Here come the VT lawsuits...

[.RJ]

Should we immediately cancel all classes and shut down the campus if a shooting occurs on campus AND we haven't found where the shooter is yet?

How are you going to communicate this, across the entire campus with several hundred buildings and tens of thousands of students/faculty/staff within a matter of minutes? That in itself, is a very tall order and not one that most campus will be able to carry out efficiently. You could call that unprepared, sure, but how prepared can you be for every situation that happens?

Its easy to play monday morning quarterback, especially months later.

[WRXtranceformed]

That's your job as campus police / security. That's what you're paid to do. You have to at least make an EFFORT, even if it's going to be difficult or near impossible (which I don't believe, by the way). That's again what these lawsuits are based on... did the people who VT and local agencies pay to protect the students and faculty at that school do their job correctly? Did they really take every step to ensure the safety of the people at that school after the shooting?

I wasn't there, and yes it's easy to point fingers and play QB, so I don't know the exact answer to those questions, but that's why these lawsuits are coming up...the lawyers and families of the victims now believe they have grounds to investigate that because of the perceived lack of action.

That is, again, why it doesn't surprise me that these lawsuits are beginning. It's a sad way for the memories of those victims to be carried about, but welcome to fucking America man! What did you expect?

[G.Irish]

Right now every single one of us is not safe at our office (except for me, I work at the Pentagon).

Uh, someone crashed a plane into your workplace. I wouldn't exactly call that place safe either.

Excellent illustration of my point. Even in a building with dudes with machine guns at every exit, dogs, infrared cameras, undercover cops and god knows what else, shit can happen. Doesn't mean anyone was necessarily negligent.

I guess we can agree to disagree. Should we shut down an entire school campus if there's a shooting somewhere in Harrisonburg? Of course not. Should we immediately cancel all classes and shut down the campus if a shooting occurs on campus AND we haven't found where the shooter is yet? Absolutely, if I was calling the shots that would be the first call I would have made. That just seems like common sense to me. A lot of other people are seeing it that way too, from the recent news stories I've read.

The reason I brought up Harrisonburg is because Harrisonburg's population is roughly the size of VT's student population. So if you say you should put about 25,000 students on lock down then that means you should put a whole city of similar size on lock down.

One could say putting a whole city on lockdown is not the same but why isn't it? Because the citizens are not students? Why should students be any more protected than other citizens. The government should be protecting people equally.

In the case of this shooting the police thought the suspect had fled the area. If they thought he was still hanging around maybe they would've done things differently. They certainly would have responded differently if they thought there was a significant chance of more violence. But that's what happens in criminal investigations. Sometimes the police are right, sometimes they are not.

I do agree with you that if someone wants to kill others he's going to find a way to do it, but you need to take every precaution you can to prevent it. Otherwise, the families of the victims can be persuaded by lawyers that they have a negligence case. That's what the issue is here. It's not necessarily the preventative steps you can take, but how you handle a disaster once it occurs...and what kind of steps you're taking to limit how out of control the situation gets.

My problem is that people always have to find someone to blame. Someone is always the victim and somewhere, somehow it is someone's fault who happens to have a lot of money. Why isn't it the fault of the perpetrator? Sue him. He's dead? Too bad.

I mean the police cannot account for everything. They can try and maybe they'll get 80% there, or 95% or whatever. But every time they don't think of EVERYTHING they shouldn't be subject to lawsuits. That's ridiculous. There are criminals who get off because the police mishandled evidence. Some criminals get away because the police missed something or locked up the wrong person or weren't in position to make the right move. Some of the criminals get away and commit crimes again. Should the police get sued by the victims or their families in those cases?

The government CANNOT protect you from everything or think of every scenarior. Even if they had shut the campus down the guy still could have killed a bunch of people who were holed up in an academic building or dorm somewhere. The argument is that they could have saved some lives but that is a big 'maybe'. A big enough maybe that you can't really say the police were 'negligent'. They made the best decisions they could based on the information they had at the time.

That's your job as campus police / security. That's what you're paid to do. You have to at least make an EFFORT, even if it's going to be difficult or near impossible (which I don't believe, by the way). That's again what these lawsuits are based on... did the people who VT and local agencies pay to protect the students and faculty at that school do their job correctly? Did they really take every step to ensure the safety of the people at that school after the shooting?

They did make a lot of effort and they broke into the building and stopped the rampage when Cho had something like 200 more rounds of ammunition left. But you can't say that they should have perfectly predicted what was going to happen, they're not perfect and it certainly doesn't seem like they were laying down on the job.

[.RJ]

That's your job as campus police / security. That's what you're paid to do. You have to at least make an EFFORT, even if it's going to be difficult or near impossible (which I don't believe, by the way).

Ok - how would you suggest making this happen within a matter of minutes? Mobilizing police/security, locking down the buildings, shutting down campus entrances/exits?

[WRXtranceformed]

Ok - how would you suggest making this happen within a matter of minutes? Mobilizing police/security, locking down the buildings, shutting down campus entrances/exits?

NOT being a professional in security field and not being there, this is the route I would take just based on me being a relatively smart and level-headed individual.

I would treat it like an emergency situation. Contact the highest officials of the school and immediately have them send out school-wide emails to cancel classes due to an emergency situation, make phone calls and post a few of your police units at major entrance / exits to the school to reroute traffic that's entering campus. I'm talking within a minute of finding out someone has been shot and the shooter is still on the loose. The rest will begin searching for the killer / assisting in making sure the campus buildings are secure. I'd imagine with the school being that big that there is not a shortage of campus and town police in that area.

Most class buildings have a main office or secretary center that can be contacted immediately to micromanage evacuations or lockdowns, whichever was deemed more important (I'm not an emergency situations expert, but I'd follow whatever protocol are normal). They can get the word out within each building until police can arrive to ensure that the building is relatively secure.

Additional sherriffs and state police can be brought in to assist in locating the shooter after campus and local police have helped to ensure that the buildings are being secured. The most important thing in my mind would be the initial calls to each building to make students and faculty who are already on campus aware of the emergency situation. I would consider a loose gunman who just shot some people on campus to be an emergency.

That's what I'd do off the top of my head. If at least similar steps like that had been attempted, no matter how long it would take, I think these families would have a much more difficult case against the state. Would all of that stuff take "a matter of minutes?" Realistically probably not, but I think the word could have gotten out and the school could have been shut down quicker than you think. And apparently that investigation panel of professionals thought the same thing. Right now a lot of it is conjecture and "maybes" like G said, but the fact that it is a big maybe is... again.... what in my opinion is driving these lawsuits.

[.RJ]

So, how does your plan of attack differ from what VT did?

[WRXtranceformed]

They didn't shut down campus or cancel classes immediately after the first shooting so..... that would appear to me to be a pretty big difference.

[.RJ]

What indication did they have that the campus should be shut down?

[WRXtranceformed]

From the Washington Post:

"It took administrators more than two hours to get the first e-mail warning out after Cho killed two people in a dormitory. In the interim, Cho mailed off a video confession to NBC and then made his way across the Blacksburg campus to a classroom building, where he killed 30 more victims and committed suicide.

Steger said that during those two hours, administrators carefully considered how to deal with the first burst of gunfire, including a warning or a complete campus lockdown.

In the end, according to the report, administrators concluded that the shooting was a boyfriend-girlfriend dispute and that the gunman had probably left the campus."

I'm pretty sure I would make something happen sooner than 2 hours.

[WRXtranceformed]

What indication did they have that the campus should be shut down?

That they didn't catch the shooter. They thought the shooter "probably" left campus? Uh, based on what, your extensive investigation in the 2 hours you sat and deliberated on what to do? Heh...

I'm afraid this is going to turn back around to finger pointing and hindsight 20/20ing, but I'm just saying what I would have done in that scenario regardless. There were too many unknowns and assumptions being made to not just close down the school for one day to get it sorted out. I'm sure that's what the lawyers are going to harp on: the negligence is going to be made in the timeliness and poorness of the decision making following the first shooting.

I should have been a lawyer.

[.RJ]

but I'm just saying what I would have done in that scenario regardless.

And you have the knowledge now of the entire situation, the timelines, and the outcomes - something that was not available at the time.

Its still monday morning quarterback. You have no idea what VT knew, and didnt know, and when they knew it, and what their procedure was, or whether this guy was going to keep shooting students. The basis of the lawsuit hinges on VT supposedly gross negligence in mishandling the situation, and honestly its a load of BS. Could they have done better? You can always do better when you have weeks or months to go over the information and re-analyze.

[WRXtranceformed]

Yep, and it's going to come down to how good those lawyers are at doing their job... and from their track record, it looks pretty good. I can see my tax bills increasing already :roll:

[WRXtranceformed]

Looks like other schools are acting smart in the face of disaster, thanks to the VA Tech tragedy:

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That's on a MUCH smaller scale than Tech in terms of how big the school was, but I think they made a good, timely call and hopefully it will prevent more loss of life there.

[Evan]

but I'm just saying what I would have done if i had a crystal ball and knew the future in that scenario regardless.

fixed.


and dont assume that all the information the officials had at the time is either correct, or what we have now. for example, you dont really think that the instant the shooting happened the decision makers knew about it do you?

there were also reports that there was a suspect in custody at the time.

[JustinG]

i knwo here at school this past week they have been testing the new security system, 3 huge loud speakers on campus that announce messages and people could hear in their apartments at hunters ridge, a mass email system, and the mass text messaging service. However only 1/3 of the students have signed up for the txt service. We discussed it in class and a girl said she didnt because she was trying to save herself some money and didnt want to get charged 10 cent for the text message. My rebuttle was, ill pay the 10 cent if it keeps me from getting shot. She kind of rolled her eyes.

[Ginger]

You're not supposed to have your phone on in class, anyways

[JustinG]

You're not supposed to have your phone on in class, anyways

I always have my phone on in class, but on vibrate and in my pocket. If a professor bitches at me ill just be like, "i could have just saved your life".

[HAULN-SS]

that's the kind of attitude that gets your Tased...

[Ginger]

You're not supposed to have your phone on in class, anyways

I always have my phone on in class, but on vibrate and in my pocket. If a professor bitches at me ill just be like, "i could have just saved your life".

Well, yeah, so do I... and I use it, a lot. But how can you write a policy that says "no cell phones in class" (which teachers do) and then say "oh, well check every time it vibrates because some nutjob might be shooting up the campus?