Virginia Tech Police Response

This Baltimore Sun story talks about some of the same issues I discussed in this post yesterday. The first complaint that has been lodged by many armchair, post-event quarterbacks is that the school should have gone into lockdown, but:

Locking down the Virginia Tech campus would be akin to shutting down a small city - and even then, there's no guarantee that a student concealing weapons couldn't find a way in, campus security experts said.

"In this situation, the shooter was a legitimate student who had an ID card," said Robert Rowan, director of the emergency response team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. "You could easily lock a building with the shooter in it. I'm not sure that would have prevented the situation there."

snip

Susan Riseling, chief of campus police at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said a lockdown would entail securing hundreds of buildings.

"The concept of a lockdown on a 2,600-acre campus that is open and has a thousand entry points by foot or hundreds by car is not feasible," Riseling said.

Riseling, who also serves as vice president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said that locking campus buildings could prove dangerous if the shooter is outside and people are prevented from taking cover indoors.

She also said that sending out alerts by e-mail can take longer than people might expect. First, officials must respond to the call and learn the details of the crime. Then they must weigh the threat to the community and consider whether sending out alerts, through e-mail or reverse 911 calls, for example, would stir unnecessary panic.

That sounds an awful lot like my comments:

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.

I am not a security expert, but common sense will tell you that the larger the location and the more open it is, the more difficult it becomes to secure it. Furthermore, any police action must be taken based upon information available at that time.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine has said that he will ask indedpendent police experts to take a look at the response of Virginia Tech's leadership. While Kaine has publicly expressed his support for VA Tech President Charles Steger (as has the VA Tech community if the standing ovation Steger got at the convocation yesterday is any indication), the review is not a witch hunt.

Contrary to media myth, these events are rare. However, each event offers an opportunity to learn and a review of the actions of teh school, the campus police and the local police can lead to some important lessons for all universities. Heavan knows we don't ever want to see another tragedy like this one, but we cannot ignore the possible lessons of this event.

But this review must be handled by people outside the event. The review panel must work soon so that memories are fresh and not corrupted by time and outside influences. Furthermore, the panel must look at the problem for the viewpoint of Steger and his administration as well as hindsight.

In the end, I still maintain that, on first impression, Steger and his staff handled this event as best as possible.