Stoning the Guardians
Tim Dees
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
I’m sitting in a hotel room outside of Chicago, watching a large school of reporters trying to extract information from Chief Wendell Flinchum, the chief of police at Virginia Tech. The day has been full of surprises for me, although my day has been an ice cream social as compared to his.
I turned my cell phone on as my plane touched down at O’Hare, en route to the 2007 ILEETA conference at the Westin in Wheeling. I don’t get all that many phone calls, so it was startling to see that my associate publisher was already jerking my chain.
“Did you hear about the shooting at Virginia Tech?”
“If it happened in the last three hours, no.”
He then gave me the 30,000 foot view, and urged me to rally the troops to produce coverage and commentary. That will follow. For now, there’s more that we don’t know than what we do.
If this incident is like most others, Chief Flinchum isn’t all that much better off to the rest of us. Between his first cup of coffee this morning and now, he’s been the front man handling the largest criminal massacre in U.S. history. He’s had to make a hundred decisions that he didn’t have three seconds to consider carefully, and his officers have had to do the same. The bodies haven’t been removed yet, and the sharks are looking for some official to blame. I didn’t hear anyone blaming the guy that was doing the shooting.
As I said, there are lots of things we don’t know right now, but I’ll hazard a few comments with the information we do know in mind.
One student who was interviewed by the Associated Press expressed his “outrage” at the way the campus community was notified of the shooting (what timing – the student is being interviewed on CNN as I type). The story says that the first shooting occurred at 0700 and there was no e-mail notification until 0922. He apparently wanted a faster and more complete lockdown.
Let’s look at that scenario. Virginia Tech has over 25,000 students and fewer than 50 police officers. At 0700, most classes are not yet in session, and students are starting to walk to class. I don’t know how many buildings the campus has—I gave up counting when I hit 200. In my experience, college students and their professors are not folks who readily yield to authority figures without explanation, debate, and often defiance. If anyone has a suggestion as to how a campus of this magnitude can be locked down any more quickly than it was, I’d love to hear it. And I’ll bet that whoever makes that suggestion has never tried it out.
I also suspect that Chief Flinchum has gotten used to “selling” his enforcement schemes to his minders in the Ivory Tower. Professors generally regard campus police as a necessary evil, useful mainly for unlocking their offices when they have forgotten their keys. I hope those professors will remember the photo I saw of two university officers sprinting to the scene. Everyone else is running away from the gunfire while they ran towards it. I am speculating here, but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that a police officer wanted the campus to be locked down immediately, and was told to hold his horses while the chance of appearing overreactive was discussed by people with lots of letters after their names.
I will speculate further that Virginia Tech frowns on the possession of firearms by anyone other than police officers. Look back to my previous blog entry for my comments in that regard. One armed, trained person in the right place…I might as well wish for next week’s lottery numbers.
This tragedy is only going to be aggravated by people looking for someone to blame for it, when the responsible party is so evident. He’s dead, but I don’t think the situation would be much better if he had been taken into custody. People would still be second-guessing the cops.
There will be a lot more to follow on this, but I’ll close with a comment that Chief Flinchum made at the press conference. A reporter asked a condescending question to the effect of “Isn’t this an unusual type of incident for a college police department to handle?” The chief replied with all of the tact he was able to muster, “This is an unusual incident for any police department to handle.” I would have stuck the word “moron” or something more colorful into that response, but the chief is clearly a more diplomatic leader than me.
I’m sure there will be ample criticism of the way this incident was handled by the law enforcement community, but you’ll have to read it someplace other than Officer.com.
May God bless and keep all the Officers who responded to this call. No matter the rank or involvement. This will forever be one of the darkest days of their career. Many, I’m sure, will question their entire being. Why didn’t I go through another door, why didn’t I —-? What if I had—-? God help each of us who have chosen this profession, as no matter what we do and no matter how quickly we do it. It is never enough, whether by someone elses standards or by our own. There will always be those people who have never been there and done it that can tell us how it should have been done when we got there. Nobody ever thinks about the sleepless nights that will be spent,the inner battles that will be fought and the personal sacrifices and the future sacrifices of the families of those Officers who were there.
Officer.com is my homepage. I am merely a reserve officer, but I feel compelled to comment on the site’s coverage of the disaster in Blacksburg.
The “tactical” sidebar borders is outrageous. To publish a commentary such as this — criticizing the victims — when virtually nothing is known of what happened in that building is irresponsble and offensive. You’re probably lucky that this site is visited almost entirely by law enforcement. If the media got wind of this article, and didn’t have anything bigger to chew on, officer.com might be in deep trouble.
Your own comments are entirely reasonable — that this tragedy might have been minimized or at least reduced by one good man, or woman, with a weapon inside the building. But the idea that a bunch of college students, under fire, should have organized themselves and jumped on the shooter is preposterous.
Somebody needs to be paying more attention to what is published on officer.com. The piece on the crowd that attacked the officers in Oklahoma is a more common fumble. Where in Oklahoma? The word “Oklahoma” appears only in the headline.
Regards,
Jack Warner
Grant Countu SO
Silver City, NM
Editor’s Note: The “somebody” is me, and I do. All of the contributing writers on Officer.com are subject matter experts in their field, and the “go to” guys in their sphere. That you do not agree with the comments of our contributors does not necessarily mean that they are wrong.
Tim:
It really is an unusual situation for the Campus PD. But it’s one of those “you’ve got to plan for” situations too….
I’m still thinking about the lockdown. Sounds like a dropped ball to me - the assumption that the initial incident at about 0700 was the end of it, and some resistance to just locking the place down “right now”, until some sort of investigation could be made.
Not to mention the “staff”…. Getting the old timers to do anything is an interesting chore all by itself. We all should realize that….
However the whole thing never could have happened…. The Virginia Legislature and the school apparently both rejected any sort of firearms on campus just a little while ago, and they have all those great “No Guns” signs all over the place, too. Those are supposed to keep the criminals and crazies out!
Gee….
Of course the criminals don’t obey those signs or most other laws. That’s why we call ‘em criminals.
So instead of stepping up to the plate and trying to genuinely protect the students and faculty there will be yet another “ban the guns” pandemonium. (Not to mention the fact that there was a gun show within ten miles of the school a week or so ago….)
One or two faculty or staff members or a couple of adult students legally carrying weapons and the body count would be a LOT smaller.
Thanks to the criminal and terrorist friendly folks out there we have a disaster. But it suits their agenda….
Regards,
Stu.
Great article you said it perfectly. How come nobody is blaming the crazy nut who did all the shooting? I am a officer in a town of about the size of the campus. If we had a double murder that we suspected was a domestic dispute we would not do a door to door knock and lock down the whole town, which first of all would be virtually impossible in that amount of time in which decisions had to be made.
Finally someone who has some sense about them. Great job!!!!!!!
I’m just guessing here but I would suggest anyone who has access to your web-site, and wears a uniform, would agree %1000 with what you have to say. I work in the business and you just took my thoughts and put them on paper - much better than I. My redneck approach would have been less appropriate!!
I was impressed with the Chief. I would have a “melt-down” in less than 2 minutes into the Q&A!!
Tim,
When I wrote my January column for you it was supposed to stay a bad dream now parts of it have come true, but like a I said then It was just a matter of time.
Excellent Article. The Country’s media is so far left, that they are hanging the good guys, and “excusing” the predators. Thanks for your writings!
As with most unfolding events in the world today, someone, somewhere else has a better idea of how the situation should have been handled. No one other than the few who were right there when it happened know what they knew and when they got the information. So many commentaries will be written in the coming days that will be written with all the information on hand at once and no regard to the actual timeline will be given. I am also with you in the fact that trained and armed citizens could have reduced the death and suffering had they been allowed to.
Not wanting the “Old West” mentality to creep into our society, but it needs to be said for any legislation that takes that option from the law-abiding citizens it only serves to empower the criminal element. My thoughts and prayer go out to the families that lost loved ones, and also to the suspects family as well. How could they have lost touch with their child so much, that he wouldn’t have sought comfort from them before doing this horrible act.
It truly amazes me how the media turned this on the police. They took aim at the first press conference and placed blame squarely on the chief and president. It wasn’t a group of angry parents with displaced fear and anxiety, it was the media.
The Chief should never have gone up there at the first news conference. That’s why we have PIO’s. Someone out of the decision making process. Can’t take the beating for decisions he might or might not have made. It looked like the Chief was pissed at the school president for dragging him up there. I got the impression that he knew better but was overruled by the President. Probably a problem with working at a college or university, working for an academic.
In reality the VT Police did a fine job. It was apparent that the mutual aide plan worked, as attested to by the volume of local police that quickly responded. The active shooter plan seemed to be enacted quickly with secondary officers securing the exterior of the building. While a active shooter team went in after the gunman.
If
The police had succeeded in “locking the campus down” the madman killer would have been locked inside of one of the buildings with an onslaught of victims. That would have resulted in the press blaming the officers for locking “my kids” in with the killer. Making hostages of them, or even worse murder victims.
If the kids had been allowed to carry guns on campus, would they have begun to suspect each other. Would this have resulted in more violence, when the innocents mistake fellow armed students for the gunman?
The police did the best they could.
Mr.Dees well said sir. God bless all those involved in this tragedy…
Chief Finchum blew it, tho it may not have been his fault. I imagine he was endlessly second guessed right from the git-go by the VaTech administration. He also has totally mishandled his press conferences making himself appear either stupid on engaged in a cover-up. There’s just no excuse for his conduct, even if he was oerced from above–and I come from a family with lots of law enforcement officers in my background and a great sympathy for all cops.
I couldn’t agree with you more. Just think if every school had one or two reserve police officers on the faculty. The airlines did it with the Federal Flight Deck Officer program, maybe it is time for something comprable for schools.
I couldn’t agree with you more Tim. Everyone looks for someone to blame when in reality it’s quite obvious. And, the perfect response for Chief Flinchum to their question of it being unusual should’ve been that, ‘You all are telling us how this is the worst shooting in history. Doesn’t that, in it’s self, tell you this is unusual to be dealing with?’ Kind of hard for something to not be unusual when it’s never happened before.
Well said!!
Good article. As soon as I heard about these murders I knew the police would be the target and then the guns. I think its common knowlege that you can not stop someone bent on homicide/suicide. Mark my word this will stir the gun banners into a frenzy. One armed person could have changed this easily.(Utah) I never leave home without my weapon-you just never know. Brother and sister LEO’s, please carry 24/7, you may be the one who makes the difference.
I have heard VA Tech police called campus security and so forth. I have worked with alot of those guys including Chief Flinchum and I must say they are a class act police department. VA Tech police is probably more equiped to deal with situations than many other police departments. How many University Police Departments do you see with there own SWAT team and K9. They did what they could, and did it well. If you are from the New River Valley you will know more about what really happened and some of the awesome police work that was done that day.
I couldn’t agree with you more - the blame for this falls directly on the shoulders of the shooter, no one else. Given what we now know about the shooter and his pre-meditation preventing further loss of life would have been an almost insurmountable task for any police agency.
I do however have to take issue with one of your contributors’ articles, “The Virginia Tech Response” by Mr. Wills. Mr. Wills statements regarding campus police agencies flies in the face of the officers who risked their lives at VTech and who do likewise across the company. Comments such as “But for the most part, campus police are best kept out of sight and out of mind. To think that they are able to quickly take control of a situation such as a suicidal gunman is ludicrous. They are not prepared to handle much more than illegal parking, unruly drunken students, and minor thefts” are completely irresponsible as a subject matter expert. In what subject matter is Mr. Wills qualified to make such statements. The generalization is as much irresponsible as it is disrespectful and wrong. I am, and know many, campus police officers who are nothing short of professionals and have quickly taken control of a suicidal gunman or two to boot.
My understanding of officer.com is that its’ intent is to benefit and further the law enforcement profession not cut it down and divide it.
Your final sentence says that we will not find crticism of the police response on officer.com however I look at an article on officer.com, entitled “The Virginia Tech Response”, and I see a contributors’ opinion that campus police are not adequately prepared to deal with such a situation. That in itself is not criticism? In Mr. Wills logic VTech police should not have even left the station but left it to the state and local PD because they are adequately prepared.
I respect Mr. Wills opinion however I think this is one that should have been kept to himself.