WHAT WENT WRONG AT COLUMBINE (MASSIVE COVER-UP ACCUSATION)

NewsWithViews.com ^ | June 12, 2003 | Larry Pratt

[fight_truth_decay]

Brian Rohrbough is the father of one of the victims at Columbine. In an interview I conducted with him for my talk show Live Fire, my listeners were informed of the continuing lawsuits pursued by Rohrbough to pry the information from the authorities who have engaged in a massive cover-up.

The killers were well-known to the school and the police as very dangerous characters. After stealing equipment from a van, they were reported to have made death threats against a student. The Sheriff denied that any such report had been made, but unhappily for the Sheriff, the father had kept a copy of the report on the official form used for that purpose.

Rohrbough said that other death threats had been made, as well. The police had recovered from the killers pipe bombs which had been reported to them.

A year before Columbine, a search warrant was drawn up to search the house of the killers but was never executed. For two years the Sheriff's department denied that there had been a warrant. It has now been revealed in court that the cops were lying. Rohrbough suspects that one of the killers' parents was close to someone in the Sheriff's department.

One of the killers was being medicated on a psychotropic drug. There is a line at many of the county schools in the cafeteria where the drugs are handed out. The schools get $1000 per year from the federal government for handing out the drugs that the parents pay for.

The Sheriff's department covered up the records of the juvenile diversion program that the killers had attended. The parents had described in documents for the program that the kids were angry. One of the killers answered questions on a form saying that he wanted to kill someone, wanted to kill himself and hurt as many people as possible. They wrote essays in a creative writing class where they described the joys of murdering innocent people. The only negative comment by the teacher who graded the paper was that you should not swear at people before murdering them.

In a class they produced a video depicting the blowing up of the school. The killers had been on the internet bragging about the bombs they built. They even put their names on the bombs.

Other video tapes were made by the killers bragging that they wanted to kill as many people as possible. They had a hit list, but that has not been released yet -- although Rohrbough is trying to get it in produced in court.

The school authorities reported concerns about the killers to the Sheriff department's school resource officer. The officer denied that he was ever told that information. This is one of the many lies that Rohrbough has uncovered in the over 30,000 pages of documents he has gotten out of the clutches of the authorities.

Rohrbough accuses the police of having been cowards. Most of the officers he hastens to add wanted to go in, but the first officers on the scene became cowards. They had a gun fight with the killers and ran to hide behind their cars instead of running into the school. Their cowardice soon became the orders from above, ultimately from the Sheriff himself.

There was about seven minutes before the killers killed anyone inside the school (two had been killed outside, including Rohrbough's son). Obviously, if the officers had gone into the building immediately, there is a great likelihood that many lives could have been saved.

It is now known that the police waited for three hours after they knew the killers were dead before they finally entered the building. This was the time during which a teacher bled to death in plain sight of the world.

Rohrbough has alleged that the county lied about 28 material facts. When he presented this in a case against the county, the judge said that the government is immune from criminal penalties when it lies. The county's defense, when they were caught lying, was to hide behind the doctrine of sovereign immunity which protects bureaucrats from liability for their misdeeds. As a result, they actually argued in court that they were not responsible for protecting the victims or the dying teacher.

As a result, Rohrbough's litigation has focused on freedom of information suits to obtain the documents which have exposed the government's lies.

The Governor's commission to investigate Columbine was on the verge of issuing a report saying that everyone in authority had done all they could when Rohrbough dug up the non-executed search warrant. The commission never did hammer the police for allowing two killers to roam the halls while the cops cowered outside.

The commission recommended two improvements. One was to improve communication technology between police departments and the Sheriff's office in the county. But Rohrbough has learned that the difficulty was solved almost instantly. The other recommendation was that troubled students not go to their diversion programs in the same car. That was all the commission could come up with!

Rohrbough lamented that there were no teachers or other adults with a concealed firearm in the school. He pointed to the case of Israel where teachers have been encouraged to arm themselves. Certainly, if the police are going to insist that they have no responsibility to protect victims from criminals, then it is unconscionable for the police and politicians to oppose people protecting themselves, including legalizing firearms for self defense in schools.

Rohrbough is of the opinion that the killers' accomplice who legally bought the guns for the killers had advance knowledge of the crime. According to her, she told the killers when she gave them the guns, "You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?" She was not prosecuted for transferring firearms to persons ineligible to own them. Rohrbough suspects that she was not prosecuted because she played the politically correct game of testifying that if there had been a gun show background check she never would have bought the guns.

One good thing that has resulted from the revelations of official misconduct was the defeat of the Sheriff in the next election.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Larry Pratt has been Executive Director of Gun Owners of America for 27 years. GOA is a national membership organization of 300,000 Americans dedicated to promoting their second amendment freedom to keep and bear arms.

The GOA web site is: http://gunowners.org. Pratt's weekly talk show Live Fire is archived there at: http://gunowners.org/radio.htm E-Mail: ldpratt@gunowners.org

Pratt has appeared on numerous national radio and TV programs such as NBC's Today Show, CBS' Good Morning America, CNN's Crossfire and Larry King Live, Fox's Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC's Phil Donahue show and many others. He has debated Congressmen James Traficant, Jr. (D-OH), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Vice President Al Gore, among others. His columns have appeared in newspapers across the country.

[discostu]

You can't go running into a building with no tactical information. What we don't pay the police to do is throw their lives away in poorly planned illconceived attempts at heroics.

[SJSAMPLE]

Hmmmm. How do you get tactical information? Do you stay outside, hoping to get a peak through the windows?

At some point, there has to be somebody willing to go inside and secure an entry position. Then a sweep can begin.

I've done a lot of MOUT training in the Army (where we had the advantage of being able to lob a grenade into the room), and I agree that information is vital. But that's why SWAT team members are (presumably) trained. You don't have all the information, but you should have the training to deal with the situation, not to sit around and wait for better (safer) opportunities to develop. At some point, you have to hitch up your balls and make the decision to go in. If their primary concern is their own safety, then they should have become accountants.

[discostu]

Yeah when you've got good information that there's a safe entry point. What they did at Columbine is the exact same way they've been handling hostage situations for 30 years and overall it has good results.

The big difference between what the Army faces and what SWAT faces is the hostages. The Army can assume that most if not all of the people in a building are valid targets, SWAT teams must assume the exact opposite. This is the method they are trained to use, wait for a clean opportunity or for the bad guys to give up.

[fight_truth_decay]

How do you get tactical information? Do you stay outside, hoping to get a peak through the windows?

The SWAT team and other police officers need to get their orders from the TOP brass, do they not?

[SJSAMPLE]

Agreed that we use different techniques, equipment and have significantly reduced liability. However, they KNEW that there were ACTIVE murders happening. They weren't waiting for a fleeing suspect to come out of barracade.

In the overwhelming majority of the "good results" that you mentioned, the suspects gave themselves up, after some time, with no loss of life. In these cases, the SWAT teams enforce a barricade and contain the suspect. This case was dramatically different and should have immediately been recognized as such.

The overwhelming majority of the cops I work with (US Army Reserve - Indiana), some of whom are SWAT team members themselves, were deeply troubled by the (lack of) actions at Columbine.

Body armor, automatic weapons, and extensive (?) taxpayer funded training were the tools they had that day, and they used none of them to prevent a single death. They merely aided the evacuation of some and prevented the evacuation of others - the teacher that died was a direct result of the SWAT team's incompetence, as they wouldn't allow him to be evacuated by his students.

No reasonable man would stand outside, armed and armored, while children were being murdered. Something about their tactics, training and POLICIES prevented them from doing what they knew was right.

[SJSAMPLE]

There were orders NOT to enter the school. Several officers had stated that they were ready and willing to go in. I don't say this was a failure of any one, or individual officer, but the SWAT chain of command and policy structure was (in my opinion) the significant factor.

[zeugma]

At least if they'd attempted to do something, there would have been a chance for some lives to have been saved. As it was, there was no chance of same because they were all a bunch of cowards.

I don't see how anyone can condone blatant cowardice as was exhibited on the scene, but then, hanging out here as long as I have, I get to be constantly amazed at the lengths some people will go to justify any action by police. I'm suprised Dane hasn't shown up on this thread yet. (perhaps he has, and I haven't noticed)

[zeugma]

Good thing the HRT wasn't involved. I don't believe anyone has survived being 'saved' by the Fibbie HRT.

[discostu]

They also knew that if they rushed in there stupidly and got killed the body count would only go up.

Even when the bad guys are killing people you don't rush in dumb, while hoping they give up the team is also figuring out how to safely assault the building. It's a race to the finish. The only difference between this case and the hundreds of other hostage situations SWAT teams have faced over the decades was raw numbers. Other than that it was textbook: unknown number of armed bad guys in unkown locations within a structure that the SWAT team is probably not familiar with.

Sorry they did the right thing. Being killed wouldn't have helped anyone. Having to draw down on somebody using a kid as a body armor wouldn't have helped anyone. They were right. Rushing into the building would have been stupid. Monday morning quarterbacking using information they had no way of getting is insulting and wrong.

[Liberal Classic]

Interesting, if disturbing post.

[fight_truth_decay]

SUPERTEAM: SWAT's Story of the Littleton Colorado Tragedy

...James Davis, a nationally recognized criminologist who has trained over 200 tactical teams over the last 15 years:"Those first officers were under fire as soon as they got out of their vehicles. They knew from the outset that these kids were packing heavy arms." The gunmen had assault rifles, semi-automatics, and scores of bombs and explosives. They were barricaded under a position of cover with potentially 2,000 victims and hostages - a nightmare scenario for any SWAT team. Within seconds the officers had a gunbattle on their hands. "By anyone's estimation, it was a God-awful circumstance," Davis continued. "There was live fire, perhaps a couple of thousand victims and no reliable information about what was actually happening or where inside the building."

Adding to the confusion, information was flowing out of the building via hundreds of calls from cell phones, school phones and even e-mail. But the information was confusing and contradictory and served to only add to the chaos. Several people were insisting there were six shooters while others reported that the gunmen had changed clothes to blend in with the other students. Shortly after Jefferson County SWAT Commander Lt. Terry Manwaring arrived on the scene, he knew instantly that the traditional tactics of time, talk and tear-gas had to give way to a hurry-up offense. Law enforcement officers had a situation on their hands that no agency has ever faced - bombs exploding and heavily armed gunmen shooting their way through a school crowded with 2,000 terrified students and teachers. "It was way beyond the worse case scenario that tactical officers train for," said Larry Glick, who heads up the National Tactical Officers Association. "What happened in Littleton was unthinkable from a training perspective." American Police Beat

[archy]

Monday morning quarter backing by people who do not know SWAT tactics or the dangers faced by such a situation.

The worst condemnations of the cowardly actions of the Colorado cops and federal Swatzies who later *cleared by fire* rooms in the school in which live survivors remained has come from other cops, in particular a cousin of mine on the SWAT [they call theirs SRT]team in another Colorado county.

-archy-/-

[Drew68]

Cops need to be smart during gun fights regardless of who's being killed. Being stupid (like running into an unknown building containing an unknown number of armed assailants in unknown positions) and getting themselves killed wouldn't have saved the life of a single child.

A voice of reason.

Furthermore, the shooting lasted 20-25 minutes tops. By the time the cops could even grasp the reality of what was happening, Eric and Dylan had shot themselves.

SWAT teams simply were not trained for the type of situation that happened on 04/20/99.

FWIW, A very close family member of mine survived the library that day.

[discostu]

If they'd attempted to do something while lacking proper information the most likely thing that would have happened is that some cops would have been injured or killed and kids would have been caught in the crossfire. The body count would have been higher.

These methods didn't get made on a lark. It wasn't cowardice it was INTELLIGENCE. I get constantly amazed by how much some people just plane hate cops and will find fault with everything they do. You'd be bitching just as much if they'd done what your suggesting, the difference is you'd be right then because your advice for them is moronic to the point of homicide.

[discostu]

That comment shows how much of a cop hater you are. The HRT does good work and has saved hundreds of lives.

[archy]

I've done a lot of MOUT training in the Army (where we had the advantage of being able to lob a grenade into the room.

Direct fire from a 155 self-propelled artillery piece works MUCH better. This has been known and demonstrated as fact since George Patton's Third Army toured Europe in 1944 and '45, though the entry and clearance of towns was specifically avoided unless absolutely necessary. But in some instances, as when the Moselle River was crossed and Metz, the first city in Germany to be taken, was cleared and occupied by the 5th Infantry Division after 10 days of particularly *intense* fighting, SP arty was a most useful tool.

Don't tell the Swatzies, though- they'll want one for when they go rounding up overdue books from the public library.

[zeugma]

Can you name someone who has actually survived in a situation where the HRT was involved. Frankly, every incident I've ever heard of where they do their commando-wannabe thing, everybody has died.

[discostu]

"Every incident" of the over 200 times (http://www.fbi.gov/hq/isd/cirg/tact.htm) they've been deployed, really. If you only look for bad news you're only going to see bad news. You're basically claiming that because all we ever hear about the Israel bus service is the bombs there's never been a successful bus trip in Israel.

[MEGoody]

"It's good to know that cowering behind police cars while children die is official policy. Such brave public servants we have 'protecting' us."

Please tell us, what would have been your modus operandi for the Columbine situation?

[TC Rider]

Let's strip the SWAT teams of the black uniforms, armor, and automatic weapons.

All they needed at Colombine were body bags and a mop.

Ships are safe in a harbor, but that is not why ships are built.