AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin Police Department (UTPD) clarified on Twitter Thursday that the gun a suspicious person was carrying while walking around West Campus on Wednesday was actually a toy.
On Wednesday, April 19, a man was seen carrying what appeared to be a large rifle in the West Campus area. Several videos posted to Twitter and Reddit showed the man walking around with the apparent weapon.
During this incident, a pizza restaurant in the area, Pizza Press, went under a brief lockdown as a precaution.
UTPD tweeted Wednesday evening that officers searched the area of the 2800 block of San Gabriel Street for the person. Students stated on social media that the person was seen on San Pedro Street – one street over from San Gabriel – but UTPD later clarified to KVUE that officers did search beyond just the area of the 2800 block of San Gabriel.
The initial report of the suspicious person was made at 5:10 p.m. Wednesday. The tweet from UTPD was sent at 7:44 p.m.
On Thursday, April 20, UTPD tweeted that an officer who was conducting a bicycle patrol in West Campus was able to identify the person who was walking around the area on Wednesday. During the patrol, the officer recovered a toy gun from the person that matched the gun seen in the video that was circulating around Twitter and Reddit.
The update clarifying that the gun was a toy and that there was no "clear criminal offense" was not tweeted until 11:47 a.m. on Thursday. UTPD said that no arrest will be made due to the nature of the incident and because there "was not a threat."
UTPD said that as the department became aware of the situation, it made the "decision to push out accurate information via social media and our website." The department further stated that if any action is required or if there is an immediate threat to the public, information would be sent out to students and faculty through the emergency text messaging system.
UTPD has two levels of alerts that they send out to the students: incident reports and emergency warnings.
Incident reports are used to communicate crimes and incidents on and immediately near campus. They are sent out through campus-wide emails, posts on social media and on their emergency website.
The difference with an emergency warning is they are used to communicate a credible, immediate, ongoing threat to campus, and provide specific actions and directions for students, faculty and staff.
Those would come in all the same forms as an incident report, with the addition of a text alert.
Wednesday’s situation was followed with an incident report and not an emergency notification, which is why they didn’t send out an emergency text.
UTPD is required to release timely warnings about reported crimes to the campus community under the Clery Act and provide emergency notifications within the Clery Act geography when the health and safety of the campus community is at risk.
The area of West Campus where the suspicious person was spotted is not under UTPD’s jurisdiction, which means they are not obligated to issue alerts for this area, but they did send the alert after hearing misinformation spreading online.
But even though they did send an incident notification, one safety campus group wants UTPD to go above and beyond to keep students safe.
"Staff were telling us they were sheltering in place on campus, some off campus student housing were saying that they were sheltering as well, and that's very concerning, and that is when absolutely we believe that when it elevates like that, we need to hear from the university," said Joell McNew, President of SafeHorns. "I know that it doesn't follow Clery requirement to send out a notification, this would fall under that courtesy."
UTPD said they did not advise anyone to shelter in place during this time or take any actions because there was not an immediate threat to the campus community.
SafeHorns President Joell McNew also thought the University should have shut down students and parents' concerns sooner.
"They're showing a video, students are sharing concerns, there's no arrests made, students think it's an active situation, and that's where the university has the ability to come in and shut down those fears and chaos and concern," McNew said.
And some comments online even expressed their concerns had it been a real gun.
But under Texas law it has always been legal to carry a rifle in public, so even if the gun were real, APD and UTPD would not be able to make an arrest unless the person was pointing the gun at people or shots were fired.