can get, I do not envy any of you the decisions you all have to make.

I am sorry.

Best I can do is give you some options and make sure it's clear what the consequences of each of the options are.

So where we are at, what our board passed was uh 38.8 million, and that has components in there.

You can see the three parts.

There's a part in there for ongoing operations, particularly to keep addressing DNA, seized drugs, firearms, and there's components in there for um property.

Then if, and so that is what my board passed.

We have left on the table.

We certainly need some resources around a growing backlog of drugs in toxicology, mostly in DUIs, and we have some capital investments.

Now we get nothing's easy about budgets.

So we have ways that we can work around those, but if that were available, we sure could use it.

Next slide, please.

Part of what I try to get people to understand, if we look at a national basis, if I were to try and estimate, because I get asked this a lot, how much should this work cost?

Um Project Foresight is from West Virginia University.

Paul Speaker has been an economist there for a lot of years that has done basically the only economic analysis of crime laboratories.

He collects data from about 200 laboratories around the world, and he's got lovely tables in there that give some estimate of the as funded spending of crime laboratories on work.

Now, crime laboratory system nationwide is broadly failing.

Backlogs everywhere are increasing.

So basically, and I've Paul and I talk about this a lot, the numbers he has there is what it costs to fail.

Um but he does give ranges of the funding.

And so my argument is if we use his 75th percentile funding for all of the various disciplines, and then we use our mixture of samples that we're looking at, because a nigh and entry is a whole lot less expensive than say a firearms exam.

Firearms exam is probably about 100 labor hours in it.

It is very expensive work.

Our work is rich in firearms and biology, two of the most expensive kinds of work.

So if we take Paul's 75th percentile estimates and our mixture of cases, an estimate for us of a sustainable funding level per request would be about 2200.

If you go look at the census of publicly funded crime laboratories, nationally, the average is about $600 per request, is what labs on average have in this country.

There are huge gaps everywhere.

So I always have to acknowledge really we do quite well.

We are not sufficiently funded, but we are better funded than most, and I appreciate that.

Next slide, please.

So this year we will spend roughly 37 million doing 22,000 requests.

That puts us right about sixteen hundred dollars per request.

And I point that out because at sixteen hundred dollars per request, you see what's happening.

Backlogs are getting managed.

The quality, it's been a long time since the laboratory's been in here talking about quality issues.

Remember where we were at about 20 years ago.

That's the difference of sixteen hundred dollars per request.

Um it is kind of on the edge of sustainable.

We can work with that.

And the fact that Amy's got a crew of a bunch of overachievers that will work themselves to the bone making up for the difference.

But that's what that's where we're at.

So next slide, please.

The FY27 budget that our board passed is roughly sixteen hundred dollars per request.

That's what we're after.

We'll we we anticipate in that.

As Amy said, we're seeing increases in the requests for more complex testing associated, particularly with cold cases.

This is a really good thing that HPD is doing.

We need to be able to support that.

The budget that we passed anticipates being able to manage that.

It anticipates the fact that we are seeing increases in costs.

Our insurance premiums went up on us 21%.

Nothing new there that anybody else isn't struggling with.

I think everybody realizes the costs of what are going into things are increasing.

But we are anticipating that we can figure out inefficiencies if we're at about six, six hundred dollars a request again this year, that we can keep making progress.

Also, in that anticipates labor to continue this property transition.

Those are the big parts in the budget that we passed.

Next slide, please.

If we have to be, like I say, talking about options.

That's what we passed.

That would be if we can be there, I will be really, really giddy.

If we had to say, for instance, flat, what that would mean for us is all of our backlogs would go up.

Um we do not have enough resources to continue the outsourcing that we need to offset things.

So toxicology, biology, and firearms is very, very, very, very limited capacity for any kind of firearms outsourcing where we do, we where we can, we do, but we've got to have the funding to be able to do that.

So basically, if we were to stay flat with this year's budget, I gotta stop outsourcing.

Um that is a very long training arc.

So we start back on an arc of not having people available when we know the work is going to be there.

So I mean, that's kind of the shortest end of it, is I have to slow down, is really the only option that I have.

Next slide, please.

On the converse side, if there were an additional 1.4 million above where we're talking, kind of my ideal circumstance, that would give us capacity to be able to start managing what we're starting to have trouble with in toxicology.

I have, there is actually national resources.

I can outsource toxicology.

Much of the work we have, there isn't any way to outsource it.

Talks is one of those places.

And we know we've got some capital investments to make in aging equipment in a couple of different ways.

Um we can work around it, but you know, those things come up, sneak up on you and bite you if you don't stay on top of those.

Those would be what I would ideally like to be able to do.

So if there were additional beyond what my board passed, there's more we can do on top of basically, I would say in October of 27.

Biology will be steady state managed, seized drugs will probably be steady state managed.

Firearms will still have backlogs, but it will be improving.

Um and toxicology, we got work to do, but I think system wise we can do all right with 1.4.

I think we can get toxicology in that as well.

That's what I've got for y'all.

Any questions I can answer?

Thank you so much for the presentation and all of your great work.

Um we were joined at the beginning of the presentation by Councilmember Flickinger.

Thank you for being here.

Um, first up in the queue, Councilmore Heyman.

Thank you, madam chair.

Um Dr.

Stout, Dr.

Castillo, to the entire forensic science center team.

Um, just our heartfelt appreciation.

Uh, you know, Dr.

Stout, I think about where we were uh years ago through the pandemic and the challenges of staff retention.

Um the dollars that we secured to make sure that the work could keep moving and to see these trends continuing for the most part the backlog going down uh is extraordinary work.

So please relay our appreciation to everyone.

Um that, you know, Dr.

Stout, I know we had put forward, we had worked together to put forward the amendment for the additional over half a million several years ago to help move things along.

That was in addition to the multimillion dollar ARPA kind of injection that was done.

I'm assuming that all of that helped.

And our the that's the first question.

Oh, yeah.

It was it it didn't just help, it was essential.

Uh without it, we we wouldn't be where we're sitting today.

Okay.

And um, I also want to recognize the work in partnering with HPD, the consolidation to take the strain off of public safety and law enforcement resources, right?

And have some of this effort live more with you all.

Um we're about to have a presentation on uh firearm safety from a public health perspective, and what stood out to me in the presentation is the one kind of backlog we're seeing upticking is that firearm um backlog.

You mentioned that the challenge is the number of examiners.

Is it just there's a shortage, just like at BARC, it's hard to recruit uh veterinary specialists, right?

So is it just there aren't enough of those types of examiners in that specialty?

Is throwing money?

I don't want to say throwing money because it's valuable, but is it additional funding that's needed to bring them in?

Can you talk a little bit more about how we address that?

Yes, is it on?

Okay.

Yes.

Um I would say somewhat all of the uh above.

Um it's actually not difficult to recruit new people in to train as firearms examiners.

However, it is a two at least a two-year process from the time we hire them until they can start contributing to casework.

The other thing we're finding is, and this is I would say across all the disciplines, however, we've uh felt it the most in firearms is just because you hire that new person and you start them in training, doesn't always mean they make it through that training.

Um, and we have to be extremely careful of not signing somebody off who we are concerned with them being able to independently do the work.

So we've suffered from some of that in firearms as well, currently.

Um, but because of funding that we got last year, we are currently recruiting for seven analysts and firearms, which is going to make an enormous difference to that section.

Five two of those positions, we are looking for experience, and we do have a couple out of state candidates.

Um so that's gonna be a really big deal.

Is if they can come in and we have two more examiners in six months from their start date, the other five will be new.

So we're looking, and that's where I think you know, Peter was mentioning we see that arc is gonna take a really long time because the day they start, we're still two years away.

So we don't have them in the most of them in the pipeline yet, but it's not a lack of funding issue there.

It's a training and development and recruitment challenge.

Training and development, once we received the funding last year.

So once we received that budget increase last year for that, then we went out to find the training and then we started recruiting.

Um like Dr.

Stout mentioned, though, we we need that to continue um in order to continue those processes.

We we do have some in the training pipeline right now.

We've got three three in the pipeline.

One was actually signed off for some casework about a month ago.

There was a celebration when that when that occurred.

Um, and we have two others that are in the pipeline currently.

Thank you.

But I I also can't stress enough that I mean this is we we estimate there are maybe 800 firearms examiners in the country.

And there's about a quarter of a million firearm exam requests across the 400 laboratories every year.

And a typical firearms exam takes about a hundred labor hours.

So you do the math on that.

You just we're we're we have ten times too few examiners nationwide.

I forgot to mention earlier we were also joined at the beginning of the presentation by staff from Councilmore Salinas' office.

Thank you for being here.

Up next, Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you both, Dr.

Stout and Castillo for your work.

And um, I notice you have some board members here as well.

Appreciate everything that you all do.

Let me um give you a shout-out as well for the transparency that you guys have.

Um your website has an incredible amount of very helpful information, um, some of it concerning, but you know, appreciate the the the openness there.

And the thing that jumps out at me when I look at uh the at a glance uh page is the the length of time it takes to do the comparison cases uh for firearms.

You know, uh the website says 382 days, and your backlog currently, according to your slide, is almost 450.

So that's a great concern because those are obviously involved in a lot of uh violent cases, and I know that um it's uh it's a challenge to find um firearms examiners to to do the work across the country, as you said.

Uh I'm curious to know what the staffing is like in that area of of your operation that does the comparisons.

How many how many examiners do you have doing casework on a daily basis?

Well, currently we have five.

However, three of them are also involved in training the analysts in the pipeline and coming up with a training program for the seven that are coming in.

So we have two that are full time on examinations, and then we have three that do examinations.

However, they're also in charge of keeping our pipeline going of getting new examiners.

So you have two that do examinations full-time comparisons, and then you have three others.

Are those three others two supervisors and a manager?

No, we also have a manager and two supervisors in the section.

So they and they manage for example, we have a weekly meeting with the DA's office and HPD to look at our queue and determine what needs to be pushed up, what priorities do we need to slot in?

They're constantly managed managing that aspect of the work, and with HPD and the DA's office managing going through that queue and figuring out, because we do find there are requests made early on that then that same amount of work isn't needed.

And so they're constantly managing that.

So we're trying not to do work that doesn't need to be done with the resources we have.

And so how many again doing doing the comparisons on a daily basis?

Two full-time.

Three five.

Okay.

Three part-time, two full-time.

Are you including the folks who do the NIBEN work or not?

They are a separate group.

How many how many of those five actually go to court frequently and testify on those cases?

All of them.

All of them go to court frequently.

I would say frequently, at least once a month is the wherecause I sit next to that section, so I generally see when they're on their way there.

And and what's the caseload?

If the the two are doing full-time uh examinations, you know, what percentage of time do the other three spend doing examinations?

Um, I'd say probably 25% because the rest is going into the training.

And then also we're working on bringing online 3D scopes because that's an important part of the helping the discipline grow because it is facing challenges.

So that also goes into those things.

Let me ask you about the training.

I I know it takes a long time.

Um does the training regimen include uh distance determination.

No, we're not doing distance determinations.

Okay.

All right, I'll go back in the queue.

Councilmember Alcorn.

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks for the presentation.

Remind me what all has is moved what's what's staying at at HPD property room and what's at Jefferson.

So what we're moving are very long-term storage items.

They're items that they they never gonna return to an owner.

It's mostly sexual assault kits.

Um test fires.

The reason for that was moving that stuff so you basically create space over at the main property room where you do have stuff that's getting returned to the public.

There's a lot more in and out of those those items and that's mixed in with property that ultimately would go back to the original owner.

The idea is we need to move enough stuff out of 1,200 the main property room to start creating space for other things that need to go in there.

What about the drugs?

That's where the drugs are ultimately going to go.

The drugs will come to Jefferson.

No, the drugs will go to the main property room.

To the main property room.

But that's we've got to get stuff out of there before we can do the construction to deal with the specific challenges of drugs, and then the drugs will go into the facility on Washington.

And the guns will go the guns were the as we get rid of the main freezer, that big freezer that's over there, they will expand the gun room over there to make more space for the guns.

Okay.

So the guns and the other.

So really just what's going to Jefferson is just sexual assault kits, text fires, and labs that are going to be there for a long time.

Right.

Okay.

Got it.

And and I know in your presentation it says that the H HPD is handling disposition, but it are we making strides on disposition.

I know that's the same.

We are yes.

There has been a lot of progress on that.

And I again I've got to give HPD an awful lot of credit.

They have been working with us.

I mean, they're doing a good job of taking the opportunity in this to think through policies.

Property the world over is an issue of disposition.

You got to get rid of stuff.

Otherwise, there is no warehouse big enough.

And you also need to think about what comes into evidence because everything that comes in, once it's in there, you've got to treat it like evidence.

Oftentimes, once it's in there, you've got laws and regulations that require you to store it for very long periods of time.

So looking at those policies on both sides, and we've made a lot of progress on that.

But the ratio has gone improved.

So as a for instance, um, we worked with HPD, they've implemented some policies about what is accepted into evidence that has reduced the intake by about 30 percent.

Oh wow.

So that will then ultimately propagate into less to ultimately end up having to dispose of.

Great.

Well, thank you.

We've been talking about this a long time.

So we really appreciate the good progress and good to see you, Dr.

Castillo.

Thank you.

Councilmember Flickinger.

Thank you.

What's the total number of examiners you have?

Total.

Well, okay.

Total that are able to go on their own to testify the whole thing.

Across the whole whole organization.

We're at about 220 employees right now.

Out of that, licensed examiners who would be uh analysts and examers is about 175, 190, somewhere in there.

Now, I asked discipline because you gotta keep in mind of firearms examiner is a firearms examiner as a career.

Um I can't move one of them over into seize drugs and vice versa.

And what's our turnover rate for the examiner?

Uh right now, our turnover rate is back where we were pre-pandemic.

So we're about somewhere between six and eight percent.

Eight percent?

Right.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ramirez.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So um I think distance determination was where we were at.

Right.

Thank you.

And uh that's not part of the We don't do distance determination, um, something that's rarely requested.

It's one of those things that again, it's that balance of what do we spend the money on standing up all the validation of and maintaining it for the number of requests that we get.

So we we drop distance determination probably about 10 years ago.

Okay.

What about serial number restoration?

We do serial number restoration.

However, that is one that is rarely requested, and we are actively considering whether we drop that from our scope of accreditation.

Yeah.

I guess what I'm getting at is is there is there a way to um condense the training.

And we're looking at actively doing that stuff.

Doing case work more quickly.

And we're also using our lean six sigma processes currently right now.

We have that group.

We have to be careful because we can't take the team members' capacity for a project, but we have a small project going on, even looking at our review process and finding ways that maybe we can make that more efficient.

So we're trying to really balance not pulling more time away from them, but using the resources we have to find efficiencies as we go through this.

Okay.

And just so I'm clear, your two supervisors in that section, are they doing casework?

They rarely do casework.

They can.

Um other position we didn't talk about that.

We added, I want to say about a year and a half ago for some admin support because the supervisors, that was all falling on them and our manager, and we're training him to try to take more of the tasks with triage and looking through cases so that possibly our supervisors and manager can do more casework.

Well, that would be wise.

You know, I think the police department has as over the last several years moved uh police officers who weren't who were doing administrative tasks over to doing a regular policing.

So to the extent you could have actual supervisors who are experienced doing the casework.

I think that would seem to help with your backlog.

Um on the outsourcing, um did I hear that the DA's office had had outsourced uh some firearms cases on its own to Tarrant County.

There is.

So in the state of Texas, um, and of the capacity outside of us or any of the other casework laboratories.

Terrant County Medical Examiner's Office is the only one that has any kind of capacity, and they do some fee-for-service work.

So we have a contract with them uh and we we basically work with the DA's office about who's sending what, because they also have two examiners up there.

Um as they end up down here testifying, they're not there doing exams.

So it's a it's a real balance of how much to go.

And there's I guess I'm wondering why the DA's office um did that on on their own, and uh, I guess paid for it as well.

Uh HPD cases, right?

It uh also and it you understand this one.

There are requests that start in the investigative process, and those are largely what we see from HPD.

And then as the prosecutors are building case, they often run up on oh, we also needed this to get run.

Um we have, as Amy said, weekly conversations with the DA's office about how best to manage, how best to utilize what little outsourcing capacity there is.

Um I you know, I don't know the details of some of those cases of what was chosen that the DA's office sent something separately to Tarrant County, but largely we're the ones that send it to them.

Okay, and I know there's there's at least one other lab in in the uh city, the county lab, right?

And they recently changed leadership over there.

Uh have have you looked into possibly outsourcing some of our cases over to the county?

Yep.

I chat regularly with them and DPS.

Um the the laboratory community is small.

There are 36 laboratories in Texas.

I'm president of the Texas Association Crime Lab Directors.

So yeah, we all talk.

Um they neither one has any capacity to be able to do anything.

Okay.

And last thing I'll ask you is on the backlog status for forensic biology and seized drugs.

The chart that's on the screen.

Uh both of those categories show up ticks uh this year.

Uh can you explain why that is?

So in forensic biology, interesting our autoclave broke.

Um, and this is actually a very robust piece of equipment.

Um we ordered one really quickly, but it sterilizes everything.

Sorry, I should explain that.

We can't function in the lab without being too able to autoclave reagents and consumables.

It broke.

We actually were on top of it, got one in very quickly, and they sent us a broken one.

And so then we had to convince the company.

They sent us a broken one.

So we were down about a month because of that autoclave in the lab, and that's the uptick you're seeing in that blue line.

Um, the green line, because we're still outsourcing sexual assault kits.

Our um intent is to start transitioning out of that this year, but very carefully.

But because we outsource, you generally have some upticks as we're waiting for cases to come back where you might see more over 90 days, but as soon as we get them back, as of now they're seven over 90 days versus the 50-something in that chart.

So we see a little bit of ebb and flow in the over 90 days, but it typically doesn't stay very long right now.

All right.

Again, thank you both.

Thank you.

Thank you both for the presentation.

There's no one else in the queue as a reminder, you're setting up the uh I've got stuff back.

Yep.

Okay.

So there will be the mock crime scene in the back for any council members who or staff who want to view it after this meeting.

Thank you again.

Thanks, y'all.

Um, our next presentation is at the request of Council Member King.

Thank you, Councilmember.

It's um safe watch using firearm dashboard update.

Uh good morning, everyone.

Uh, thank you for the opportunity to present today.

Uh my name is Colch.

I'm a senior analyst in the data sciences program at the Houston Health Department.

And with me today is my colleague, Dr.

Lauren Hopkins, who is the Chief Environmental Science Officer for the City of Houston and a professor in the practice of statistics at Rice University.

Today we will be speaking about the SafeWatch Houston Firearm Injuries Dashboard that the Houston Health Department has launched in partnership with Councilmember Abby Kamen's office launched in December of last year.

We have present previously presented about this project to the council's public safety and homeland security community committee during its nascent stages, and we just wanted to give you an update now that this project has reached its fruition.

On the screen, you'll see a QR code that links to the dashboard that's publicly available on the health department's website if anyone would like to explore along with the presentation.

Next slide, please.

Okay.

As we know, firearm injuries are a serious public health concern, and it is critical to focus interventions and prevention efforts where they are needed the most.

At the Houston Health Department, we have extensive experience in leveraging data-driven approaches that have been key to implementing successful prevention and intervention efforts.

A few examples of this include previous research into out of hospital cardiac arrest uh cardiac arrest and bystander CPR that identified hot spots of high out of hospital cardiac arrest rates, low bystander CPR rates, and high risk demographics.

And this was used to effectively target culturally appropriate uh community-based intervention efforts.

In terms of dashboard development, last summer we developed a summer surveillance dashboard that tracks heat related illnesses and heat triggered illnesses, which is also publicly available on our health department website.

And this approach can be utilized for violence prevention efforts as well.

Using available data, the circumstances surrounding firearm injuries must be carefully evaluated for these efforts to succeed.

At the Houston Health Department, we have many programs working in the community violence prevention space.

The specific focus of this project is to inform these public health interventions so that we can all work towards a safer and healthier community.

Next slide, please.

A detailed understanding of who, what, when, where, and why these firearm related injuries and deaths are occurring helps us to target interventions and break the trend of violence.

Different types of firearm injury call for different types of prevention and intervention efforts.

You would not implement the same types of efforts for homicides, such as crime deterrence as you would for suicides, such as mental health initiatives, as you would for unintentional injuries such as uh gun safes and storage education.

The health department collects, analyzes, and presents data across disparate databases and surveillance systems to define who is most vulnerable to a firearm injury.

So are there certain populations that are bearing a disproportionate burden?

What types of firearm events are occurring?

Are we uh are we seeing more homicides and assaults?

Are we seeing more suicides?

Are we seeing more unintentional injuries?

What uh when and where are the firearm events most often occurring?

Are we seeing increases during certain months such as summer months versus winter months?

Are there certain peak times of days?

Um there certain geographic hotspots uh where we're seeing more firearm injuries, and then finally, most importantly, why are the firearm events occurring?

Is there context behind these injuries?

All of these components are integral in understanding the nature of firearm injury in our city and how we can tailor these interventions to keep our residents safe.

Next slide, please.

With that being said, the Houston Health Department, in partnership with Councilmember Abby Kaman's office, sought to develop an interactive, publicly accessible dashboard to provide a comprehensive overview of the problem.

Um, to give a brief summary on this project's development.

Uh, the health department began working on a prototype of the dashboard in early 2023.

In July of 2023, the health department and partners presented this project, as I mentioned, to the public safety and homeland security committee, um proposed and support of it, supported by Councilmember Kamen's office.

The following month, uh, the council member secured funding for dashboard development.

And then from 2023 to 2025, the health department worked on developing this dashboard and establishing data sharing partnerships that feed into this dashboard.

And on December 2nd of last year, we had a public launch and press conference hosted by the council member uh to launch this dashboard.

Moving forward, we are having quarterly task force meetings to discuss the data trends being shown in the dashboard and planned interventions with partners across the city.

You will see that I've included a couple of QR codes on this slide.

And the bottom QR code links to a recording of the press conference launch in December of 2025.

Next slide, please.

As described, these efforts have culminated in a public health tool that shows real-time trends in firearm injuries in Houston.

Again, I've placed a QR code on the slide that links to the dashboard with the website URL for those who may want to look up the dashboard in parallel to the presentation.

As the dashboard is extremely interactive, you can also apply filters that dig deeper into the data at a more granular level.

And there are also separate tabs for each of the data sources that have been incorporated if you would like to dive deeper into that particular data set.

Next slide, please.

So we would like to thank uh Councilmember Abby Cayman and her office, the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, Memorial Herman, Harris Health, Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, Texas Children's Hospital, UT Health Houston, the City of Houston Fire Department, and the City of Houston Police Department for all of their support with this project.

Next slide, please.

Because no one data source alone provides a comprehensive overview of the problem, the health department integrates and overlays these data to overcome the limitations that are inherent to each of the individual data sets and form a more complete picture for better interpretation and to develop more efficient solutions and interventions.

At the health department, we have an in-house feed for syndromic surveillance of that provides comprehensive coverage of emergency department visits and urgent care visits throughout our city.

The Houston Fire Department provides us with 911 EMS ambulance data that provides information about shooting and uh the location of the shooting incident and information about whether the patient was dead on arrival.

The Houston Police Department provides us information on non-fatal injuries along with the severity of the injury.

The Harris County Medical Examiner's Office provides us mortality or death data and also provides us with context surrounding the manner of death.

And lastly, the three level one trauma centers in the city of Houston provide us with uh additional firearm injury data with comprehensive data on uh details on risk factors and shooting circumstances around the injuries.

Um again, it is essential to integrate these data sets to fill the gaps and limitations, as I mentioned, that were inherent to each data source.

Um I'm just gonna give a couple of ex of examples of these sort of limitations to give a sort of idea.

Um the emergency department data does not capture individuals who died at the scene or nor does it provide us with shooting locations.

While the EMS 911 data does provide us with shooting locations, it does not capture individuals who were not transported via ambulance.

So for those patients or victims who self-presented to an emergency department.

Next slide, please.

So as you can see, we've brought together a lot of different data from a lot of different partners to get the most comprehensive view of the problem.

In fact, this dashboard is the first in the nation to integrate level one uh trauma center clinical data with the EMS emergency department police and mortality data sets, and together this offers a far more accurate and comprehensive picture of the firearm injury problem than any one data set alone.

Next slide, please.

With data dating back to um 2019 or 2020, depending on the data source, uh, this dashboard allows users to explore patterns by intent, so whether it was accidental self-harm, uh uh assaults, uh, demographics such as age, sex, race, and ethnicity, geographic locations such as the zip code of residence and the zip code of the incident, um, temporality, so whether what what day of week, the time of day, and any sort of seasonal trends we may be seeing, the location type, so whether it occurred in a private residence or in a vehicle or in a public area, and survival outcomes and injury severity trends.

Uh this helps us identify trends such as high risk times of day, locations, and populations that support data informed prevention and policy decisions.

Next slide, please.

The dashboard is uh updated quarterly, so in January, April, July, and October.

Um, and of course, we take data privacy and confidentiality very seriously when developing and disseminating our data products at the health department.

Um, all data presented in the dashboard is de-identified.

This means that there's no personally identifiable information integrated or accessible.

Um we also suppress categories with a count below five.

And so this means that for any category, including when filters are applied on the dashboard, if the count of individuals in that category falls below five, then that category will be removed from the visualizations.

Next slide, please.

Um as of just last week, we've now incorporated data through all of 2025 for all of the data sets, including the trauma center visits, which uh have a few months' lag behind the other data sets.

So I'll give a very brief overview of some high level trends that we've seen in the dashboard in 2025 and how that compares to what we observed in 2024.

Um please keep in mind that what I'm discussing here are just a couple of trends and comparisons that can be teased out of the data.

Um, but you can get more refined and granular details looking at the dashboard and applying available filters and really digging in deeper.

Um, when looking at the data from January 1st through December 2031 of 2025, we can see that uh none of the data sources have a statistically significant trend in monthly incident counts, but they're all showing a downward slope.

And what this means is that if the monthly counts of firearm injuries continue to decrease, we may begin to see a statistically significant decreasing trend.

Um looking at the trauma center visits specifically, uh in 2025 there were 194 trauma center visits for unintentional injuries.

Almost half of those occurred in populations 24 years and younger.

And this is relatively consistent with what we with what we observed in 2024.

Um comparing the average monthly counts between 2024 and 2025, we can see that across all of the data sets, there was a decrease in the average monthly count of firearm injuries.

And in fact, for the emergency department visits, the EMS 911 calls and the trauma center visits, we did see a statistically significant decrease in the average monthly counts between 2024 and 2025.

Um also see a breakdown of trauma center visits between 2024 and 2025, showing the total number of trauma center visits, uh, how many of those were for unintentional injuries, and of those unintentional injuries, how many occurred in children and young adults 24 years and uh younger?

And you can see, as I mentioned, it counts for about half of those.

Uh, next slide, please.

So um, who can use this dashboard?

This is a public health tool designed to provide actionable data to the community to help with intervention and preventive strategies.

Um, the dashboard is available to the public, including residents and neighborhood groups who would like to learn more about firearm incidents in specific areas, community organizations that implement programming and initiatives, healthcare providers and trauma centers who want to reduce the number of injuries or fatalities and further their prevention and intervention strategies, researchers, journalists, and students who identify trends that drive conversations around public health issues, and local policymakers and city departments in their efforts to secure funding for intervention, education, and prevention strategies.

Next slide, please.

There are many ways that this dashboard can support efforts and bring benefits.

Um, as mentioned previously, within the health department, we have programs working towards community violence prevention efforts where this data can be used to guide programmatic efforts.

This is similar to the sort of work that the health department does in relation to asthma interventions, stroke interventions, heat-related illness, and other sorts of public health efforts.

Um, because the dashboard is publicly accessible, other local organizations that are working in the firearm violence prevention sector can also leverage this dashboard in their efforts and can be used as a collaborative tool.

Findings and initiatives can be shared during quarterly task force meetings that I mentioned previously that are composed of members of the Texas Medical Center facilities, uh Councilmember Abby Cayman's office, our health department programs, and others.

And finally, there have been grants that have been offered in the past and can be indicative of future funding opportunities.

So the data and analysis from this dashboard can be used to apply for that funding that will focus on gun violence prevention and intervention efforts for a safer and healthier community.

Next slide, please.

Councilmember Cayman recently funded 1,000 gun safes, which have been developed delivered to our health department warehouse.

The health department and council member Cayman are partnering to get these safes into our health department health clinics, multi-service centers, and other facilities to distribute these safes to those who need them.

And there will be more details coming on this soon.

The task force also allows us to work with local doctors and researchers to distribute gun safes and locks to pediatricians and doctors in high injury zip codes and training them on screenings for gun safety, similar to screenings that have been done for car seat safety or pool safety for children.

Next slide, please.

While this dashboard is now live, it does not mean that it is static and cannot be enhanced further.

With this in mind, next steps for this project include uh integration of level two and eventually level three trauma center data, future enhancements to dive deeper into the data, and again, continuing these regular task for task force meetings with partners at the medical center and other uh organizations to discuss trends that are we're that are being observed in the data and interventions that are being implemented.

Next slide, please.

And so um, as I've mentioned earlier, uh the Houston Health Department has extensive experience in data and statistical analysis and producing all sorts of data reports and uh products.

So on this slide, I've included a few Q uh QR codes linking to these materials that are also availably available publicly on our website for those who may be interested in exploring some more of these.

Uh next slide, please.

And so um this concludes my presentation today.

Um, I'd once again like to thank you for the opportunity to present today about this initiative, and we'll be happy to answer your questions.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for the presentation.

Up first, Councilmember Cayman.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, and thank you for the opportunity to provide an update to council on where things stand and kind of where um things can continue to grow and move forward and uh progress.

Um, to Camel and Dr.

Hopkins.

I know Dr.

Hopkins, we didn't really get to hear from you much.

I didn't know if you wanted to add anything, but I always like to give you all recognition, not only for this and the innovation, but I remind everyone I use the example during the pandemic of the wastewater treatment testing that was literally recognized nationally for the innovation and how we look at wastewater and um public infections.

Uh but Dr.

Hopkins, did you have anything you wanted to add?

Oh, I thank you for the uh the opportunity to add something.

Um, what I wanted to highlight was that prior to this effort, we really we didn't have this, you know, so it's an amazing undertaking, and it to me it's it means something when you when you uh work on a project that you said, why didn't this happen earlier?

That means that it makes sense and it's been um very valuable, not just in bringing the data sources together, because as you can imagine, working with different agencies and pulling them together, and um our um biostatistician here uh really doing a great job, you know, displaying it, looking at other cities, major cities to see what is done and really researching what is the best way to present it.

Um, but also this advisory board that really bring together the whole city of Houston, all kinds of people working in this area who uh support it.

And um anyway, so I I just wanted to give credit where it's due.

Um, it's a fantastic project.

Thank you.

And Kamel, I want to thank you.

I know Kavi is not here.

Um, also I know Director Tran has been a huge uh participant in this, as was our former director uh Williams.

But I don't think people understand the undertaking uh and what y'all did to pull this together.

So I while I appreciate some of the the shout outs, the the real credit goes to the health department, the hard work of staff, and all of our community partners.

I believe some we will hear from, but it was really the doctors, the trauma specialists that were begging for this.

Um but now the community can use this tool as well.

In terms of trends, uh, I'm still concerned it's great to hear there's downward trends, but when you look closer at some of those numbers, it's downwards by four or five incidents.

Uh so when you look at we our focus has been on unintentional shootings because we know that that's a uh highly preventable from a health-based intervention perspective.

And when you look at unintentional shootings, we're still seeing nearly half of all unintentional shootings are children and young adults under 24.

Uh, and that is something that each one of us can be doing something about.

Uh, we just had a pediatrician uh the other week reach out because of their interest in this and actually getting some of the educational materials and free gun locks and gun safes.

We are still going to PTOs and in schools and speaking with groups, uh, your super neighborhoods colleagues, your civic clubs.

Um, we can't give away enough of these when we bring them.

So please, you know, utilize the resources that we have spent uh as a district office, but they're for anybody to use.

Uh so we have plenty of gun locks and gun safes and materials, uh, but I did want to recognize as you did um all of our level one trauma centers that partnered with us and our data partners with HPD, with the fire department, our medical examiner's office at the county, uh, Ben Tobb and Harris Health System, and they are here today.

Thank you all.

Uh Memorial Hermons Trauma Center, Texas Children's.

I don't think people understand if we think government politics are tricky, hospital politics is a whole new uh layer, and that they all came together in partnership on this to save lives, really speaks to the commitment of our health care community.

So, with that, um, I am very grateful, and while every life matters, um, I do want to also point out that for each uh non-fatal injury with a firearm, on average it costs 25,000.

That's for a non-fatal injury.

So when you add up all of the these injuries and the cost to the community, let alone the trauma, um, I think it speaks volume.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Um, I forgot to announce that Councilmore Davis um also joined us.

Thank you for being here today.

Up next, Vice Chair Jackson.

Thank you, um, Chair, and thank you for the presentation.

Um, Dr.

Hopkins, thank you.

And thank you, Councilmember, for your leadership on this.

Um, you know, this is gonna be a critical tool, an important tool for our credible messenger program.

Um when we launched it back in 2022, one of the challenges was where do we go?

The state is so big, but how do we narrow in on the neighborhoods that need these paid mentors, um these violence interrupters to um basically help um mitigate some of the activity to crimes um in these particular neighborhoods, and so this tool exactly been broken down by zip code, it's gonna be a critical piece, important piece um um of our work.

And so um I'm really excited about it.

I mean, when we came in, we asked HBD was like, can you break it down um by neighborhood so we can, you know, we're not trying to figure out where we need to be.

Um we can we'll be where we need to be, you know, versus like spending a lot of time trying to um locate um the um hot spots, and so this tool is gonna give us that that information.

And so um again, I'm looking forward to um passing it on to our credible messengers.

And again, thank you for your work on this, council member and health department.

Thank you.

Thank you both for the presentation.

We will move on now to our public speakers.

Um each speaker will be given two minutes to speak.

Our first speaker is Caitlin Fitzgerald to be followed by Elizabeth Cleeman.

Good morning.

Um, I first want to say thank you to the council for allowing me the opportunity to speak on today.

My name is Caitlin Fitzgerald, and I'm a trauma and acute care surgeon and serve as the associate trauma medical director at Harris Health Bent Top Hospital, one of our level one trauma centers in the city.

Um I'm here today because I see and treat um the harsh reality of uh trauma um victims and firearm injuries up close every day, um, both in our emergency room at Ben Tob and then in my domain, more importantly, the operating room.

Um, as highlighted by the last presentation, these cases um really affect individuals of all ages and backgrounds, and they often have lasting impacts, not only for the patients themselves, um but certainly for their families, for providers like myself, um and certainly the broader community at large.

One point I think um that is uh important to highlight is that not all firearm injuries are the same, and which is why I think uh what makes uh part of this gun violence dashboard so valuable.

And for the first time, really in our country, by bringing together information from trauma centers like Ben Tob, emergency medical services, law enforcement agencies, and our public health systems, it really provides not only a more complete and but consistent understanding of firearm-related injuries across our city.

And from a healthcare perspective, from my perspective, you know, having access to this kind of data is super important.

It allows us to understand patterns where these injuries occur and which populations are the most affected.

And from that understanding, it can uh in turn help us inform prevention efforts and also guide resource allocation in a more targeted way to make more of an impact.

And I think ultimately it helps us answer critical questions such as where are these injuries happening, why are they happening, who is most at risk, and I think most importantly, and one of the goals of the dashboard is to figure out what we can actually do about it to make a difference.

So not only does this dashboard give us the ability to adjust our prevention efforts based on the real-time data that we're seeing, but we can also measure and track whether any interventions that we're doing are actually working over time and again how to adjust them.

The goal of a tool like this is not just to track inside uh to to track incidents, but to also support thoughtful evidence-based approaches of hopefully reducing these injuries in the future.

And as someone who treats these patients, I see the value in having a clear information on how to guide these efforts.

Um, and ultimately I'm very excited to be a part of this project and part of the city of Houston and Harris County.

So thank you for your time and for your support of the of the project.

Thank you.

Hold on one second, Councilmember Ramirez.

I I just want to say thank you for coming down uh to your busy schedule and sharing your perspective.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Next, Elizabeth Clemann.

To be followed by Howard Pryor.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment today.

My name is Elizabeth Kleman, and I am a licensed clinical social worker at the Michael E.

DeBakey VA Medical Center, where I am the suicide prevention program manager.

I support 12 full-time suicide prevention coordinators and two community engagement and partnership coordinators.

I also serve as the co-chair of the suicide prevention and resource coordination coalition, which aims to enhance the awareness of resources, provide education, and expand community connection to prevent suicide amongst service members, veterans, law enforcement, and their families in the greater Houston area.

I am here to highlight why the Houston Safe Watch Firearm Injury Dashboard is a crucial tool for veteran suicide prevention, especially in coordination with the Houston VA Medical Center and other veteran serving agencies in our community.

The VA Houston Healthcare System serves approximately 115,000 veterans annually through our hospital and 11 community-based outpatient clinics.

Tragically, though, most veterans who die by suicide are not connected to VA care.

Highlighting the critical importance of community engagement and partnership.

Finding the spaces in which veterans live, work, and thrive is an important first step in suicide prevention engagement.

This is where SafeWatch fills critical gaps.

Even without veteran identifiers, this data reveals community level areas of concern, zip codes and neighborhoods where self-harm firearm injuries are occurring.

These insights will allow my team, the VA suicide prevention coordinators and outreach staff to strategically focus resources and target outreach.

Houston's trauma centers, emergency departments, EMS, and law enforcement are all partners in SafeWatch.

And this means when veterans receive emergency treatment at non-VA facilities, the dashboard captures early warning signs for suicide among veterans who may not otherwise be known to us.

And allow for coordination and collaboration with community partners and improved care transitions for veterans.

SafeWatch amplifies our mission.

It supports proactive outreach by identifying and predicting self-harm trends and guides clinical and non-clinical interventions like specific evidence-based suicide prevention treatments and safe storage practices like cable gun locks and secure storage education through VA and community-based veteran organizations, prioritizing veteran families, agencies, faith communities, and gathering places in identified hotspots.

We imagine using SafeWatch data to strategically align city violence prevention and mental health resources to amplify existing outreach efforts, especially in zip codes with rising self-harm incidents.

SafeWatch is more than a citywide dashboard for us.

It's a bridge between public safety data and veteran health care services.

It gives us at VA Houston and other veteran serving agencies real-time geographically precise insights into where veterans in crisis reside and where interventions can be most effective.

Together, we can use data to prevent firearms suicides and veterans and uphold our responsibility to those who served.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Cateman.

Thank you.

I'm not, I know we have a lot of public speakers, so I'm not going to speak after everyone.

So I just want to say thank you to everyone that's present in person, and I think we have several online.

I did want to point out though the impact to our veterans.

And Councilmember Davis, we've talked a lot about this in terms of suicide prevention and the nexus with firearms.

And so again, thank you for what you do in support of, and I want to add in uh the suicide risk for active military as well.

Um but just thank you for spotlighting that particular issue because it really matters.

We appreciate it.

Thank you.

Councilmember Ramirez, hold on one second.

Thank you for your uh comments.

The the suicide number by firearm jumped out at me, almost 1,500 over um a few years, just by firearm.

Or are you all noticing any trends?

Um the same.

So we recognize that the veteran population is one that's all trained as a matter of course, regardless of the branch of service and firearm um aptitude and and here geographically, we know people are more likely to own firearms um and keep them in their homes and um accessible to their families, so we notice the same here as well.

About 73 to 74 percent of veterans in Texas die by suicide using a firearm.

Uh very sad to hear that.

Uh, thank you for your work.

Councilmore came in.

Thank you, Councilor Mariras.

I just wanted to add on to what you said.

Um, in terms of lethality of use uh during suicide of a firearm, right?

It's the most lethal means.

85 to 90 percent.

And veterans are the most likely to use a firearm in an attempted suicide.

Um and so the work that they are doing is critical.

We've also been trying to work at the state legislature for trusted programs through VA organizations and with actually Harris Health programming where um veterans in crisis, or if a family member knows of something can work um to have uh temporarily kind of giving your gun to a trusted entity, um, not necessarily law enforcement, so that you're creating time and space between when that action is occurring, but again, you need the data to back that up.

Temporary out of home storage is the concept, and a lot of veterans are much more likely to go that route than to believe that they're giving up their access permanently.

I just do want to add quickly that the um that a firearm death is 85 to 90 percent fatal, while all other means combined have a five percent fatality rate.

So the data just really supports firearms as the specific intervention piece.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Howard Pryor to be followed by Carrie Bacunus.

Uh thank you, Council, for giving me the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Howard Pryor.

I am uh one of a handful of people who are uh formally trained in both pediatric surgery and trauma surgery, and I serve as the uh director of the trauma system for Texas Children's Hospital, including all four campuses.

I just wanted to take a moment to celebrate this excellent uh firearm injury and prevention tool.

We you uh see children that are impacted by all three variations of firearm injury at our hospital on a regular basis, including unintentional injuries, self-inflicted injuries, and injuries that are uh based on violent interactions, usually um with a lot of emotion involved in them.

Uh we've see we my partners and I see the devastating um impact of all of these types of injuries.

Obviously, what children under 10 years of age are injured by a firearm, their likelihood of survival is much, much lower than uh an adult of the same uh in the same situation.

They typically require urgent and very dramatic operative interventions in order to save their life and would require the types of resources that can really only be found at a massive children's hospital like ours.

We um appreciate the opportunity to prevent these injuries as much as possible because it is a very challenging and taxing emotional uh burden on the health care providers, the families and the communities when something like this happens.

So uh this tool is allowing us to focus our injury preventions from our injury prevention center directly on um re neighborhoods that need specific types of education.

For instance, uh accidental injuries obviously need more discussions about gun safety and storage, whereas self-inflicted injuries in the teenage era typically come from emotional uh impulsive decisions that can be uh de escalated by uh no access to a firearm.

A teenager in a house with a loaded gun sitting around is in a much more dangerous position than one that has that gun in a um gun safe.

And then obviously violence prevention, we help people focus um in communities on how they can teach teenagers specifically to de-escalate a conflict and not get ramped up and concerned about someone disrespecting them.

Um these types of uh these types of tools will allow us to make a much bigger difference and make these uh developing negative trends actually stick and decrease further.

And we wanted to take a moment uh as an institution to celebrate this the development of this.

We are applaud our colleagues for joining us in helping make this happen.

Um, it was a behemoth effort by um council member Cayman and the public health department, and there were there were politics that are based mostly around concerns of um privacy issues that had to be worked out, but everybody came together and focused on the needs of the community more than the politics of the institution to make this happen.

I think it's a fantastic development for the city of Houston.

Thank you.

Next speaker is Carrie Bakunis, to be followed by Alexander Tessa.

Good morning.

My name is Carrie Bakunis, and I'm an emergency medicine physician at Memorial Herman Hospital in the Texas Medical Center, where I also serve as the director or the medical director there.

Um having worked there for the past decade, I can assure you this issue is not theoretical, but it's personal.

In the emergency department, we're on the front lines caring for these patients on a daily basis.

Just recently, I had a single shift where I cared for two 16-year-olds who were both shot.

Um, both two teenagers, two families whose lives were changed in an instant.

And that's not a rare occurrence.

Um, so what really stays with me isn't just the trauma, but it's knowing that so much of this is preventable.

As you know, gun violence is not isolated.

It's a public health emergency that affects patients of all ages, and we're seeing it every day in our emergency departments.

At Memorial Herman Health System, we believe addressing this crisis requires a multi-pronged um and collaborative approach.

And we're fortunate enough to work in a community that encourages collaboration with other hospitals, public health leaders, law enforcement, researchers, and local government, because no single system can solve this alone.

By combining our data and resources, we can and better inform city leadership and law enforcement, helping drive smarter, more targeted prevention strategies.

But together as hospitals, law enforcement, and public health leaders, we have a responsibility to prevent these tragedies before they happen.

Tools like the SafeWatch dashboard play a large role in prevention, and we're happy to partner with them because at the end of the day, the goal is not just better care, but it's fewer patients.

Thank you so much to Council Member Cayman and to the health department for their initiative in doing this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alexander Tessa.

If you could unmute, yes, go ahead.

Excellent.

Thank you for inviting me to speak today on this matter.

I'm Alex Thessa, I'm an associate professor at the UT Health Houston School of Public Health and a firearm violence researcher.

Um just want to make a couple uh remarks about this dashboard.

Uh so first of all, uh, as a researcher and somebody who studies firearm violence, we've struggled for a long time with just an absolute lack of data.

Um and oftentimes when we do study firearm violence, we have to pull data from a very particular source.

For instance, people often draw on media reports of shootings.

But we we know that those uh when we draw on just one specific source, it doesn't have the whole picture.

Um what's a wonderful attribute about this dashboard really kind of furthers our knowledge and sets a standard kind of for the nation is its ability to draw on multiple data sources and triangulate that and for the first time get what I think is really a full scope of the picture of firearm violence.

Having that better data, I think offer opens also a number of opportunities I want to discuss.

One is uh it allows researchers uh such as at the university and the health department to really dig in and understand where the most pr uh what the most pressing firearm violence issues are that are uh impacting the city, where they are occurring, and it allows for a more strategic utilization of resources uh to uh unfold evidence-based practices and strategically implement them.

Uh but also it allows us uh as a researchers to further our line of resource research and bring in resources into the community.

Uh it was mentioned more briefly about how there's uh grant dollars uh for violence research.

And often to get those grant dollars and be competitive for them, you really need to have access to novel groundbreaking data that makes an organization or agency want to invest in you.

And so another avenue where the staff board really sets Houston apart is that I think it brings opportunities for us to bring in grant money, which means resources, opportunities, jobs, and cutting out the research into the Houston area to study this issue and to really set the stage for uh the best practices to innervated violence and understand patterns of firearm violence.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you so much.

Next is Dr.

Sandra McKay.

Everyone, thank you for uh your time.

I'm Sandy McKay.

I am a general pediatrician with UT Health Houston.

I appreciate the opportunity to testify virtually, as I am ironically at an injury prevention conference in uh Rhode Island.

So apologize if the connection is fun.

Um I also want to echo the many comments from the previous speakers about the importance of this dashboard and the efforts, really just highlighting the collaborations, including, you know, from you know, in collaborating with research teams like with Dr.

Testa, but also being here at an injury prevention conference.

It's those collaborations that you can also have with other research institutes and and academic institutions as well, as you start to really build beyond just the city of Houston.

And there's a great deal of interest in this dashboard from other academic institutions, as even as I'm here today, um, sharing the good work that is being done in Houston with the larger academic community.

But also the main interests from my perspective as a general pediatrician are those community-based interventions and the outreach that we can do that can really truly be targeted and looking through things as you know, reaching out with other pediatrician offices to do targeted device distribution, knowing where we can be effective with our outreach, knowing what time of year we can be the best in our outreach, collaborating with our outreach education efforts with our injury prevention teams at our hospital systems, so that way we can work effectively together and break down silos in order to maximize our efforts and to be very timely with all of our responses.

But I think one of the greater things that may have been unanticipated with these efforts is bringing together the many different organizations that we're hearing from today that have the shared goals of just saving lives and preventing firearm injury.

And that is one of the truly beautiful things that we're seeing happen out of this amazing effort that has been led and really spearheaded by Councilmember Kaman's efforts.

And I'm just really excited to have been a part of these efforts and really thankful for the ongoing support of these public health tools, and thank the council for their time today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And hold on one moment, Councilmember Kiman.

Yeah, no, really quickly to Dr.

McKay and Dr.

Teston.

I know there's a lot of other doctors that have participated, but it was actually uh I was sitting on a panel at Rice University that Dr.

McKay was moderating.

I was sitting next to Chief Satter White, and we were talking about this issue, and it was Dr.

McKay that really planted the seeds of how critical this is.

So, Dr.

McKay, thank you for your leadership.

Thanks to all of our health experts, our partners in the hospital, and Dr.

McKay and Dr.

Testa have also been very instrumental in the task force in the conversations and partnerships and collaboration that is continuing.

So I really did want to recognize y'all's work as well.

Thank you.

Up next is Karen Knapp.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Go ahead.

Great.

Thank you.

Yes, my name is Karen Knapp, and I'm a resident of District H.

I'm speaking today to thank Council Member Cayman, City of Houston, and Harris County departments and our medical community for collaborating to create the SafeWatch dashboard.

Bringing SafeWatch to fruition is a major achievement that will help save lives, especially the lives of children and teens across Houston who should not be handling guns.

Some dashboard data from 2025 that stood out to me.

141 firearm deaths in the 15 to 24 year age range, 48 of those were suicides.

112 children and teens from under 10 years old to 17 suffered firearm-related non-fatal injuries.

Those are the those are the injuries reported by police, so we know there were more.

That's astounding and not in a good way.

It's shameful in civilized society.

The good news is that the database shows where and when shootings are occurring.

So the city, county, medical community, and nonprofits can work together to prevent a generation of young people from ruining or ending their lives with guns.

I want my tax dollars spent on giving young people alternatives to gun violence, like summer job opportunities and community violence intervention programs.

Not on investigating youth-involved gun incidents, treating kids for wounds, or jailing them.

Especially after hearing from our forensic science experts, how expensive it is for the city to investigate firearms related incidents.

I also want to thank Councilmember Kamen for being a champion for gun safety in the city of Houston and making secure gun storage a signature issue of her tenure on council.

In doing so, she's helping prevent guns from falling into the hands of children as well as people of all ages who could be a danger to themselves or others.

By giving away gun locks and gun safes, Councilmember Kamen also makes it easy for people to keep their firearms from being stolen and turned into crime guns.

I urge the next district C council member and really all city council members to carry on council member Kamen's gun safety initiatives to help all Houstonians be safer.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next, Carlton Harris.

Carlton, if you could unmute, please.

Good afternoon.

Can you can you hear me now?

Yes.

Go ahead and afternoon.

Um thank you, Council members, and thank you, Council uh woman Cayman for your continued leadership on the issue of gun violence prevention in our city.

Uh the Safe Watch Dashboard is more than just technology.

It's a lifeline for Houston.

It gives the ability to see in real time what's happening in our neighborhoods so that we can act before another life is lost.

Too often we respond after tragedy, safe watch changes that help policymakers, law enforcement, and community organizations use data to predict trends, allocate resources effectively, and hold ourselves accountable to the results.

It's about transparency, strategy, and saving lives through informed decision making.

But data alone isn't enough.

That's why the Forgotten Third is an essential partner.

We reach young people who are too often invisible, who are not in school, not working, and not connected to opportunity.

These are the young people most targeted by silent by cycles of poverty and violence by engaging them with mentorship education and pathways to employment.

Forgotten Third is doing the hard part level work of prevention through futures of risk into futures of purpose.

Together with UT Health Houston research expertise and councilwoman Kamen's leadership.

This partnership brings policy, public health, and community voices to the same table, what real public safety looks like.

Data-driven actions rooted in compassion is how we save lives, rebuild trust, and create a safer, stronger Houston for every young person who deserves the chance to live, grow, and thrive.

I am Carlton Harris, the executive director of the Forgotten Third, uh working alongside Dr.

Testa and Dr.

McKay with Memorial Herman Hospital for HVIP program.

We work with uh gunshot survivors, providing uh comprehensive wraparound services to prevent retaliation.

Uh, this is hard work, and I really want to commend councilwoman Kamen for all the hard work and getting this dashboard up because now we can make data-informed decisions where these hot spots are and provide the adequate resources to interrupt violence at its core.

Uh, I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person.

I'm currently out of town in Baltimore.

Um, I'm also at uh uh community violence intervention leadership academy with the University of Chicago, and we're bringing back resources and expertise to help prevent gun violence in Houston and Harris County.

Thank you for my time.

Thank you.

Council Mr.

Kamen, were you in the queue?

No, okay.

Um, thank you so much.

Our next speaker, Julie Marinucci.

Julie, if you could unmute yourself.

Is she still on?

She's still here.

Okay.

Councilmember Peck, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Go ahead.

Okay, great.

I'm very sorry about that.

Um, thank you, Councilmember Peck and Councilmember Kaman and all of the other council members there today and for the opportunity to speak.

I'm Julie Marinucci, and I'm a um safe gun storage advocate.

Um, I originally spoke as part of a group in support of the dashboard when Council Member Kamen proposed it.

And I am so glad that this uh fire uh injury dashboard is up and running.

Um, has been noted, you can't manage what you can't measure.

And that's especially true when it comes to gun violence data, and even more important because of its potentially life-saving impact.

Timely and accessible local gun violence data is vital.

And with it, police departments can make better decisions about when and where to deploy officers.

Um community violence interruption programs can effectively um target and evaluate their efforts.

And also researchers are able to identify the next generation of promising prevention works programs, excuse me.

Because of this work, Houston will be a national leader in collecting, analyzing, and publishing gun violence data.

Thank you all for all the work that has been done.

Um this has been a very informative update.

And um uh thank you so much for bringing this dashboard to life.

And I just want to make sure that um that it continues for years to come.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you, Julie.

Up next, Bridget Lewis Jensen.

Bridget, if you could unmute.

So I don't think that she's on.

Okay.

We'll move to our next speaker, Dr.

Catherine Kathari.

I also believe it's not on.

Oh, you're in person.

Oh come on.

Is this on?

Okay, perfect.

Uh good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

Um, in support of SafeWatch Houston.

My name is Dr.

Catherine Kathari.

I'm a pediatric emergency medicine physician.

I am also an emergency medical services physician or EMS.

Um, and I'm the director of transport and EMS collaboration at Texas Children's Hospital.

I want to build on my colleagues' remarks about why data and partnerships like SafeWatch are so uh critical for the children for children and the children in Houston.

When an injury occurs and 911 is activated, EMS teams are dispatched.

Paramedics and EMTs are often the first to arrive, working quickly in unpredictable and sometimes dangerous environments to assess injuries, control bleeding, stabilize patients for uh for transport.

These are high-stakes moments where seconds matter.

Many of the patients that they respond to, unfortunately, are children and adolescents.

Teams must work not only to provide support for the patients, but also their families and bystanders during these traumatic situations.

These calls can affect entire communities.

That is why SafeWatch Houston is such a valuable tool.

This dashboard helps us better understand when and where firearm injuries are occurring across Houston.

This information supports planning, resource allocation, and coordination between EMS hospitals, public health, and public safety partners.

It allows us to identify patterns, anticipate needs, and strengthen our response.

Equally important, this data helps inform prevention.

EMS clinicians see firsthand the impact of firearm injuries on children across neighborhoods and communities.

By sharing timely local data, the Safewash dashboard helps guide targeted strategies that can reduce injuries before they occur.

This partnership represents a shared commitment to improve care and safety for children across the city of Houston.

I appreciate your time and thank you for your commitment to protecting Houston's children and families.

Thank you, Councilmember Kamen, for your leadership and partnership.

Thank you so much.

Our last speaker is Doug Smith.

I didn't see you come and pick the list, so I wasn't sure you were going to call these.

Great going away present.

Thank you for that.

And one of the things that's missing, they you don't have information on level two and level three trauma centers.

And I'm sure a lot of families go to their local hospitals.

So hopefully some were along the way you'll be able to get that information.

And I hadn't heard anything for a long time on about the huge backlog in the rape kit analysis.

And the reason I hadn't heard anything, uh, there's a saying that if it it leads, if it bleeds, and uh the rape kits aren't bleeding anymore.

Uh they're way down from where they were, and the department is uh due a huge congratulations uh because of that.

So I don't really have much more to say.

Uh one of the things that I hope they will do, and it sounds like they're doing it because if I understood them correctly, uh all of those kits over, I think they said 90 days are outsourced.

And it seems like if they focus on the more recent cases, they'll have a lot better chance of catching somebody from repeating what they've done.

And I'm not sure they're doing that, but it'd be curious to find out what their policy is regarding that.

And that's all that I have to say, and I appreciate your time.

Thank you, Doug.

We always appreciate you being here.

Um there are no more speakers in the queue, so we will adjourn.

Our next meeting will be um Monday, May 4th.

Please make note that it will be on a different day than usual.

So Monday, May 4th at 10 o'clock a.m.

We stand adjourned.

Well, this is Bridget Jensen.

I was had tried to unmute, but was unable.

Is the meeting still here?

We just adjourned um the meeting.

So most people have already left.

Um could you send us an email with your comments and we will distribute them to the committee?

Uh okay.

Thank thank you.

I'll I'll do so.

Okay, thank you.

Just look at my end.

Okay, thank thank you very much.

Okay.

Bye-bye.