Urban Target Practice

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

clubsoda22

member
Joined
Jul 16, 2003
Messages
1,717
Location
SE PA
Seems the locals around my college will use just about anything as a target to hone their shooting skills, weather it be the street signs around campus, or students on campus. Fortunately the homies rarely hit anything.

Frankly, i'm getting tired of my university not informing the students about close calls. Yesterday night, at about 2am, in the parking lot behind my dorm, Someone on the other side of I95 shot over the highway at a student (I95 is recessed at that point). Fortunately all the bullets missed. As far as we can tell this was a random act of violence as there is know way the shooter could have identified the kid from that distance.

I find this out, not from a university bullitin, but a campus safety officer i'm friendly with, who claims it happens more often than we think. It seems that the university decides not to report anything that doesn't result in a confirmed kill. The last confirmed kill never made it into the crime statistics because it was on a city street, and city streets aren't considered campus property. Screw the fact that it was in the 1/2 block between his dorm and the campus pub. This is standard practice with all colleges.

Anyway, i can't wait untill i'm 21 so i can get a CWP. In the mean time, it's never been more tempting to carry illegally, but i'll just stick with my knife and pepper spray, because unlike criminals, i'm not one to break the law.
 
You are going to find the 'non-reporting...'

phenomenon at a lot of state-funded campuses across the country. It sucks, it's wrong, and it needs fixed. The colleges look at it like this-

When Daddy Warbucks gets ready to select a college for little Mary Beth, one of the first things they're going to look at is the crime stats for the contenders. Daddy is not going to spend beaucoup dinero with, or make big donations to, Thugville U. They want the money, so they lie. Thugville skews their stats and literature until they look like some ivy-covered sanctuary of great minds and philanthropic giants.

This is as wrong as wrong can be. If they are taxpayer funded and you really want to bring some smoke on 'em, you could-

A) Call you local investigative TV reporter with plastic hair and big teeth, and

B) Call your Congress-thing and tell them you already did "A", and that you expect a full review of this situation- with public accountability.

C) Call Bill O'Reilly and tell him you did "A" & "B".

Never charge a windmill unless you are totally committed to knocking the damn thing over. You just might get it done, and at least it'll hurt a little less when those big blades clean you off your horse.
 
Universities are required to maintain and release crime statistics...yours probably has the information buried on the web page somewhere. You could probably ask campus police for the stats and they will have it for at least the last few years. For funding and disclosure reasons.

However, it sounds like the recent shootings may not have been classified as "campus" crimes, so they might well be brushed under the rug.
 
Our local Sheriff's Office has been taking lots of fire of late due to their habit of clearing crimes "by exception."

For those of you that don't know what that means, it goes kinda like this: if you're looking for a specific bad guy for a series of specific crimes, and you happen to find this BG dead by the roadside, then all of those crimes just got cleared "by exception." Our local detectives were clearing cases in a bunch of creative ways.

One way was getting criminals to cop to whole strings of crimes they didn't commit, then writing to their sentencing judge to say how "cooperative" the BG was in "solving" x amount of unrelated cases. The BG, of course, is not charged for anything but the original crime, and the rest of the cases are cleared "by exception".

Another neat way to clear a case is to change the crime classification. Several burglary victims, for instance, found their cases had been recorded as "lost property", and not as "burglary", which would be more... ummm.... accurate.

Or course, the Sheriff had no idea that his detectives were doing this, right? Right...

Any way you play it, it's morally dishonest, reprehensible, and all jurisdictions do it.
 
This sort of statistical "fudging" is very common indeed. As an example, Alexandria, LA is listed in the top cities for crime in the USA. The reason? The Chief of Police insists that each and every crime be tallied, and correctly described. It's something when a small, relatively quiet city like Alexandria is much, much worse than NYC, Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, etc. in the crime statistics! In reality, of course, Alexandria is a nice place to live, with average to below-average crime: but because the CoP counts accurately, and records the results, it looks much, much worse in relation to other cities.

There has been political pressure on the CoP to change his policies, and indulge in the sort of "creative accounting" that other cities use, but so far (I'm pleased to report) he's been able to dodge that particular bullet. However, I'm not so sure what will happen when he retires... :fire:
 
I find this out, not from a university bullitin, but a campus safety officer i'm friendly with, who claims it happens more often than we think.
Click to expand...
When I lived in the dorms, I heard about many more (attempted) rapes than were ever reported to the student body, and that was just for a small section of the dorms. :uhoh:
I'm not sure if the girls involved didn't report them, or if the campus police covered them up, but, the result is the same.

And even after I'd hear about a rash of these, I'd still see girls propping open the security doors to the buildings so that their friends could get into the building without having to have someone open the door for them. Of course, they never locked their doors, either. Too much trouble to carry keys around. :rolleyes:
 
phenomenon at a lot of state-funded campuses across the country.
Click to expand...

School is completely private. Gotta pay 30K a year for the privlage of getting shot at in the parking lot (well, 21K because i'm a community service leader).

Anyway, i know about creative accounting of campus crimes. I'm starting up a medical QRS on campus so we've been seeing plenty of campus safety reports.

The new president of the school is an amazing guy, but the director of campus safety has got to go. The guy doesn't allow campus safety officers to wear bulletproof vests or carry pepper spray because he thinks it will make students think the campus is unsafe (duh, it is). Meanwhile, this is one of the most violent cities in PA. Frankly, i have firends at temple and drexel who cringe at the stories i tell.
 
as there is know way the shooter could have identified the kid from that distance.
Click to expand...

At the risk of digressing and being a snot, you're in college and don'k know the difference between "no" and "know"? I know we try to be pretty tolerant of spelling and grammar, but please :uhoh:

Club , you really need to be spending more time on English comp and less time here . . .
 
and "D"...............

"This is as wrong as wrong can be. If they are taxpayer funded and you really want to bring some smoke on 'em, you could-

A) Call you local investigative TV reporter with plastic hair and big teeth, and

B) Call your Congress-thing and tell them you already did "A", and that you expect a full review of this situation- with public accountability.

C) Call Bill O'Reilly and tell him you did "A" & "B"."


D) Invite your local THR gunnies to a "meeting" in the area--say about
20-30 of us appropriately "equipped". Woe be to anyone casting a
shot in their direction.............................

:D
 
club, I have a solution. however, I don't think anybody here would like my solution. It is the same solution that I proposed for the muggings. LOL.

Mike- Club and I go to the same school. I can vouch that his english skills are FAR from lacking. We all make minor mistakes when we are frustrated, as he obviously is in his initial post. so, yes you sound like a snot and your insult was OT.
 
Gee, I'm sorry, my bad, and you're right, this place is casual, and I shouldn't be so picky. Club's topic IS important and I didn't have anything constructive to add (which is why my post count is low. BTW, I've been around since TFL started, long before THR existed, but I digress again), I should have just kept surfing, but I sometimes get bemused by some of the attitudes here. I usually do a better job of keeping it to myself.

Sorry somebody was haveing a bad day. I, too, get frustrated, as in my work I've had to deall with too many 'kids' fresh out of skool, who think they know it all, have no work ethic or social/organizational skills, and are ill equipped to actually do something useful in the real world, but want lots of $$ and perks, and can't figure out why they aren't in charge yet. I don't know you guys, I don't know if you have a clue or not, but I guess I should give you the benefit of the doubt.

I will admit to two things, though. First, I am a lousy typist, which makes for some interesting contractions, transpositions, and malaprops; and second, my motives were entirely self-serving - I want you guys to do well in school so you can get good jobs to help pay for my Social Security and Veterans benefits:neener:
 
The new president of the school is an amazing guy, but the director of campus safety has got to go. The guy doesn't allow campus safety officers to wear bulletproof vests or carry pepper spray because he thinks it will make students think the campus is unsafe (duh, it is). Meanwhile, this is one of the most violent cities in PA. Frankly, i have firends at temple and drexel who cringe at the stories i tell.
Click to expand...

For a second there I thought you were at Penn as it costs $30k tuition/year and is close to Temple and Drexel but the new prez of Penn is a woman (Amy somebody) so I guess that rules Penn out.

If it were Penn I would have agreed with you ... they truly are stupid about campus safety. While I was at Penn (undergrad) there was a huge stink about letting the campus police carry semi-auto handguns. The Penn police are full Philadephia police officers so they don't have any issue carrying firearms but the school was up in arms when they wanted to switch from revolvers to high-cap semi-autos (gasp). [The Philly PD issues a number of sidearms; most use S&W third-generation autos.]

I submitted testimony to the powers that be regarding the benefits of semi-autos for the police and to my knowledge the measure passed. It probably does not surprise anyone here to find out that their main concern was that arming the police with high-capacity semi-autos would somehow increase the possibility of shooting an innocent bystander in a firefight. :rolleyes:

Wherever you're in school, good luck.
 
Since the shots were fired from such a long distance, how was it determined that the student was the target? Could the student have just been in background of the intended target? I know this doesn't remove the fact that the student did come under fire, but how did they know he/she was indeed the intended target of the shooter?
 
the sudent was standing in an empty parking lot at 2:30 in the morning, the only other target could have been the brick wall of the dorm behind him....which he hit.

club got banned for his post, so even though he's unable to PM you, he apoligises for flipping out at you. It's been a rough week (finals).
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

F
  • Locked
NC State students want to carry on campus (article)
Replies
0
Views
318
Frandy
F
C
  • Locked
Topics in University Security: Lockdown 101
Replies
4
Views
525
Dienekes
D
P
  • Locked
Concealed Carry on Campus- Skeleton Policy
2 3 4
Replies
79
Views
3K
RubenZ
R
D
  • Locked
Utah students hide guns, head to class, with them
Replies
4
Views
508
CountGlockula
CountGlockula
C
  • Locked
Would you tell the cop you were packing if...
2
Replies
40
Views
2K
pax
P
Back
Top