Texas, feds now monitoring online posts for racist rhetoric
AUSTIN — State and federal officials in Texas have started monitoring racist and incendiary rhetoric online, such as that alleged to have been used by the suspect in the El Paso mass shooting, in the hopes of preventing violent attacks in the future.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told a select House committee on mass violence prevention Tuesday that officials at so-called fusion centers — multi-agency intelligence centers throughout the state — had not previously done that work, in part because of the public’s concerns about privacy.
“We know that if we can proactively find those individuals before an event, we have a better chance of getting an opportunity to prevent it from happening,” McCraw said. “It takes professional analysts aroundthe-clock to do it.”
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen each formed select committees and tasked them with exploring legislation to prevent gun violence after deadly shootings in August in El Paso and West Texas left 29 people dead and dozens injured.
As McCraw pointed out to the committee, there have been 12 mass casualty attacks in Texas in the past 53 years, and of those, six have come in the past three years.
Though the online hate monitoring still is in beginning phases, McCraw said officials will be tracking groups from neo-Nazis to incels — self-described involuntary celibates known to commit acts of violence.
Law enforcement is also infiltrating online forums like 8chan where the suspect in the El Paso slaughter allegedly posted a manifesto prior to the attack.
“All of those groups, obviously when there’s individuals that start talking about something that raises a concern, a threat, we should be able to move on it,” McCraw said.
McCraw said the centers will need more resources in the future to not only identify such individuals but also follow up and vet them.
Much of the discussion Tuesday centered on eight executive orders issued by Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this month that aim to improve the state’s suspicious activity reporting system. The public can submit tips about suspicious activity that may indicate future criminal or terrorist activity to the system using the state’s mobile app and website iWatch.
But lawmakers also asked questions of McCraw and Deputy Director Skylor Hearn about the feasibility of additional potential solutions.
Some of the ideas mirrored those that Abbott recommended in a safety action report released Thursday, such as requiring stolen firearms to be reported to local authorities and added to a national database. McCraw said such data would be helpful to DPS.
Rep. Charlie Geren, RFort Worth, asked McCraw about the possibility of receiving information from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on when someone lies on a federal form to illegally obtain a firearm and making it a state felony.
Doing so already is a federal felony but seldom is prosecuted. Federal background checks led to about 112,000 denied transactions in fiscal year 2017, and of those, ATF referred about 12,700 for further investigation, a Government Accountability Office report from last year states. The U.S. attorneys offices had prosecuted only a dozen of those cases as of June 2018.
“I think that would be an immediate step forward,” Geren said. “And I know my district attorney would do everything she can to stop what happened in Odessa or El Paso.”
McCraw said he thought ATF would welcome the idea and said he’d check in with the agency.
Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, said he wants to expand the categories of warrants that block someone from getting a firearm, as well as include protective orders, also known as restraining orders. Moody said data shows that many mass shooters have a history of domestic violence.
“It is inexcusable for us as a state to turn a blind eye to the statistics that show us those are the people that are involved in mass shootings,” Moody said.
Only invited testimony from McCraw and Hearn was accepted Tuesday, but Chairman Drew Darby said the committee will hold more hearings in Amarillo, Dallas and Fort Worth and Houston, at which the public will be allowed to speak.
Still, the hearing room was full of members of the public and activists wearing T-shirts and stickers bearing the names of their groups.
Hilary Whitfield, a volunteer leader with Moms Demand Action who came with a group of more than a dozen, said she was encouraged by some of the ideas tossed around at the meeting that suggested support for tenets of red-flag laws.
“For us, we know that unless they are talking about passing background checks on every gun sale and passing a strong redflag law, that it just doesn’t do what it needs to do,” Whitfield said. “They’re not going far enough.”
Rachel Malone, Texas director of Gun Owners of America, whose group also showed up in force, said she also was mostly pleased with the way the discussion went.