Los Angeles Times: California bill calls for violence prevention plan

So much blood was strewn across the Santa Clara Valley light rail work yard in San Jose that state Sen. Dave Cortese placed booties over his work shoes to inspect the scene.

Concerns churned in Cortese’s mind hours after the May 26, 2021, mass shooting — the Bay Area’s most violent in a generation: Could this have been prevented? What were the protocols for dealing with this type of emergency and how could workers have been better protected?

A disgruntled former rail employee armed with three semiautomatic pistols killed nine co-workers before turning one of the weapons on himself. The shooting had a “profound impact” on the state senator.

“I started to raise questions about what kind of plans were in place to detect or to prevent this kind of harm and realized there weren’t really too many,” Cortese (D-San Jose) recently told The Times. “There wasn’t much going on at all.”

Cortese introduced a variety of safety measures, including Senate Bill 1294, signed into law last year, that created wellness centers to provide mental health services for transit workers, an effort to prevent future tragedies.

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