Duck & Cover - It's Inevitable.
I really didn't want to weigh in the the VA Tech Shootings. I really didn't. There has been enough clucking around the blogosphere to make any commentary relatively useless. But I've had too much thinking about this not to want to get something done on "paper".
When it comes down to it, I will have to (begrudgingly) agree with a statement that was made over in d0minique:
"Fault is an error or mistake in judgment or the responsibility for actions that proceed from that judgment. A gun is an inanimate object, and as such lacks the ability to reason and makes errors in judgment and also lacks the capacity to choose its own course of action. Fault as a concept is inapplicable to the gun."
But I will also assent that guns are tools. Readily available tools with an incomparable convenience for causing injury and death. Still, the fault lies with the bearer of arms, not the arms themselves. The human experience is not so advanced or enlightened as to allow humanity to exist without the necessity of tools - however dangerous they may be.
If anyone needs my pat answer on gun control, I will resignedly admit that I am a second amendment advocate. Not blindly or for machismos sake, and (increasingly) not because I think guns will be necessary to protect myself from the government1. However, in the event that I need a firearm, I want to make sure I can get one. Anyway, as I said in setsuled's blog2,
"Anyway, as far as practical life goes, I generally entertain that I demand & defend the right to have a gun - but choose not to exercise it."
Okay, that clears my position on the political issue. Questions still in mind.
Was the college legally liable for the loss of life? I ask this, not just because it's a timely question, but since my job is to assess liability, I might actually be able to do it3. There are four requirements necessary to establish liability: duty owed, duty breached, damages, and proximate cause. Let's take these one at a time.
1. Did the college have owe a duty to its employees and students to keep them reasonably free from harm and injury?
Of course.
2. Did the university fail to provide adequate measures to prevent the incident from occurring, or act in a timely fashion to prevent further injury & harm?
Debateable. Defenses are applicable in this case.
3. Where there damages, injuries, or fatalies as a result of the incident?
No question here. There were damages.
4. Were the damages a direct result of any duty breached which was owed to the claimant?
Again, debateable, but mostly because of the concept of "foreseeability"
Much of this issue will depend on what degree of negligence law is set up in Virginia, how much evidence is necessary to establish that a wrong was performed or there was a lapse in prudent action pursued or failed to be pursued.
Now, I have an even further "inside" perspective on this issue. I used to work in Campus Security when I was in college. Yes, it was for a MUCH smaller school in a MUCH smaller locale. I am going to assume that basic procedures & infrastructure are pretty much the same in most collegiate environments. This may be a huge assumption, or a small one, I'm not sure. Here's the wiki on the university. It is roughly four times the size of my small college (please don't laugh), with roughly 19 to 20 times the student population (your high school population was probably larger than my college's, whatever). I know our college had about two to four unarmed security guards on any shift, so I'm guessing that VA Tech probably had about eight to twelve. Some of these might be assigned to static stations or posts, some probably are mobile (ours were all mobile, but that's because we didn't have that many). Let me give you a general idea of what likely happened, from perspective of campus security.
1. First shots happen at 7:15AM or so. At my campus, 7:00AM was change of shift. There was usually a 15 minute gap of down time while people had coffee, gossipped, wrote their shift reports, and got any updates necessary. Even given an hour one way or another (hour into 1st shift, or hour before end of third shift [unlikely]), this didn't occur at a time when security staff are at their prime. Add to this that the event occurred on a Monday morning, which cannot statistically be a common time of day for any problems to occur.
2. Shots fired. At this time, there are two victims, none other. Best guess, the shooter flees. Security is likely contacted at this point by someone in the dorm at the time, probably the RA. Security is called, who dispatch one or more guards to the dorm to secure the area and take as much info as they can. The dispatcher contacts the Head of Security (who in turn informs the administration), and probably contacts local police to come out ASAP.
3. Local police arrive, probably only a few officers, depending on how much information the people in the dorm have given Security. At this point, Fog of War sets in. Media reports show that the administration, security, and police believe that the shooter was involved in a domestic dispute and fled campus. Not unreasonable to believe. Campus Security is probably out of the loop this point, aside from a general suggestion to watch out for someone obviously lurking around with a gun. Police are taking statements, perhaps locking down the dorm, collecting any information for leads or identity of the shooter. Important note: This takes time. A lot more time than you would think. Instead of blowing manpower chasing a wild goose, police gather as much information as possible to narrow a search range an possible suspects.
4. University administration begin spin control. Obviously, this will hit the press. They begin coordinating (hovering over) with police for facts, action plans, threat assessment. Coordinating with legal, docents, people whom the university deem it important to know. They are mentally composing a statement to the press and for the students, none of whom are immediately believed to be in peril. The dispatcher is playing solitaire, and answering calls for lock-outs & faulty fire alarms, since he's probably a work-study kid.
5. This goes on for some time. Probably more time than everyone realizes, as the authorities waiting for further instructions from municipal police & the administration (tightly holding the leash of Campus Security) try to figure out how to keep all those nice tuition paying parents and donors from panicking. Then, as things turn out, the second shooting episode begins. Pandemonium reigns, defcon Red is lit, and everyone goes into catastrophe mode.
I want to point out a few mitigating factors here. Campus Security are not commonly elite troopers of law enforcement. Hell, they're probably meagerly paid mall cops who take a lot of shit, aren't responsible for a whole lot of crucial systems, and shouldn't be considered bullet shields. I doubt the VA Tech Campus Security staff were armed. Even the most formidably statured security guard I knew back at school said that if he ever ran across a prowler in one of the buildings his plan was to throw his flashlight at the guy & run like a muthafucka. Okay, so I don't blame them.
Related to this. Blacksburg, VA is a small college town. There are roughly 39.5 thousand people in the city, while there are about 28.4 thousand at the school (I don't know if the city population is inclusive of the students). By comparison, Lubbock, TX (home of Texas Tech University, which has a comparable student population) has about 209.7 thousand people (although the city is 10 times bigger in area). I highly, highly, HIGHLY doubt that the municipal police force was up to the task of securing a 2,600.0 acre area, much of which is suburban in layout. Looking at some of the schematics of the campus layout, I think it would have been damn near a fucking nightmare to "SHUT DOWN THE CAMPUS" as some people think should have been done. Logistically, I doubt it could have been done in time4. Even with all of campus security called on shift (which would have been appropriate) to assist, you're talking about shutting down & cordoning off a 10.52 km² area & then patrolling said area for the suspect while maintaining the cordon. This, of course, would have been without concrete knowledge that the suspect was even still in the area. AND, as no one else seems to have noticed, during the morning commute hours & principal morning class hours.
Man, I know things were FUBAR'd, but I really don't believe they could have done a better job given the information they had & the expertise available. I don't believe that the administration or the authorities had a reasonable suspicion that they were dealing with a spree killer with intent to execute more than two dozen people (in completely different areas of the campus). I have got to chalk this one up to the God of Fog of War (what a fucked up game that would be), and not to incompetence.
I think that addresses Duty Breached. I don't think the university breached their duty to the students or their staff (who were, incidentally, remarkably singled out as targets by the shooter). They did what they could with the information they had. Yes, they could have cancelled classes as soon as the first shooting occurred. There's no guarantee that the shooter wouldn't have just found another locale on campus for the massacre (like, say, the commissary of a large dorm). I don't think the email went out to students immediately because the staff hadn't copy-written it at the time. It would not be in the university's interest to mass mail "OMG THERES A TOTALLY CRAZY MUTHERFUCKER OUT ON CAMPUS LOCK YR DOORS OR ELSE! RLY!" at 7:30AM because, frankly, they didn't know that. There was a shooting, there were no further victims other than the initial two. They didn't know where the shooter was, but revealing that information would have led to panic, further confusion, and worse crisis control. In hindsight, the administration could have quietly advised all RAs and staff that: "There has been a violent crime on campus this morning. Police have been notified. All morning classes and functions are cancelled. Afternoon classes are expected to be held, please expect further information as we have it." I don't know why they didn't, but whatever. It's possible that many of the administrative staff weren't even at their desks at 7:15AM.
The other debateable issue is proximate cause and foreseeability. Could VA Tech have foreseen that the shooter would have done this? Well, maybe. The student apparently had a history of forming rather disturbing ideations5 & had been referred to the campus counsellor for possible therapy. However, this was voluntary and he refused (or neglected) to do so. The student did not have any criminal history. He bought the weapons legally (although the serial numbers were removed on two of the weapons, suggesting either he did this [unlikely, why would he care?] or that the location he bought them from was somewhat disreputable [more likely]). He was not legally permitted to carry them, but that's not the point. From a very basic profile status, he was no different from the poor bastard who was initially fingered by the internet hoi polloi as the shooter. In my opinion, the shooter was probably even less remarkable. Foreseeable? No, I doubt that too. We like to believe that we can intuit the good guys vs. the bad guys, know the good fruit from the bad eggs; but really? We ignore those impulses on a daily basis. Most of the time, nothing bad comes out of it. Or maybe we intervene at the right time and the situation is defused.
Really, the point is that this kind of Monday-Morning Quarterbacking is a bunch of bullshit. They didn't know, it is unlikely that they could have known, and no amount of security/prevention would have likely deterred the incident from ultimately happening. The best thing that could have been done was that Cho should have gotten some therapy and maybe taken a semester off from school to sort himself out, but he was the only person who could have done that. Not VA Tech, not the police, not anyone.
I've got a few more things to say about this, but I think I'll break it up into a few different posts.
-12th.
1 I was of this opinion as recently as this afternoon. However, in reviewing more and more stuff on the intarweb, I begin to note a bit too much fanaticism in those who posit this kind of possibility. After consideration, I remembered one of the lessons that the film Children of Men taught me: the late twentieth century has made Armed Revolution obsolete. Without significant military resources at one's disposal (far, far beyond the capacity of an armed militia - we are talking field-grade military hardware in huge numbers), any militarized resistence is essentially doomed to fail against a well-organized, incumbent government with a strong infrastructure and defense network. Why? Bitch ass, did you forget that they can call an air strike on your ass? You might outrun a tank, but you ain't gonna outrun a twelve-block napalm strike. And you know what? The US Army can call that in over and over and over again. They got bombs. Shit loads of bombs.
2 Set's post on the topic is a good example of how this issue is an extremely polarizing one. Also, my own comments here demonstrate that I am not without my healthy dose of paranoia when it comes to whether the Bush Regime (or any government group) might lean toward perpetuating its own Noche Cristalina, if you know what I mean.
3 notalawyernotalawyernotalawyernotalawyernotalawyer, nannynannybooboo, notalawyer.
4 According to the city's website, they employ seventy-four full-time and eight part-time employees at the police department. Note that's all employees, NOT officers. Media reports suggest that a SWAT team was called in for assistance - fuck if I know where it came from, since the county seat itself seems pretty damn small.
5 Shit, don't we all? You should see my fiction. At least it's slightly better written. Slightly.
When it comes down to it, I will have to (begrudgingly) agree with a statement that was made over in d0minique:
"Fault is an error or mistake in judgment or the responsibility for actions that proceed from that judgment. A gun is an inanimate object, and as such lacks the ability to reason and makes errors in judgment and also lacks the capacity to choose its own course of action. Fault as a concept is inapplicable to the gun."
But I will also assent that guns are tools. Readily available tools with an incomparable convenience for causing injury and death. Still, the fault lies with the bearer of arms, not the arms themselves. The human experience is not so advanced or enlightened as to allow humanity to exist without the necessity of tools - however dangerous they may be.
If anyone needs my pat answer on gun control, I will resignedly admit that I am a second amendment advocate. Not blindly or for machismos sake, and (increasingly) not because I think guns will be necessary to protect myself from the government1. However, in the event that I need a firearm, I want to make sure I can get one. Anyway, as I said in setsuled's blog2,
"Anyway, as far as practical life goes, I generally entertain that I demand & defend the right to have a gun - but choose not to exercise it."
Okay, that clears my position on the political issue. Questions still in mind.
Was the college legally liable for the loss of life? I ask this, not just because it's a timely question, but since my job is to assess liability, I might actually be able to do it3. There are four requirements necessary to establish liability: duty owed, duty breached, damages, and proximate cause. Let's take these one at a time.
1. Did the college have owe a duty to its employees and students to keep them reasonably free from harm and injury?
Of course.
2. Did the university fail to provide adequate measures to prevent the incident from occurring, or act in a timely fashion to prevent further injury & harm?
Debateable. Defenses are applicable in this case.
3. Where there damages, injuries, or fatalies as a result of the incident?
No question here. There were damages.
4. Were the damages a direct result of any duty breached which was owed to the claimant?
Again, debateable, but mostly because of the concept of "foreseeability"
Much of this issue will depend on what degree of negligence law is set up in Virginia, how much evidence is necessary to establish that a wrong was performed or there was a lapse in prudent action pursued or failed to be pursued.
Now, I have an even further "inside" perspective on this issue. I used to work in Campus Security when I was in college. Yes, it was for a MUCH smaller school in a MUCH smaller locale. I am going to assume that basic procedures & infrastructure are pretty much the same in most collegiate environments. This may be a huge assumption, or a small one, I'm not sure. Here's the wiki on the university. It is roughly four times the size of my small college (please don't laugh), with roughly 19 to 20 times the student population (your high school population was probably larger than my college's, whatever). I know our college had about two to four unarmed security guards on any shift, so I'm guessing that VA Tech probably had about eight to twelve. Some of these might be assigned to static stations or posts, some probably are mobile (ours were all mobile, but that's because we didn't have that many). Let me give you a general idea of what likely happened, from perspective of campus security.
1. First shots happen at 7:15AM or so. At my campus, 7:00AM was change of shift. There was usually a 15 minute gap of down time while people had coffee, gossipped, wrote their shift reports, and got any updates necessary. Even given an hour one way or another (hour into 1st shift, or hour before end of third shift [unlikely]), this didn't occur at a time when security staff are at their prime. Add to this that the event occurred on a Monday morning, which cannot statistically be a common time of day for any problems to occur.
2. Shots fired. At this time, there are two victims, none other. Best guess, the shooter flees. Security is likely contacted at this point by someone in the dorm at the time, probably the RA. Security is called, who dispatch one or more guards to the dorm to secure the area and take as much info as they can. The dispatcher contacts the Head of Security (who in turn informs the administration), and probably contacts local police to come out ASAP.
3. Local police arrive, probably only a few officers, depending on how much information the people in the dorm have given Security. At this point, Fog of War sets in. Media reports show that the administration, security, and police believe that the shooter was involved in a domestic dispute and fled campus. Not unreasonable to believe. Campus Security is probably out of the loop this point, aside from a general suggestion to watch out for someone obviously lurking around with a gun. Police are taking statements, perhaps locking down the dorm, collecting any information for leads or identity of the shooter. Important note: This takes time. A lot more time than you would think. Instead of blowing manpower chasing a wild goose, police gather as much information as possible to narrow a search range an possible suspects.
4. University administration begin spin control. Obviously, this will hit the press. They begin coordinating (hovering over) with police for facts, action plans, threat assessment. Coordinating with legal, docents, people whom the university deem it important to know. They are mentally composing a statement to the press and for the students, none of whom are immediately believed to be in peril. The dispatcher is playing solitaire, and answering calls for lock-outs & faulty fire alarms, since he's probably a work-study kid.
5. This goes on for some time. Probably more time than everyone realizes, as the authorities waiting for further instructions from municipal police & the administration (tightly holding the leash of Campus Security) try to figure out how to keep all those nice tuition paying parents and donors from panicking. Then, as things turn out, the second shooting episode begins. Pandemonium reigns, defcon Red is lit, and everyone goes into catastrophe mode.
I want to point out a few mitigating factors here. Campus Security are not commonly elite troopers of law enforcement. Hell, they're probably meagerly paid mall cops who take a lot of shit, aren't responsible for a whole lot of crucial systems, and shouldn't be considered bullet shields. I doubt the VA Tech Campus Security staff were armed. Even the most formidably statured security guard I knew back at school said that if he ever ran across a prowler in one of the buildings his plan was to throw his flashlight at the guy & run like a muthafucka. Okay, so I don't blame them.
Related to this. Blacksburg, VA is a small college town. There are roughly 39.5 thousand people in the city, while there are about 28.4 thousand at the school (I don't know if the city population is inclusive of the students). By comparison, Lubbock, TX (home of Texas Tech University, which has a comparable student population) has about 209.7 thousand people (although the city is 10 times bigger in area). I highly, highly, HIGHLY doubt that the municipal police force was up to the task of securing a 2,600.0 acre area, much of which is suburban in layout. Looking at some of the schematics of the campus layout, I think it would have been damn near a fucking nightmare to "SHUT DOWN THE CAMPUS" as some people think should have been done. Logistically, I doubt it could have been done in time4. Even with all of campus security called on shift (which would have been appropriate) to assist, you're talking about shutting down & cordoning off a 10.52 km² area & then patrolling said area for the suspect while maintaining the cordon. This, of course, would have been without concrete knowledge that the suspect was even still in the area. AND, as no one else seems to have noticed, during the morning commute hours & principal morning class hours.
Man, I know things were FUBAR'd, but I really don't believe they could have done a better job given the information they had & the expertise available. I don't believe that the administration or the authorities had a reasonable suspicion that they were dealing with a spree killer with intent to execute more than two dozen people (in completely different areas of the campus). I have got to chalk this one up to the God of Fog of War (what a fucked up game that would be), and not to incompetence.
I think that addresses Duty Breached. I don't think the university breached their duty to the students or their staff (who were, incidentally, remarkably singled out as targets by the shooter). They did what they could with the information they had. Yes, they could have cancelled classes as soon as the first shooting occurred. There's no guarantee that the shooter wouldn't have just found another locale on campus for the massacre (like, say, the commissary of a large dorm). I don't think the email went out to students immediately because the staff hadn't copy-written it at the time. It would not be in the university's interest to mass mail "OMG THERES A TOTALLY CRAZY MUTHERFUCKER OUT ON CAMPUS LOCK YR DOORS OR ELSE! RLY!" at 7:30AM because, frankly, they didn't know that. There was a shooting, there were no further victims other than the initial two. They didn't know where the shooter was, but revealing that information would have led to panic, further confusion, and worse crisis control. In hindsight, the administration could have quietly advised all RAs and staff that: "There has been a violent crime on campus this morning. Police have been notified. All morning classes and functions are cancelled. Afternoon classes are expected to be held, please expect further information as we have it." I don't know why they didn't, but whatever. It's possible that many of the administrative staff weren't even at their desks at 7:15AM.
The other debateable issue is proximate cause and foreseeability. Could VA Tech have foreseen that the shooter would have done this? Well, maybe. The student apparently had a history of forming rather disturbing ideations5 & had been referred to the campus counsellor for possible therapy. However, this was voluntary and he refused (or neglected) to do so. The student did not have any criminal history. He bought the weapons legally (although the serial numbers were removed on two of the weapons, suggesting either he did this [unlikely, why would he care?] or that the location he bought them from was somewhat disreputable [more likely]). He was not legally permitted to carry them, but that's not the point. From a very basic profile status, he was no different from the poor bastard who was initially fingered by the internet hoi polloi as the shooter. In my opinion, the shooter was probably even less remarkable. Foreseeable? No, I doubt that too. We like to believe that we can intuit the good guys vs. the bad guys, know the good fruit from the bad eggs; but really? We ignore those impulses on a daily basis. Most of the time, nothing bad comes out of it. Or maybe we intervene at the right time and the situation is defused.
Really, the point is that this kind of Monday-Morning Quarterbacking is a bunch of bullshit. They didn't know, it is unlikely that they could have known, and no amount of security/prevention would have likely deterred the incident from ultimately happening. The best thing that could have been done was that Cho should have gotten some therapy and maybe taken a semester off from school to sort himself out, but he was the only person who could have done that. Not VA Tech, not the police, not anyone.
I've got a few more things to say about this, but I think I'll break it up into a few different posts.
-12th.
1 I was of this opinion as recently as this afternoon. However, in reviewing more and more stuff on the intarweb, I begin to note a bit too much fanaticism in those who posit this kind of possibility. After consideration, I remembered one of the lessons that the film Children of Men taught me: the late twentieth century has made Armed Revolution obsolete. Without significant military resources at one's disposal (far, far beyond the capacity of an armed militia - we are talking field-grade military hardware in huge numbers), any militarized resistence is essentially doomed to fail against a well-organized, incumbent government with a strong infrastructure and defense network. Why? Bitch ass, did you forget that they can call an air strike on your ass? You might outrun a tank, but you ain't gonna outrun a twelve-block napalm strike. And you know what? The US Army can call that in over and over and over again. They got bombs. Shit loads of bombs.
2 Set's post on the topic is a good example of how this issue is an extremely polarizing one. Also, my own comments here demonstrate that I am not without my healthy dose of paranoia when it comes to whether the Bush Regime (or any government group) might lean toward perpetuating its own Noche Cristalina, if you know what I mean.
3 notalawyernotalawyernotalawyernotalawyernotalawyer, nannynannybooboo, notalawyer.
4 According to the city's website, they employ seventy-four full-time and eight part-time employees at the police department. Note that's all employees, NOT officers. Media reports suggest that a SWAT team was called in for assistance - fuck if I know where it came from, since the county seat itself seems pretty damn small.
5 Shit, don't we all? You should see my fiction. At least it's slightly better written. Slightly.