President Bush and Vice President Cheney - Although both were hard at work in D.C. battling Congress over funding Operation Iraqi Freedom when the shootings occurred, they were nonetheless blamed for using the incident for political points, and for not supporting nationwide gun control laws.
Charles Steger, President of Virginia Tech – Blamed for not “locking down” an entire sprawling university campus the size of a small city after the initial 2 murders were committed in a VaTech dormitory on one side of campus. Blamed for not cancelling all classes after the dormitory shooting, despite his being advised by law enforcement that it appeared to be a domestic incident between the shooter and an ex-girlfriend. VaTech parents are calling for him to be fired.
Commonwealth of Virginia’s Gun Control Laws – Blamed for being too liberal, making it easier for citizens to keep and bear arms.
Commonwealth of Virginia’s Gun Control Laws – Blamed for being too restrictive, making VaTech a gun free zone where students and faculty could not protect themselves.
VaTech PD, Blacksburg PD, Montgomery County Sheriffs – Blamed for sealing off a small perimeter around the dormitory where the initial 2 killings took place, but not ordering a campus-wide lockdown because they believed the first incident to be a domestic incident.
VaTech PD, Blacksburg PD, Montgomery County Sheriffs – Blamed for not immediately rushing, with guns blazing, into the classroom building where gunfire could be heard on the opposite side of campus from where the domestic shooting occurred earlier that morning.
VaTech PD, Blacksburg PD, Montgomery County Sheriffs – Blamed for not capturing the shooter alive so that he could explain his motives and help society prevent similar tragedies in the future.
Notice that someone is conspicuously absent from the blame list: the shooter. Much like the urge to blame America for terrorism in the wake of 9/11, broadcasters yesterday could not resist the urge to spend most of their air time speculating about how society needs to be kinder to outcasts (like the allegedly picked on Columbine killers) to prevent such massacres.
A Washington Post article addressed the issue of why, after the initial dormitory shootings, warnings were not issued:
Although the gunman in the dorm was at large, no warning was issued to the tens of thousands of students and staff at Virginia Tech until 9:26 a.m., more than two hours later.
"We concluded it was domestic in nature," Flinchum [VaTech PD Chief] said. "We had reason to believe the shooter had left campus and may have left the state." He declined to elaborate. But several law enforcement sources said investigators thought the shooter might have intended to kill a girl and her boyfriend Monday in what one of them described as a "lover's dispute." It was unclear whether the girl killed at the dorm was the intended target, they said.
The sources said police initially focused on the female student's boyfriend, a student at nearby Radford University, as a suspect. Police questioned the boyfriend, later termed "a person of interest," and were questioning him when they learned of the subsequent shootings at Norris Hall. A family friend of the boyfriend's said the boyfriend was stopped by police alongside Route 460 in Blacksburg, handcuffed and interrogated on the side of the road and later released.
However, VaTech students, affected by the emotional incident, were outraged over what they perceived as a failure by the university to warn them of a pending disaster no one knew was going to occur. Students interviewed by CNN expressed their initial observations:
Police said they were still investigating the shooting at the dorm when they got word of gunfire at the classroom building.
Some students bitterly questioned why the gunman was able to strike a second time.
"What happened today this was ridiculous," student Jason Piatt told CNN. "While they send out that e-mail, 20 more people got killed."
Students and Laura Wedin, a student programs manager at Virginia Tech, said the first notification they got of the shootings came in an e-mail at 9:26 a.m., more than two hours after the first shooting.
The e-mail had few details. It said: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating." The message warned students to be cautious and contact police about anything suspicious.
Student Maurice Hiller said he went to a 9 a.m. class two buildings away from the engineering building, and no warnings were coming over the outdoor public address system on campus at the time.
Everett Good, junior, said of the lack of warning: "I'm trying to figure that out. Someone's head is definitely going to roll over that."
"We were kept in the dark a lot about exactly what was going on," said Andrew Capers Thompson, a 22-year-old graduate student from Walhalla, S.C.
Clearly law enforcement and university officials had investigative leads pointing to an off campus suspect, and given the nature of domestic disputes, the decision not to lock down an entire university based on what they knew was appropriate. There was no investigative information that could have predicted that the dormitory shooter possessed multiple firearms, was a VaTech student, and had laid plans to massacre students on the opposite side of campus, carrying chains to lock students in, intending to execute them with no apparent emotion. Such behavior would have been incompatible with a domestic incident, which usually diffuses once action has been taken against the girlfriend/spouse.
The campus lockdown that occurred at VaTech on the first day of classes last fall was ordered because intelligence then indicated the escaped felon was at large on campus and had shot a sheriff’s deputy. That was not the case yesterday, as the initial domestic shooting at the dormitory pointed to an off-campus suspect. Comparisons of the handling of these two very different situations are not productive and lead to unfair conclusions about the decisions made yesterday.
The university administration and police department deserve the prayers and support of the community rather than finger pointing. When they responded to the first 911 call about the classroom shootings, they rushed to the scene, secured as many students as possible and then risked their lives entering the building to confront the gunman. After witnessing the shooter commit suicide, the responding officers swept the area, still without knowledge of the motive for the attack or whether there were multiple suspects. They rescued the barricaded students, provided first responder medical assessments and care, carried the wounded to safety, and witnessed a horrible scene of carnage while feeling helpless. There is no feeling more disturbing to someone who has worked in law enforcement than the helplessness when you cannot protect someone from harm. Yet for these brave officers there appears to be only insult added to injury with each criticism.
The Virginia Tech webmaster, tasked with updating the university’s web site throughout the ordeal and with a police scanner at his desk, shared the following assessment of emergency response with friends on the blog Wired:
This was a multiple-agency response and there is little interoperability -- but the police still got the job done. Virginia Tech Police Department was and is lead agency in the whole event, with Blacksburg PD right there with them. The Montgomery County Sheriff's Department is also involved and the Virginia State Police. Give all the various dispatchers credit for a great job, as they were the linchpins that kept all the communications straight between all the agencies. There was a massive response from all the local rescue squads, let by the student-run Virginia Tech Rescue Squad. A triage area was set up adjacent to Norris Hall and ambulances shuttled in and out of the area to transport victims to Montgomery Regional Hospital, the Carillion New River Valley Medical Center, and to hospitals in the Roanoke Valley. Carillion's helicopters and the State Police helicopters were unable to be used for transport due to the high winds we are experiencing.
The campus (and surrounding public schools) were locked down, since no one really knew what the situation was, how many shooters there might be, and where any more might be. The incident ended after 11 a.m. and people on that side of campus were released to go home. Other parts of the campus were released at 12:30. SWAT teams from various police agencies in the region are doing a sweep of campus and the crime scenes are being processed.
Without imposing martial law and a complete police state, college campuses cannot be protected from a shooting rampage like this one. Steps can be taken to reduce the possibility, but prevention is not possible. Gun control has never kept guns out of the hands of criminals. The university reportedly did not have a campus-wide surveillance camera system, and perhaps the Commonwealth of Virginia will include funding to install one in the next university budget. However, the absence of cameras cannot be blamed on the university president, and the initial decision not to lock down the campus was made in good faith based on available information.
To blame is human, to sympathize divine.
2 comments:
Sir,
Having made a number of false starts to this comment, I now realise that I do not have the words to adequately express my shock & sorrow for this terrible, incomprehensible tragedy, nor to adequately extend my condolences to the American people and more particularly to the families of the victims of this terrible tragedy. Please forgive me for that, and accept these few words as my best, though wholly inadequate, attempt.
On the subject of the 'blame game' you describe, I once again find myself admiring and agreeing with your erudite narrative.
Watching that very first press conference I was shocked at the tone of the questions being posed by the assembled press, many of whom - and one female voice in particular - had already clearly bypassed the tedious first course of establishing the facts, and had moved on to the far more appetising dessert of Steger and Flinchum's negligence.
Being rude, aggressive and accusatory towards these shocked and reeling gentlemen - struggling to comprehend the incomprehensible as we all were - at that time and in those circumstances, with no more to go on than their own (mis?)interpretation of the tragic sequence of events, is reprehensible beyond words.
Blame is a dish best eaten very, very cold indeed.
Johnny,
Sadly, the day after the shootings there was a bomb threat to the campus directed specifically at President Steger. I suspect there are few university presidents who could have handled this incident any better than Steger did, but the media is not interested in capturing the remarkable rise of people to the occasion, since controversy is the currency of the media realm.
If I wrote a follow up to this post, I would have to add more law enforcement agencies, medical responders, school counselors, local psychiatric staff who evaluated him in 2005, and a host of others who have been new targets of blame. Again, everyone but the shooter is responsible, since assigning blame that way would end the media frenzy since he, unlike those on the blame list, is NOT available to defend himself and attract more viewers.
No emergency response is ever perfect, since crises breed chaos and dynamics change a response plan in mid-course. Like you, I stand by my assessment that given what they knew and when, those who have been blamed acted in a manner appropriate to their authority.
As always, thank you Johnny for thoughtful comments.
Post a Comment