Posted on 04/17/2007 5:21:32 AM PDT by IrishMike
The entire nation will now collectively mourn one of the great tragedies one can endure: the death of so many of our children.
But a detailed analysis of the facts will also be ongoing. There are many questions from all observers.
It just seems to me, when law enforcement finds two dead bodies on a sleepy university campus in the 7 A.M. hour: they immediately should slam the Red Alert button. Yesterday there were some lame remarks about getting out an email (two hours late) and that there wasnt time to get the word to both lock down the campus and stop the influx of tens of thousands of commuters.
They dont have radio and TV in Blacksburg, Virginia? If at 7 A.M. a tornado was announced heading for that campus, what would have happen? How about a snowstorm? We had high winds in Washington D.C. this week and the schools were closed three hours early. It was on every radio and TV station in seconds. With that huge force of law enforcement, a good police commander could have closed every road into that campus in no time.
They got radios, cars and flashing lights, dont they?
Did anyone notice that a bunch of those law enforcement offers were, ahem, chubby?
Law enforcement at Virginia Tech didnt save one life. They didnt waste one bullet doing it either. Somebody should be ashamed: law enforcement didnt fire a shot. The only shooter on that campus got tired after all the mayhem he made.
If my kids name was killed in the classroom after 9 A.M. I am one angry parent.
When is the last time law enforcement found two dead students, murdered students, on that campus during the 7 A.M. hour?
(Excerpt) Read more at johnib.wordpress.com ...
You are correct, first gun purchased 13 march, the second last week.
There is a difference between the enclosed environment of a privately owned store and the open environment of a 4+ square mile publicly owned multi-building institution. When you enter a store, you are entering private property and the owner of that store has the right to secure his property any way he wishes, and you surrender part of your rights to enter his property. When entering the campus of a public college, you still have the same rights you have anywhere else considered in the public domain including a reasonable right to privacy.
What you are advocating with your call for greater security via cameras is a violation of that right to privacy. Do you really believe that the young men and women attending Virginia Tech would ever submit to having their privacy abridged by campus security cameras. Right now, there might be a call for such security measures, but (if enacted) within months there would be all manner of protestations by the student body until those invasive security measures were removed.
Ben Franklin addressed the issue of security vs. liberty best when he said, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Thanks.
“I don’t know how accurate the reporting was but didn’t the killer ‘lock-down’ the building he was in by chaining the doors? His lock-down plan was to lock doors and shoot everyone in sight.”
It will be days and weeks before we can talk about the events with any reliability, but I heard a report that he chained the doors of specific rooms that he entered.
Think if the university had some sort of “red alert” button (LOL) that would have locked all the doors (and windows, of course) of all the buildings on campus instantaneously. And think about if you were locked in a building with the killer. He might have had more time to kill more folks more easily, with no way for his victims to escape.
sitetest
How about information available BEFORE the killings
...
Cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, according to an investigative source, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women.
A note believed to have been written by Cho was found in his dorm room that railed against “rich kids,” “debauchery” and “deceitful charlatans” on campus.
Cho was an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the school’s counseling service.
So, he was an angry young man. What should the college administration have done, kick him out of school? Would that have kept him from coming back and killing folks? I don't think so.
And who exactly is this 'investigative source'? As far as 'allegedly stalking women', what exactly does it mean that he did? Did he ask a couple of women out one too many times so that they thought he was a creep? Did he actually follow some young women around? So many things become known only after the fact, about which nothing could be done at the time, and, by themselves, don't give any hint of what happened later.
Here is something that I found on FOX, that indicates the shooter was criminally mentally ill. Arson is a crime and the kid should not have been in school.
The Chicago Tribune reported that the note included a rambling list of grievances that railed against “rich kids,” “debauchery” and “deceitful charlatans” on campus. The paper also reported that Cho died with the words “Ismail Ax” in red ink on the inside of one of his arms.
Quoting an “investigative source,” the newspaper said Cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women, and that he was taking medication for depression. The Tribune also reported that Cho’s family runs a dry cleaning business and he has a sister who atatended Princeton University. Cho and his family came to the United States in 1992, when he was 8 years old.
Law enforcement officials told ABCNews.com that Cho bought his first gun, a Glock 9mm handgun, on March 13; they say he bought his second weapon, a 22-caliber handgun, within the last week. The serial numbers on both guns had been filed off, sources said.
Actually, after the 2nd shooting, they didn’t shut down the campus, they locked down the buildings, meaning the kids were kept inside each building they were already in.
SPECULATION ALERT: Trying to put pieces of the story together. This is a “story” I put together using snippets from the released information.
When the first shootings were reported, witnesses apparently fingered the boyfriend of the dead girl, and someone said they saw him leaving the dorm at about the time of the shooting. They identified his car. This was the WRONG person, note that the early stories kept saying that the suspect in the 1st shooting didn’t match the description of the 2nd shooter.
The police thought they had a domestic killing. Probably there was screaming from the room about cheating, and then the shots and two people were dead. They arrive and people see a dead man and woman, and assume the boyfriend of the girl found her with the RA and shot them both, and then fled. They went after him, and they caught him off campus and were questioning him when the 2nd shootings took place.
Not knowing that Cho existed, and having NO witnesses mention him, they thought it was a standard domestic problem and they had it under control.
If Cho was stalking and going crazy, maybe nobody KNEW he had a fixation on the girl, and so didn’t relate them. And with a co-ed dorm, there are probably people coming and going all the time and nobody saw or notice Cho.
Yep -— I recall that self promoting bozo. Thanks for the ping and I’ll not waste my time reading his sorry column.
“Yep - I recall that self promoting bozo. Thanks for the ping and Ill not waste my time reading his sorry column.”
Guess it was actually a ping to make sure you didn’t waste your time! LOL.
Yep and it worked. Good to see you, bonyx!
Cho had shown recent signs of violent, aberrant behavior, according to an investigative source, including setting a fire in a dorm room and allegedly stalking some women.
A note believed to have been written by Cho was found in his dorm room that railed against rich kids, debauchery and deceitful charlatans on campus.
Cho was an English major whose creative writing was so disturbing that he was referred to the schools counseling service."--IrishMike
Dang, You are one prescient flour, sugar, milk, and butter concoction.
I am going to nominate you as Head of Homeland Security's ESP Section, Special Department 20/20, Subsection Hindsight, whose Motto is: "We're never wrong. Just ask us after the event to second guess".
*snort*
You are such a jerk. He meant because your intelligence level is half fool ,he knew what he got into when he took the job. Face it admit it .you just hate me .Is that is all you do stalk my posts. i get the impression you are an internet stalker. Now get lost.
When that begins penetrating a 4 square mile campus...
Wait...wait a minute; just back up a second.
We were talking about how they should have responded 2+ hours earlier. We were talking about what you know when you find a dead person. Let me help you catch-up.
You were saying that everytime a dead person is found, authorities should hit the "Red Alert" panic button, enforcing military law. Also....having heard, twice from Geraldo, we should blame fellow Americans for this evil.
I was saying that all you know when you find a dead person is that somebody died.
We were far before it was "penetrating a 4 square mile campus".
I can not believe some of the stuff that is being said here and on the TV/XMFox.
Lockdown, lockdown lockdown over and over.
Secure, secure the premises, over and over.
So now that we know a little more about the time line and the name of the murderer, lets assume that a lockdown of 26,000 is practical for the sake of discussion.
What time would you issue the lockdown? Probably between 7:30 and 8:00 AM.
Where was the murderer at that time? Most certainly in his dorm room writing his note and loading up for stage two.
So we have him locked in a dorm with more people available to him than were in the engineering building. In frustration, he was going to kill someone so in this situation, he would have more targets for his rage.
OK, so issue the lockdown before he can get to his dorm. Fine. He gets to the dorm, shows his ID and the person manning the door says “Hurry, hurry, get inside before the murderer shows up”.
Now the really “astute” in the 20/20 experts will say that the person at the door is obligated to be sure that everyone entering is not armed.
How? The person at the door is unarmed and not a trained enforcement officer. But he is going to frisk and disarm an armed and crazed individual?
As for securing the entire university, for what reason does one secure an area? In the hopes that a villain will attempt to flee and the cops will catch him at the check point.
This guy did not intend to flee.
Of course, the other reason for securing an area is to keep bad guys out, but in this case that is a moot point.
So boiled down to the bare bones, what we have is many 20/20 experts all repeating the same song: The cops should have done something. Sounds good.
The problem is that in order to do something that would do some good, the cops would have had to have one of these 20/20 experts telling him what was going to happen next.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.