Bad Call: VA Tech Parents Demand President, Police Chief Resign

Fox News is reporting that some parents are already demanding the resignation of VA Tech President Charles Steger and Campus Police Chief W.R. Flinchum in the wake of yesteday's shooting.

Steger and Flinchum should not resign.

Tensions are high and some people are understandably upset, but this is absolutely the wrong call. People should be asked to resign only if their actions were unreasonable under the situation or patently incompetent. So far, I have seen no evidence that either man acted unreasonably. Everything that unfolds now is unfolding with the benefit of hindsight. But the very nature of crisis decision making is that the decision makers are working with incomplete information, information that we now possess but they did not at the time. So the measure is whether the actions of Steger and Flinchum were reasonable at the time and in crisis mode with far less information than we know have.

Here is a excerpt from Fox News:

"My God, if someone shoots somebody there should be an immediate lockdown of the campus," said John Shourds. "They totally blew it. The president blew it, campus police blew it."

The Shourds said they received a phone call from their daughter, Alexandra, a freshman at the college in Blacksburg, who was unsure of how to handle a vague university e-mail received around 9:20 a.m. regarding the first shooting incident that happened at the West Ambler Johnston Hall around 7:15 a.m.

Let us consider Virginia Tech as its own self-contained city, which in effect it is. With a population of 30,000 between students and staff, it is not a small town, but a small city. The concept of a "lockdown" is absolutely laughable when you talk about any other city. When dealing with curious and, yes rebellious, students getting a "lockdown" is impossible and anyone who thinks it is possible has no concept of security outside their own home. The Shrouds, parents that they may be, were not in Steger's and Flinchum's position, they have no concept of how to react in such a situation.

Now, let assume that a domestic violence shooting happens in any other city. The killer flees and the police responde a few minutes later. As sad as the domestic violence situation is and unprecedented on the campus, domestic violence shootings do occur in other cities. The procedure would be to begin searching for the killer, but organizing that search takes at minimum a few minutes. So if the shooting took place at 7:15am, give five minutes for police to respond and get starting a search at 7:30-7:40 am would reasonable in any other city and indeed, in a smaller city with few police resources, a 15-25 minute search response is excellent.

Next, police have to make a few assumptions about pursuing such suspects, including guessing where such a killer may go. It would make no sense to remain on a college campus that can closed down a lot easier than a regular town, so the assumption the original shooter fled campus is a reasonable one, even it turns out to be incorrect. In the heat of the moment, with reports no doubt flooding Steger's and Flinchum's office, they had to make a decision at 7:45 am--do we close the campus and notify everyone and cause a panic when we have no facts to support that call?

Of course, closing the campus would be an option and lets assume they did so. How do you secure a 2,600 acre campus with a small police force, at least half of which was not on duty? You can close the street access, but having been to Virginia Tech, I can tell you it is pretty easy to simply walk off campus into the woods. But let us assume the campus and local police can close the campus--who is going to search for the killer?

Now you see the initial delimma of Steger and Flinchum, either close the campus or catch a killer. With their manpower they could only do one or the other.

With a campus now closed, the killer could be contained on campus, which is what happended by design of the killer.

When the killer was not quickly apprehended, say it is now 8:30-8:45am, roughly one hour after the start of a manhunt. Now Steger and Flinchum are faced with the decision of whether and how to inform an entire city. Here is where VA Tech differs greatly from the rest of the world. On college campuses, every employee, student, and faculty member has an email address. So they sent out an email, which took a while to compose, in an effort to inform people of the danger and at the same time prevent widespread panic--call this 10-15 minutes to compose and send. The time now is 9:00am or so.

But sending an email to 30,000 people takes time, even with state-of-the-art email facilities at VA Tech. So around 9:10-9:20am people start checking emails and getting the message.

From the time the first responders got to the first shooting scene, at best 7:16am, and Steger and Flinchum are notified, call it another 10 minutes, to the decision to send an email out to campus, we have 1 hour and 45 minutes or so of elapsed time. Now I am just guessing as to the sequence of events, but I will bet that in the coming days, my guess will be pretty close to accurate. No action here is unreasonable nor rises to the level of firing or resignation.

Crisis decision making of this scale is not something the Mr. Steger has any experience nor can you really plan for something like this. Chief Flinchum's job probably entails planning for such a scenario, but with a police force more accustomed to controlling rowdy fans at a football game, how often can the police train for such a scenario.

In light of what is known now, I must tip my hat to both Steger and Flinchum. Both did a fine job under nightmarish cirucmstances. Instead of being forced to leave their job, they should be commended for good solid crisis decision-making.