On February 4th, 2022, a man brought a gun into Lincoln Public Schools. I wrote about this the next day and included a police report showing that the man was not charged, and the gun was not confiscated and destroyed as state law seems to require.
Since then, I have been in communication with Joe Wright, head of security at Lincoln Public Schools. He told me that they followed policy when they allowed the man to return to the meeting after putting his firearm in his car. I asked for the written policy(ies). This was on February 8, 2022. At the time of publication a week later, I had not received a response.
I attended the school board meeting and spoke about how serious it is when a gun comes into a school board meeting. I again asked for the procedures in place to keep children and community members safe and hold adults accountable.
I spoke with a sergeant who was unable to provide additional information and asked me to call Public Information Officer Erin Spilker. (Unfortunately, Spilker is on leave due to a totally different local law enforcement fiasco.) I left a message with dispatch and Assistant Chief Jason Stille returned my call. Neither person was able to explain adequately why Officer Cooper #1616 did not confiscate the gun as the state law seems to require, or cite the individual. Both assured me that the man was very nice, very sorry, and because he’s never been in trouble before, it wasn’t clear that he should be in trouble now.
To create transparency for myself and for you, I submitted an open records request to Lincoln Public schools and asked for the list of names of people who were invited to the invite-only meeting where the incident happened. I have received the list of names. After a bit of research, it appears that the man who brought a gun into a school meeting is Todd Vesely.
On the day of the most recent school board meeting, Todd Vesely posted this to Facebook. It’s interesting, because as I understood from my conversations from law enforcement, the person with the gun was VERY SORRY for entering a community meeting in a gun free zone with a gun, which is why they decided to call it a “whoopies” and let him continue on pretending to be a “responsible gun owner”.
Readers, I’ll update you when I have more information about the exact policies that govern when adults appear to be committing crimes at Lincoln Public Schools, and any new information about this story, as I learn it.
