Let me be clear. I am not bashing the two men yet. If they can articulate they thought the area was safe then they did what they thought was best. My original point was that they will take a beating by the media not that I am bashing them. Their press conference was a joke and they both looked clueless. This will not help their image.

The point is, there is always the possibility of something dangerous happening everywhere. And it's not unreasonable to expect a shooter to get as far away as possible from the scene of the crime. Can't we just accept the fact that it is the shooter's fault, or can we not rest unless someone has been blamed and someone's life besides the victims' has been ruined? This whole philosophy is the whole stupid reason we have the war in Iraq, it's the whole stupid reason for billions of wasted government dollars, and it's the whole stupid reason for that deplorable patriot act.

Plenty of these shootings have happened without schools being shut down. It just doesn't make the news. Focusing on this one event while ignoring other similar events with different results is what is known as a spotlight fallacy.

Now let me ask you, will punishing the police chief and president of the uni accomplish anything? Absolutely not. It's just frivolous action meant to make you think the world is safer. But it's not any safer, and it's not just, either. Once again, there's not sufficient evidence to support the idea that anybody besides the shooter acted irrationally or unjustly. The fact that the outcome was the way it was has absolutely no bearing on whether the correct decision was made. I know that's a foreign idea to most people, but nevertheless, it is true. I believe I also mentioned the possibility that they cancel school and lock down the area but the same outcome still occurs.

Fair enough. I know they'll take a beating, and for the reasons I mentioned in the post before this.

I think this is where you and I disagree. Put yourself in these shoes...

You have a child that attends VT and they were injured or killed today. You later find out there was a shooting two hours earlier and the police did not do everything (or even anything) to secure the area to insure the safety of your child.

It isn't about blame. It is about accountability. The police department must be held accountable if it is later determined they did not protect the lives they have sworn to protect.

They did not look clueless. The are afraid to say anything because the media is there to pounce on one little slipup and were obviously implying that it was their fault. Imagine they give out too much nfo in the press conference then have to retract it? The media would have a field day. In the light of what happened in the Duke case I think they had to me so vague and not answer much.

I see your point, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that college is the last major step perhaps besides marriage in a vast majority of Americans' lives in becoming totally independent of parents care. These students I'm assuming are generally 18-23 years old and they're still the "kids" of many parents who are helping pay their tuitions and holding off retirement until after graduation.

Besides, these students still would have had tons of life to live if not for this. So yeah while I guess they are legally adults, I think the point the media is making is that their lives are taken while still in relative youth.

Nobody is taking the blame from the shooter.

Sure there are shootings everywhere, but so what? If you have a mass shooting, you secure the area, simple as that. That means if you can't apprehend the suspect, you lockdown the area until you are certain he isn't there and can continue his rampage. It's called establishing security and that is the police chief's job. He can't do that competently, so he has no business in contuining to do it. Sure the shooter may run, but then again, he may stick around in the area and continue, which is why you attempt to secure the area. You don't do that by not informnig people for two hours, nor by inviiting more people into an insecure area. Maybe cancelling school and locking down the area doesn't prevent more killing, but that is the smart, rational strategy, not apathy. It certainly makes it more difficult, so the shooter has less of a chance to kill.

Will firing the police chief or the president accomplish anything? Yes. If a future situation were to happen, we wouldn't have the same incompetent men handling the situation. Will the new people be competent, who knows? But we do know that these two are not and should not be in a situation like this again.

The point isn't just for them to act rationally or justly, but to act competently and they didn't.

Dude, you can play the what if's whenever anyone is killed. There is no direct fault with the VT administration. People want their heads because it will make people feel better, and have their sacrificial lamb. The truth is that you can't prevent crazy shit from happening and people shouldnt start blaming these poor people.

I absolutely agree 100% with everything that SunDevil has said on the subject.

The "area" is over 2600 acres, hundreds of buildings. What were they supposed to snap their fingers and have all of that magically secured?

Also, the first incident was not a "mass shooting". The first incident, from all indications, appeared to be an isolated incident.

Well, you start where the shooting is and you expand. That didn't happen. The best tool here is communication and that was postponed for no reason and that is massive incompetence.

You're making it sound like I think they could have prevented more shooting. I'm not saying that. I'm saying they could have done alot more tto increase security and that they are incompetent. I never said they could have perfect, complete security, just better.

That's incorrect. According to fox news, two people were found dead. Even if it wasn't mass shooting, one person getting shot should mean to a police chief, Secure The Area!! Inform people that there has been a murder and the suspect is loose. I don't understand why we are accepting and defending incompetence.

Oh well we can't secure the area. Let's get these bodies out of here and maybe no one will notice.

Actually, if you have the same people in charge, they're far more likely to be overcautious after having been through that than some monday morning quarterbacks who watched the news and think they know everything because of it. Unless they simply don't care, which is really quite an unfair assumption.

And what what are your credentials for these assertions? You keep talking of incompitence, lack of security. How exactly were they supposed to "secure" a 2600 acre area with hundreds of buildings, 26000 students and 10,000 employees in such a short period of time?

I mean, honestly, its easy to criticize them citing what system they should have in place or what they should have done after the fact. You can't account for everything. I'm sorry but thats life.

Who says I know everything? Is it not obvious that you alert your people that a mass murderer is loose? To take precautions and do what you can to make your area is secure?

You're right we should continue to keep incompetent men in a position to make important decisions, they will magically get better... Taht is why Bush was re-elected, Rumsfeld stuck around for about 3 years after the catastrphe in Iraq, ....

So, they should assume that someone is going to go and start up shooting up a school building because of what appeared to be an isolated incident where a jealous guy shot a guy and a girl. To me it sure looked like "jealous boyfriend kills girlfriend guy". Does that set off the shut down the school alarm? not to me

"That's life?" that's the best we can do? Accept incompetence without tyring to figure out a better way to accomplish somehting? We should be about tyring to improve, not accepting incompetence. Lemme guess you worked directly under Rumsfeld?

You guys think I expect perfection, but I don't. Waiting two hours to alert people is unacceptable.

My credentials? I have masters degree in international security with an emphasis in terrorism and local repsonse, along with some work in crisis management. Situations very similar to this.

Absolutely, yes. You don't know their intentions and you can't assume what they may or may not do. That is why you assume it will worsen. The fact was that you had two dead and a suspect unaccounted for. There's no reason to keep people in harm's way (if not needed to be) while the situation is out of control.

You're relying heavily on your assumption that these men are incompetent. The fact that these guys are the police chief and the university president would seem to suggest otherwise...

And if they both made the same decision (and surely had other people they consulted with as well), and they're assuredly very familiar with common procedures for handling this types of situations, AND they obviously had more information at the time than anyone else did, can you really expect anybody else to have done it differently? Sorry, but you are acting like you know everything about the situation and that you totally would have done the right thing were you in their place. It's just a ridiculous assertion; hindsight is always 20/20.

Let's put it in terms of probability... Here's a situation:
Person A, Person B, and Person C are all arrested for murder. Two are going to be pardoned the next day, and A wants to know if he'll be pardoned. Given this information, what is the probability that A gets executed? 1/3.
So A asks the warden to let him know exactly one of B and C who is going to be pardoned. A is told that B will be pardoned. Now what is the probability that A gets executed? 1/2 of course. P(A) = 1/3, P(A^B^C)=1. Given P(B) = 0, P(A^B^C) = P(A^C) = 1, so P(A|B) = 1/2. Clearly it's easier to make the correct decision given more information.

Now, let's assume the correct decisions were made. Suppose the scenario in which risk is absolutely minimized results in a 0.0001 (one in 10,000) probability a catastrophic event occurs. Now suppose that event occurs--given this information, the probability of the event occurring is now 1. Does that all of a sudden make the decision the wrong one?

That's what is happening. We're saying, "Given the fact that a catastrophic event occurred, it is clear that the wrong decision was made." It's reactive (NOT proactive), and it's not fair. It's a fallacy.