Virginia Tech Tragedy

A tragic day yesterday for Virginia Tech University. My heart goes out to the family and friends of the victims of the (at this time) unidentified gunman.

Already we are seeing people making this tragedy into a political statement. Fingers are being pointed, and blame trying to be placed. In trying to find some meaning to this situation, many are jumping to conclusions, and/or expecting answers to questions that are still being made.

I would like to ask people in general, the same thing that I have told people here at my work (where I am writing this), and that is that this situation will take many days, if not weeks to fully unravel. And, with the sole (apparently at this time) gunman taking his life after taking the lives of 32 others, we will truly never know exactly what drove this tragic event. That said, I would like to make a couple of observations about what I have seen and heard by the media.

Much is being made on why the school wasn’t locked down after the initial shooting at the dormitory, where I believe 2 people, a male and a female, were shot and killed. People have got to remember that the police are not psychic. They can only respond to the information that they are given, and from all indications that they had at that time, is that the gunman had left the campus.

Also, realize that the campus is 2600 acres, and has 25000+ students and faculty. That is the size of a small city! There are dozens of buildings there. Now, I did a bit of math (because I do not know the staffing of the campus police) to figure out how many campus officers there may have been on campus at that time. Taking a guess that there may be 3 officers per 1000 students (you would be lucky to have that many where you live where such ratios can be from 1.5 to 2.5), I came up with a force of about 78. Figuring that this would probably be a 24 hour 7 day a week force, I calculated probably 6 shifts, which would mean that there would be approx 13 officers on campus duty at that time. I may be way off, but where I work right now with a city of over 70,000 with a normal shift staffing of 9 officers, so 13 is MORE then adequate for a collage.

Okay, with those numbers, there is NO PHYSICAL WAY that they would be able to lock down the entire “open” campus, like many of the press are clambering about. And, even IF they had WANTED to lock down the campus immediately after the first shots were fired, HOW were they going to do that? Pull up a map of the campus and just look at it.

We NEED to have a little more common sense here, people. Too often we let the emotions of the moment dictate our questions, instead of letting our logic dictate such things (yes, I know, since when is the main stream media [MSM] logical??).

Next, we have the issue of gun control. Now, I have a handgun myself, and I am licensed to carry it, and it is registered. I follow the rules and the laws of my community. Personally I do not feel one needs a SKS with a 30 round mag of 7.62x49 to go hunting. I think that we as a society should have, and follow, certain laws, while keeping our constitutional rights intact. But, I do not see this mass murder as an issue of gun control, BECAUSE the killer was going to kill someone. He went to that campus with the 9mm and .22 handgun with the intent to cause harm to others. He PLANNED on breaking the law! Do you really think that a person that is going out to murder others, is really going to be deterred by any laws about handgun ownership?? Apparently some people think so.

I am not stating these things to make a political statement, because this should not be about politics. This should be only about the victims and the killer, the faculty and staff of V.T. and the family and friends of the victims (as well as the killer, because I am sure that they will be just as devastated by all this when his name is known/released). People need to realize that information WILL come out about this tragedy, but only in it’s own time. Yes, we want all the answers to our questions about this situation, and we want them now! But, any time that you have such evil acts that occur against others, you never will get all of the answers. Not to everyone’s satisfaction. How do I know this? Simple. We are still trying to figure out the evil of WW2, no? Be it the evil of Hitler or Stalin. We are still wondering about Pol Pot (sp) and “The Killing Fields”. We still are wondering about the Witman shootings from that tower in Texas!

No, we can expect scores of books to be written about this tragedy for years to come. There will be many opinions given, and some may even be close to what the truth may be. But, as in life, there is never just ONE truth, except that which drove the killer to do what he did. And, with him dead, we will NEVER know what the reason is (or more probably reasons are) that drove him to do this horrific act.

Again, my thoughts and heart goes out to all that have suffered from this terrible tragedy.

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After writing the first part of my VT blog (above), I did a bit of research into the campus police.

Their website is here : http://www.police.vt.edu/

Actually, my numbers that I gave before were high, as I knew that they would be. I just did not realize HOW high that they would be. If you would look at the personnel listings and the organizational chart, you will see that they run 4 shifts, with 1 sergeant in charge of each shift. Under them are 5 officers and 2 dispatchers. THAT IS IT!!

Now, let us just assume, for the best, that we had two shifts on duty at the time. That would give us 2 sergeants and 10 officers and 4 dispatchers on duty at the time of the shooting. Everyone is calling the campus police… victims… witnesses… parents… media… the ‘normal’ police… I am sure that those phone lines were lit up! And that they stayed that way! Those dispatchers probably split ½ between phones and radios, so 2 are trying to handle all these phone calls, while the other two are trying to put out what information they might possibly have over the radios between the officers that are most probably at the initial shooting site.

Do people HONESTLY think that these 16 people would be able to lock down the campus from top to bottom?? And remember, I am giving it a double shift here, but it is more probably that it isn’t 16 member of the campus police that are online at the time of the shooting, but 8!! Two dispatchers and 6 officers. To lock down a campus of 2600 acres and 26000 people??

But, perhaps I am looking at this all wrong. Perhaps I do not truly understand what those of the MSM are attempting to get at when they are talking about locking down the entire campus, because surely they cannot believe that 8 to 16 campus police personnel would be able to do it by themselves. Perhaps they wanted those 2 or 4 dispatchers to call every one of the buildings and tell them to lock all the doors and keep all the students within and everyone else out. No, that would take too long in the eyes of the media as well, when you consider how many buildings there are involved. Perhaps more along the lines of the email messages that were sent out later on, where they did communicate a campus lock down?

It seems to me that too many people are basing decisions upon what they would like to have happen. A lock down occurs immediately and a swarm of 100 uniformed swat officers flows through the campus to secure every single building and perform a top to bottom search? Bring in helicopters? How long do they think all this type of stuff will happen, even if they DID start the process immediately? And, can you imagine trying to sort out all the information overload with EVERYONE calling 911 at once, most of those callers with either questions, or hearing shots only. Phone lines would be tied up, 911 lines buzzing busy. Chaos is a simple word to use, and most probably accurate in this situation… for HOURS!

Schools, be the small elementary types, or large universities, have to balance their educational responsibilities and the safety of their students. They cannot go off half-cocked and knee-jerk to every possible problem or situation because of what MAY possibly happen, especially if such responses are not supported by cold hard facts at the time. You have to make decisions with the information that you have at the time, which is what VT did. Did they make errors in judgement? Certainly. Did they make any mistakes? No doubt. Are they regretting the decisions and second guessing themselves? Oh you bet!

The MSM is only interested in the sensational, and the dynamic. They want there to be conflict and drama. It sells papers and magazines and keeps people sitting in front of the boob-tube to watch the talking heads ramble and rattle on about what they think should have been done in haughty judgement against those that are trying their best with what they have (sponsored by Colgate and Campbell’s Soup). They are not interested in righting the wrongs or making people safer or making our lives easier. They could really care less if there was a lock down, and the gunman was caught and stopped after only killing the first 2 victims. Why? Because more people will watch the news and buy the papers and the magazines when there are 30 people killed. Two people killed by a gunman? Happens all the time. Such would barely get 20 seconds on the local tv news, and certainly not get any time on the national news.

Again, do not let emotion over rule logic! Do not jump to quick decisions and rush to judgement. Wait, watch, listen, and learn. Don’t just listen to one news source. Think!

Yes, it is a tragic situation. But, let us not blame the college, but put the blame where it truly belongs. The gunman!!

(Originally posted April 17, 2007 on my Yahoo 360 blog)