I'm afraid you have no concept of the realities involved. Police cars driving down deserted streets warning people to stay in their homes makes a compelling scene in a disaster movie, but in real life, it's usually pretty much a waste. People in their homes, if they hear it at all, would most likely ignore it. If you need to notify everyone in a situation like this you must go door to door. It's the only effective way. Of course that takes a lot of time and manpower.
As for getting support from neighboring jurisdictions and the feds, in two hours you just might have officers arriving in sufficient numbers to begin closing up the campus. Of course given the size of it, you'd have a hard time securing it with a light Infantry battalion.
There was no reason that we know of for the police or the administration to know that this was a prelude to a mass murder. When you can show me a note that the scumbag left at the scene of the first murders detailing his future plans or even his future plans written in the blood of his first victims on the wall, then I will join you in saying the administration and police were irresponsible. But there is no information saying that there was any reason to believe that the first murders were the first step of his master plan.
I mentioned costs in an earlier post. Do you really think that there wouldn't have been a large financial cost to the college if they had canceled classes that late in the day? How many deliveries of perishable food and other supplies do you suppose they would have had to pay for and not use on a campus that size? I don't have any idea what the contract says, but I bet there would have been a lot of hourly workers who would have had to have been paid anyway. You are essentially suggesting that you shut down a small city with no advance notice. Of course there will be a big financial cost to the university. What about the vendors for things lie garbage disposal, contractors performing maintenance or construction work on the physical plant? They would incur costs that the university might have to pick up.
Then there is the time of day the first shootings happened. What percentage of the staff and students do you figure had already left home for the university? Have you ever been involved in trying to get a message to even 100 people? Even with all of the modern communication devices available to us, it still took 4 hours before the majority of people in my unit were notified for a practice alert. A good practice alert was when contact had been made with everyone in under 8 hours.
Why don't you put the mantle of responsibility on your shoulders? You are the college president. Sometime around 7:30 am on a Monday morning you are notified that there has been a double murder in the housing area. There is no information available to you that suggests this is anything more then that. The police are looking for the boy friend of one of the victim's room mates. So you weigh the time of day which makes it impossible to notify staff, faculty and students before they leave their homes, the not unsubstantial cost to the university in money against the possibility that the suspect is still on campus and dangerous. The fact that this double murder is really the first phase of the worst mass shooting at a school in American history never crosses your mind. That's almost incomprehensible.
Perhaps the university should employ a psychic or at least the president should have listened to Coast to Coast Am the night before.....
I'm quite sure that if this had just been a double homicide and they had canceled classes, we'd see threads here calling for the university president and police chief's heads because they are bliss ninnys.
Jeff
