Why didn't police at VT do enough during the two hour span?

[Ignacio Upton]

The two shooting sprees at Virginia Tech happened during a period of TWO HOURS. Wouldn't the whole campus be placed on lock-down during this time?

[wtmusic]

1. ?

Good question. Someone will have to answer for that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. The excuse is that it is not easy to lock down a campus

but just like Columbine this will be examined... and chances are some heads will roll and training will be changed.

Our usual response

There are other questions that will never be asked since the perpetrator is in a black bag on his way to the local morgue

[SoCalDem]

That was my first impression too.. One would think

that after Columbine, the police would have been a bit more forceful early-on.

I think a lot of lives could have been saved in that two hour timeframe.:(

[WCGreen]

3. I have been asleep and didn't hear about this until a little while ago...

And that was the very first part of the incident that jumped out at me...

[AZBlue]

4. I went to VT - it's a very very large school.

Nonetheless, I do wonder why more wasn't done during those 2 hours. And, where was the shooter? Why did no one notice him? Where did he go? It's a large school, but it certainly didn't take 2 hours to walk from the first scene to the second - more like 20 minutes, at a leisurely pace.

[Ignacio Upton]

9. If he was shooting people in a dorm

Then people down the hall either would have run for their lives and notified authorities, or they would have locked their doors and called 911 or campus safety. There should have been ample time to mobilize. Even if there were students in other dorms who sleep in late due to their class schedules, their RA's could knock on their doors to wake them up (or Residence Director (RD) or some other dorm official if the RA is off at class.)

[Xithras]

16. It's very easy to blend in on a campus.

By all accounts he had handguns, and he was a student on the campus. If he put the guns in his pockets where they couldn't be seen, he would have blended right in with the other students.

[Warpy]

5. They were busy at a homicide scene on one side of the campus

with the rest of the campus locked down.

Apparently the shooter crossed the campus and simply waited until the lockdown was released. As soon as it was, he started shooting again.

The police thought they had one murder scene. They didn't know they had two until it was too late.

[Virginia Dare]

10. And they may have originally caught the wrong guy...

I saw pictures of them hauling several people away, obviously not the shooter, at any rate it was a very chaotic situation, the gunman probably had it planned very carefully.

[YDogg]

6. I'm guessing the campus is sufficiently large that ...

... the gunman was able to move from one place to another unnoticed, and that the police were probably on the way to the dorm rather quickly. But if the guy didn't stick around, they probably had no clue to know where he went.

But in the meantime, I wonder whether the rest of teh campus was alerted? I haven't heard/read.

It's all so very sad.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

7. For crying out loud.

Can we at least figure out what happened before pointing fingers?

[Lil Missy]

8. Not sure, but i heard something on the news about someone being in custody early on, and they

thought it was over at that point.

[Virginia Dare]

11. Yes, I think that was probably the case...

at any rate hindsight is always 20/20.

[AshevilleGuy]

12. The media are completely ignoring this question.

About an hour and a half ago a security expert being interviewed on MSNBC asked why classes were not cancelled and the university in lockdown after the first shootings. And this guy is on MSNBC again right now asking the question again. The anchor IGNORED the point both times.

There will be a news conference at 4:30. If it goes as usual they will bring someone out who will answer every question with "We don't know.".

[Xithras]

14. What good would a class cancellation have done?

This isn't high school, where canceling a class means sending kids back to the safety of their homes. Canceling classes simply would have pushed the students outside, where they still would have been targets, or would have pushed them into other buildings on campus, such as the libraries or the dorms. The students would have still been on campus irregardless of the universities actions, and the danger level for them would have been the same.

[AshevilleGuy]

18. He went to a single classroom and did the shootings.

He shot the prof first. Chances are very high that this was planned, and that there was a connection between him and the prof. Had classes been cancelled he might well have shot somewhere else, but we don't know that.

Also, he did not shoot out in the open. Had classes been cancelled and building locked, he MIGHT not have killed the numbers he did.

[Xithras]

20. No, he went where the students were.

He wanted to kill people. That much is obvious. The students were in classrooms, so that's where he went. If the students had been in the open, he'd have gone there. If the students had been in their dorm buildings, he would have gone there. He was on campus, and he would have been privy to any announcements the students would have been able to hear. He would have known where they were, and where to go kill them.

[spoony]

21. Great points n/t

[Xithras]

13. Here is your answer. I am a college professor: They did nothing incorrectly.

First issue: The lack of a lockdown. Colleges are not like high schools, and cannot react like high schools to these kinds of situations. Unlike high schools, college students are ADULTS who are in the classrooms of their own volition. An instructor can declare a class "locked down" and lock the door, but legally he has no authority to keep the students in the classroom. If a student wants to leave, the instructor MUST unlock the door to let him or her out. Failing to do so is false imprisonment and is a prosecutable offense. Unlike high schools, where "in loco parentis" laws provide the school with certain authority to dictate actions to students, colleges are universities are at will, and the schools have no authority to dictate behavior or hold them prisoner. It's flat out illegal for the school to do so.

If the doors have to be constantly opened for students, a lockdown cannot be effective. If a lockdown isn't effective, there isn't much point to trying.

Second issue: The two hour delay. By all accounts, the police and campus security were actively hunting for the shooter, but didn't feel that he was still on campus. Many people don't realize this, but something like 95% of all serious on-campus crime is committed by people who are NOT students. In most cases where there's a shooting, rape, or assault, the perpetrator is simply someone who has wandered onto the campus to commit a crime, and the first thing they generally do is flee the campus again. There was a shooting, and then no sign of the shooter for two hours. The obvious conclusion to draw from that, based on the statistics, is that the shooter had left the campus and that no danger remained.

Third issue: Unlike fairly enclosed high schools, colleges and universities tend to be large, sprawling complexes with dozens of buildings spread out over many, many acres of land. The properties are generally open to the surrounding communities, and they are almost impossible to secure. Again, a lockdown would have been ineffective.

[Ignacio Upton]

17. I'm a college student myself

But then again, I've never had a situation at my school of the magnitude of VT. I'm also not surprised of the majority of crimes being committed by people who do not live on campus (I get campus safety notices sent to be whenever there is a robbery, murder or rape on the periphery of campus.) As to the sprawl issue, I do know that campus safety coordinates many of their activities, so mobilizing them should be a problem (and, after reading the responses in this thread, the VT officials were alerted quickly.)
BTW, today I went out and selected my major (double major, actually)...bad omen I guess.:scared:

[gravity]

15. We should wait before we start making accusations

We still don't know what happened, so just wait for the smoke to clear before you play the blame game.

[Javaman]

19. Because the police were playing video games

that's what fred thompson just said...