Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire LEO Failure

Newsflash: you are agreeing with TWO lawyers...

VA,
Currently working in Barrington (small town near Dover if that means anything). Grew up in the northern part of the state so I guess my mindset is a little different than most.

George

I know the area well. Within 24 months, we'll be within long range commute of Boston; likely living inside VT or NH.

I sincerely hope that nobody that I know finds out about THAT.

It'll cost ya...

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His family and LEO brothers will probably disown him now VA!!

VA,
I grew up right on the Connecticut River so I could throw a rock to VT. NH and VT were pretty much the same place in my mind then. Now I have a preference for NH, though after the last election I've been a little disappointed.

George

3 actually!

The cops are culpable and time will tell. If you don't believe me you are either dead or stupid.
Pick one......

300wby, I can't agree that the LEO's are culpable, they follow what comes down form the school presidents office. I agree, they should have told the school president to go piss up a rope, but they were following their higher, just as the Military would have to do. Les

I have found this entire story too tragic for words. As the father of three children, two recent graduates from college and the third about to convocate, I feel the immediacy of the loss of their families all too keenly.

But on the other hand, after Columbine our family discussed possible courses of action that would have saved lives. My kids each came up with different variations of "I would fight back, like THIS..." I suddenly realized that my kids had grown up with the knowledge that there were nut jobs all around them who were potential mass murderers, and the media's carte blanche authority to glorify these mad dogs was only increasing the likelihood that another massacre would take place.

But they had also grown up in a home where warrior mindset is taken for granted. They all learned basic self-defense when very small, and although none of them were ever interested in martial arts, they all learned enough about how to fight that two of the three actually did pretty well in some tough situations. In other words, they refused to accept the possibility that a crazed gunman could come into their world and wreak havoc without paying a price of some kind, and at THEIR hands.

My kids were prepared to do battle and survive. Unfortunately, most of America's young people think the milk-pap "advice" such as that put out by Virginia Tech, the absolute opposite of what I trained my kids in, is logical and sensible. VT's policy on dealing with an armed active shooter makes no more sense than... well, for those of us who've dealt with such persons, we know it makes no sense whatsoever. What idiot wrote this crap? S/he should be NAMED in the public press, and then be forced to deal with the legal consequences!!

Personally, if my child was murdered on a campus with such a ludicrous policy statement on how to deal with gun violence, I would sue the University into non-existence. I would sue them until there was nothing for them left to do but tear down the buildings with their own bleeding hands for scrap to pay the judgments against them.

The only way educational institutions are going to wake up and adopt realistic policies for the protection of their students is if they are forced to look past the standard academic position and start listening to real professionals. I mean no disrespect against local law enforcement agencies, but local law enforcement has too broad a purview to take on developing a security plan for a 65-acre campus and 20,000 students.

These Universities need to hire people and organizations with REAL experience in dealing with REAL armed threats in such circumstances. They don't need unarmed rent-a-cops who couldn't get hired by any reputable LE agency. They need qualified ARMED security personnel, trained and staffed in sufficient numbers to respond to any reasonable threat. It's not enough to have one guy per shift with LE training and a single M1 Garand in locked storage in the HQ building!

Yes, that is going to cost some serious money, but let's face it, we're past the point in America when we can pretend this isn't a burgeoning problem. The families of the kids who were killed are already paying pretty significant tuition bills; what parent of a dead VT student wouldn't be willing, in hindsight, to pay more for adequate Security staff coverage?

Universities and colleges need to recognize that allowing qualified faculty and staff--and perhaps even students!--to carry concealed firearms on campus is not a "politically uncorrect" move which needs to be quashed for the sake of making people "feel safe", but a tactically valid response which will make them actually BE more safe.

Wow, buncha Monday morning quarter backs with a 15 second video for all their information. Whens the last time YOU ran into gunfire with "reckless disregard" for your personal safety 300? Not ever I'll bet. I have and it ain't fun. From everything I'm hearing this morning the cops on scene were trying to enter the building ASAP but things were nearly over by the time they got there.

You ought to be ashamed of yourselves if you think every cop there isn't replaying everything that happened and what he could have done diffferently over and over.

I don't agree with you. However I do agree with Doc Rocket. Finally someone has pointed out the obsolete thinking that many schools have. As I mentioned in an early post a tactic that could work is what Flight 93 did.

What happened at Virginia Tech was about the same as the first three 911 planes.

On a side note did anyone see the interview with the mayor of Blacksburg on Fox? He is of the same pacifist mold as the current leaders of VT. He said that the incident was handled just right and he is in full support of the leaders and police at VT. Somehow I don't think that the same nut would have got nearly as far at West Point or the Citadel.

Bret, the real point to be made is this:The Police in reality can't protect anyone unless it is by blind luck. There were a LOT of heavily armed Lawmen already present on campus yet even in such close proximity, they were helpless to influence the course of events. I HAVE faced hostile gunfire and it is NOT something one looks at as something to do today. I'm as certain as you are that the cops on scene are grating their guts over it but the plain truth is that they just did not have the ability to stop the carnage. We never could proect anyone in the way some believe we could. It just ain't so.

Sounds about right to me, though I've no doubt that some hopefully very few cops have a yellow streak that runs through them, can't even begin to imagine that the majority on the scene would have given anything to have that perp in their sights for a sec, anything up to and including their own life. Tragedy isn't helped by laying blame at folks that were only slightly less powerful or positioned to avert this tragedy than the rest of us. YMMV, but I imagine there's been some sleepless nights for some street level LEO's. I can only hope they pay more attention to criticism of the players than the fans. Tough gig for everyone involved, coulda shoulda woulda.

There'll be no Medals of Honor to distribute amongst the LEO...there was no uncommon valor...too bad Audie Murphy wasn't a cop.

and Yes I know that MOH can only be awarded to military...just making an analogy.

I think you're full of s hit. Believe it!

Are you trying to tell me the cops don't have authority to lock down the campus? You better rethink that.....

BT/DT. Got GSW scars and edged weapons scars to prove it. And no, it wasn't fun.

I am NOT criticizing the individual officers, nor even the VT Police. From what I read in USAToday they did about what any undersized, underfunded department could do. The responsibility lies with the ostriches-with-their-heads-in-the-sand who run Virginia Tech. Since Columbine, secondary schools across the country have implemented systems to keep their campuses safe. These plans were not just locally developed, but resulted from dialog among jurisdictions across America. I was personally involved in the implementation of our local school district's active shooter planning. We utilized systems developed elsewhere and adapted them to our schools, and in turn passed on our stuff to others.

However, at the time we were doing this I remember reading criticism of the post-secondary institutions' failure to learn and implement active shooter programs. Virginia Tech is obviously one of them, and as such, they can be and SHOULD be held liable in court for the loss of life. I sincerely hope VT survives the whipping they're about to get, but I also sincerely hope they pay dearly, to the point where they realize they've got to face reality. They need to get some serious tactical risk managers in there to come up with a realistic active shooter plan.

I agree, every officer who was there is--rightly wrongly, only they can say--questioning his/her actions. My guess is that most of them did as they were trained to do and have nothing to be ashamed of. The University, however, has a lot to be ashamed of, and to be held accountable for.

Okay, I'll tell you. That authority rests with the President of the University.