Public safety is being pulled in every direction: staffing shortages, state-level preemption fights, and residents who expect less violence and more transparency, all at once. In this fireside chat from the 2026 NBC-LEO Summer Conference in Birmingham, Alabama, Ralph Clark, President and CEO of SoundThinking, sits down with Mayor Van R. Johnson II, 1st Vice President of the National League of Cities, for an unfiltered conversation about what it actually takes to keep communities safe in 2026. Mayor Johnson, a former police officer turned Savannah, Georgia leader, and Ralph Clark, whose company built the ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology, dig into the tension between personnel shortages and technology adoption, the real-world effects of laws like Georgia's constitutional carry, and why public safety only works when residents trust the systems built to protect them. Learn more about how SoundThinking helps cities build data-informed public safety strategies at https://www.soundthinking.com/contact/sales. #PublicSafety #GunViolencePrevention #ShotSpotter #SoundThinking #CommunityTrust #DataDrivenPolicing #NLC #NBCLEO #LawEnforcement #CivicLeadership

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