Hearings timely in light of shootings

Fresno Bee 5/12/07

How's this for a timely hearing: As Fresno police were hunting down a murder suspect near the Fresno State campus Tuesday morning, a state Senate committee led by Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter, was holding an informational hearing on university emergency alert systems.

Florez had planned the hearing of the Governmental Organization Committee in the wake of the Virginia Tech killings. But the proceedings took on extra relevance in light of the California State University, Fresno, situation, which forced the university to send out an e-mail alert to students.

Among those testifying was Fresno State University Police Chief David Huerta.

Huerta was in Reno, Nev., on Monday attending an emergency preparedness conference, he said. University officials called and woke him up that night to notify him of the situation. He was on the phone all night. Instead of returning home Tuesday morning, he went to Sacramento for the hearing.

"I may be judged for not going home," he said in an interview after the hearing. "But I have a competent police staff, and you couldn't have a better police department than the Fresno Police Department to handle a matter of this kind. There was constant ongoing phone communication."

He periodically left the hearing to get updates, and got word around noon that the suspect -- Jonquel Brooks, a 19-year-old student -- was in custody. Brooks turned himself in to face charges that he opened fire in an off-campus apartment in a dispute over a PlayStation, killing a Fresno City College student.

Huerta said the Virginia Tech killings never flashed through his mind.

"What I'm dealing with is different than Virginia Tech," he said. "I didn't have a homicide on my campus. It wasn't my turf to manage. This was Fresno Police Department -- we were just supporting them, and that's all we were trying to do. If this occurred in my residence halls, it would be a different situation."