Everything is 20/20 in hindsite
Posted on 04/16/2007 6:17:51 PM PDT by kellynla
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- On a university campus of 2,600 acres, with more than 26,000 students, ironclad security is not a practical goal. Even so, tough questions swiftly surfaced as to how effectively Virginia Tech authorities responded to Monday's horrific massacre.
Why were campus police so sure the threat was contained in one dormitory, when most of the killings occurred two hours later in a classroom building?
Why did they think the assailant might have left the campus after those initial shootings?
Why was there a lag of more than two hours after the first shootings before an alarm was e-mailed campuswide - around the time another, more deadly burst of carnage occurred? And more generally, some security experts wondered, was the school's crisis planning and emergency communications system up to the task?
Clearly, something went terribly wrong.
Bombarded with security questions at a news conference, Virginia Tech President Charles Steger said authorities believed the shooting at the West Ambler Johnston dorm, first reported about 7:15 a.m., was a domestic dispute and mistakenly thought the gunman had fled the campus.
"We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he said.
The dormitory was locked down immediately after the shooting, Steger said, and a phone bank was activated to alert the resident advisers there so they could go door-to-door warning the 900 students in the dorm. Security guards deployed at the dorm, he said, and others began a sweep across campus.
Asked why he didn't order a lockdown of the entire campus, Steger noted that thousands of nonresident students were arriving for 8 a.m. classes, fanning out across the sprawling campus from their parking spots.
"Where do you lock them down?" Steger asked.
He said security on campus will be tightened now, but offered no details.
"We obviously can't have an armed guard in front of every classroom every day of the year," he said.
Overall, Steger defended the university's response, saying: "You can only made a decision based on the information you know at that moment in time. You don't have hours to reflect on it."
Some students were upset that the gunman was able to strike a second time, saying the first notification they got of the shootings came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m. The e-mail mentioned a "shooting incident" at West Amber Johnston, said police were investigating, and asked students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.
Student Maurice Hiller said he went to a 9 a.m. class two buildings away from the engineering building, and no warnings were coming over the outdoor public address system on campus at the time.
"I was troubled with the fact that two hours elapsed from the first shooting," said Brant Martel, 23, a junior. "I just feel they were a little slow on their response."
But Edmund Henneke, an associate dean of engineering who was in the building where the second round of shootings occurred, said criticism of the authorities' response was unfair.
"We have a huge campus," he said. "You have to close down a small town and you can't close down every way in or out."
Security experts not connected with Virginia Tech said their immediate questions focused on whether the university had adopted and practiced a plan to handle such dire crises, and whether its system of emergency communications was state-of-the-art.
"It is critical for them to have solid emergency plans in place to deal with crisis situations," said Kenneth Trump of National School and Safety Services in Cleveland. "The key is to have a solid communications component in place to deal with notifying students, parents, faculty, staff and the media whets going on."
"The most critical element that falls apart in any type of emergency, especially at educational institutions, is often communications," Trump said.
Michael Dorn of Safe Havens International in Macon, Ga., which has advised many universities on security measures, said campus emergency plans can be ineffective unless staff and students are trained on how to cooperate.
"They can make the difference between one or two people being victimized and larger numbers," Dorn said. "But it's a lot harder to do that in higher education that in a K-12 school. A lot of higher ed officials don't have the basic things in place that our K-12 schools have."
It was second time in less than a year that the Virginia Tech campus was closed because of a shooting.
Last August, the opening day of classes was canceled and the campus closed when an escaped jail inmate allegedly killed a hospital guard off campus and fled to the Tech area. A sheriff's deputy involved in the manhunt was killed on a trail just off campus. The accused gunman, William Morva, faces capital murder charges.
As for other crime on campus, Virginia Tech reported just eight arrests for illegal weapons possession from 2003-05, according to statistics posted by the U.S. Department of Education.
> We obviously can’t have an armed guard in front
> of every classroom every day of the year,” he said
But you could easily have one inside every classroom every day of the year. Just allow people to carry.
Ya' gotta' think about what you intend to do to pull this stuff off. Not sure you need to be trained for it, but you do have to do serious planning.
This is not a Tim McVeigh.
That makes too much sense.
Sincerely,
Mary Carpenter
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7CCB40F421ED4819
http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/2nd_Amend/deaths_in_merced.htm
Virginia Tech is a model of gun control. This is what the libs want for the entire country.
Looks like first Freeper post from Univ was at 7:14
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1818131/posts
I dont know how to post, but someone should post the response of the editorial board of the Roanoke Times to the discussion they started on a blog on their site about the shootings- They could not tolerate the discussion regarding the obvious right to carry issues so they just shut it down.
Virginia Tech has the strictest gun control laws in Vrginia.
Early reports are this was a Chinese alien. How does this guy pack 9MM semis? Do we let aliens have these weapons? Can an arab alien get killer weapons? Who is in charge here? Don’t think Im anti-gun. I pack everyday with a license. Had I been in that class room I would have shot him real dead in the head.
The only way to stay safe these days, it seems, is hang out all the time at the Bada Bing.
VT is a college out in the middle of the woods, basically. There has been little if any violent crime there in the past. In reality, no college security service could be prepared for something like this.
Having said that, a single armed citizen could have stopped this, or at least would have had a fighting chance to stop it.
Paula Zahn on CNN sounded a little perplexed when she read a bulletin saying Gov Kaine had issued a state of emergency. She was practically asking “why” or what for? Apparently it is to coordinate law enforcement efforts in case another shooter is out there but it sounds to me just a little like maybe the governor is trying to be part of the action. Is it unfair of me to assume that? How can we be anything but suspicious of any action a Democrat office holder takes these days.
Fire a few professors.
This whole day has been full of gross errors all topped off by CNN’s Larry King interveiwing an Arab student who just happened to be standing outside recording all the gun shots going on inside a Virginia Tech building as students were being executed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the video from this Arab student’s cell phone shows up on assorted Islamist websites.
One thing is evident as usual:
Liberals cannot be allowed to run this country or thousands more Americans will end up dead.
Everything is 20/20 in hindsite
BUT, it's early days to criticize yet. The two shooter hypothesis, with the first shooting being only coincidentally related to the massacre is, I think, exculpatory. On the third hand, I think that at least as long as we're at war every institution should have a carefully worked out "What if" plan which is triggered at the first homicide o attempted homicide.
But it won't help to excoriate the campus fuzz, all thirty of them, before we know more.
Also, that response does not address the question. No one is asking for armed guards every day of the year. But when a shooting has already occurred on campus, then it is not unreasonable to increase security drastically until the suspect is apprehended.
I really feel sorry for Steger. No matter what mistakes he may have made, he’s got to be in a huge amount of pain right now, and has to face doing endless press conferences with reporters pelting him with “Why didn’t you do this?” “Why didn’t you do that?” He’d probably give anything to have the chance to turn back the clock a few hours and do many of those things. And he can’t really even say so, because a big part of his job is to protect the university from liability suits.
This whole incident illustrates issues much bigger than anything Steger or any other campus official has control over. Students should have the right to be armed, and there should be no legal prohibitions whatsoever on shooting a fleeing felon in the back. Just imagine if, in a dorm of 900 students, just a couple of dozen had guns handy, and also had the legal right to shoot a fleeing felon in the back. Very likely at least one of them would have gotten him. And 31 students who are dead would still be alive.
BUMP!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.