Virginia Tech fined $55,000 for failure to notify in timely manner

http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/03/29/virginia.tech.fine/

(CNN) -- Virginia Tech will be fined $55,000 for waiting too long to provide timely warnings about a shooter on the loose during a 2007 rampage in which 32 people died, the U.S. Department of Education said Tuesday.

The school said it will appeal.

A December 2010 report said the school did not notify students in a "timely manner" -- as dictated by what is known as the Clery Act -- after a shooting that left two people dead at West Ambler Johnston residence hall on the morning of April 16, 2007.

Would two hours notice saved the victims?

We know your opinion on that. Would you answer the question please.

...the instant they began a violent attack would be even better.


If we're going to fantasize, let's FANTASIZE!!!

Access to guns and ammo is.

I mean, I have public policies that I'd love to see implemented, too, but I know the likely hood is essential zero. In other words, fantasy.

I don't go around pretending there's a realistic chance of it happening.

from the article:

According to the report and Tuesday's letter to Virginia Tech, police went to the scene of the Virginia Tech dorm shooting at 7:24 a.m.

At 7:57 a.m. police notified the office of the executive vice president about the shooting. President Charles W. Steger was then notified and an 8:25 a.m. meeting was held to discuss the shootings and how best to notify the campus community. The administration knew that no weapon had been found and that bloody footprints led away from the crime scene, according to the education department.

. . .

the police notified the office of the vice president half an hour after they arrived (you think somebody might have called the vp when they called the police???? then the college had a meeting half an hour later--and issued a warning 45 minutes later? yep, sounds like "timely manner" to me.

by the way, they didn't have a policy in place to notify students and faculty? they had to figure it out then??

In the final report regarding the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech massacre by Seung-Hui Cho, specifically the part concerning the delay in the issuance of vague warnings (more than two hours after the first killing), issued on Thursday, December 9, 2010 by the U.S. Department of Education under Arne Duncan, Virginia Tech was said to have violated this Act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clery_Act

Says it all. The bureaucratic mind in (in)action.

Fucking tools. They should be in jail.

Those involved in the delay should be fired.

Matter of fact the local media was reporting the earlier shooting when the "massacre" took place..

I sat here and watched it unfold on local TV.

That's not how I recall it. All the police arrived on campus as the killings were occurring and later. No way Cho encountered police on the way. They had concluded that the killer had left campus. This was a horrendous mistake.

There is cell phone footage where you can hear Cho shooting in the background. You see the campus police shooing students away while waiting for the city's SWAT team to show up.

The shooting is slow, methodical, punctuated by pauses where he reloaded. Cho had almost a half hour to wander the building expending 174 rounds before "real police" entered the building. He reloaded 17 times using "ban legal" 10 round magazines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkrDYR-pd7I

This is about the last two minutes shot by a student with his cell phone. Note the stalwart campus cops milling about with no apparent sense of direction or urgency waiting for the "real" police and occasionally yelling at students to "Get away." Remember, this is after Cho came back on campus after mailing his manifesto to NBC news. Dressed in "de rigueur" black trenchcoat and backpack, like he came from central casting, Cho walks past the campus constabulary unnoticed.

Listen to the shots. There are a couple spots where wind noise overpowers the audio, but close to the end you hear a blast where SWAT finally breaches the barricaded door. They rush in and almost immediately, in the face of an armed response, Cho kills himself.

Except for an 86 year old Holocaust survivor who tried to barricade a door no one took any action to thwart the shooter. I still wonder why someone did not break the "In case of emergency" glass on one of the fire axes in the hallway and try to find the opportunity to use it. Autopsy reports indicate a number of the victims simply cowered under their desks meekly waiting their turn to be shot.

Students should have been warned and they never would have gone to class.

That cell phone video is only of the last few minutes of the rampage. Where that student picks up filming that segment Cho had already been inside the building for twenty some minutes shooting.

Campus police had been getting 911 calls from the desperate students trapped in the building for most of that time. Contrast that with the sense of urgency displayed by the campus police. All they did was secure an area outside Norris Hall to keep anyone else from entering the building until the city SWAT team got there.

You can readily see why the University and their campus police might not have liked the local TV station to keep airing that footage.

investigating the earlier shooting when the "rampage" got up to full steam.

I know this because, I live just a few minutes from Virginia Tech.

Even more proof that they "can't" protect you.

EDIT, from Wikipedia..


Pretty damning evidence...

in his possession, the attack might have been stopped and some lives saved.

The individual with a concealed weapon could have hid behind a desk with his weapon pointed at the door. When Cho made his entrance, the armed person could have made sure that Cho was the shooter and not a cop or an innocent person and fired. It's quite possible that the attack would have ended at that point with Cho seriously injured or dead.

Of course, had concealed carry been allowed on campus, Cho might have realized that the college classrooms were not shooting galleries with defenseless targets and decided not to attempt a massacre.

We do need to improve our system of checking buyers of firearms to insure that they are not violent criminals or people who have been legally adjudged to have serious mental conditions. But when all of our safeguards fail we need to allow honest responsible people to have an effective means of self defense.