Webster Hill intruder case flimsy at best

Police told NBC 30 that the unknown intruder who spoke to a 4th grader before fleeing the building told the boy: “My wife and I had sex this morning and now we’re going to have a baby.”

If true, I can’t imagine how that could be used to make a criminal case for anything other than trespassing.  It’s a stupid thing to say, yes, but a crime? I don’t think so.

I’m still concerned that an unknown man could talk one-on-one with a young student in a bathroom, but this is hardly the crisis that some are making it sound. And it’s a damn shame that the response of adminstrators is to take steps such as barring parents from walking their children to class anymore. That’s brilliant.

West Hartford is home base for campus security professionals

It turns out that the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators is based right here in West Hartford.
Here’s its statement in the wake of the Va. Tech massacre:

IACLEA President Healy’s Statement on Virginia Tech Shootings

Statement of IACLEA President Steven J. Healy

WEST HARTFORD, CT (April 16, 2007)– The shootings at Virginia Tech University today are a horrifying tragedy. On behalf of its 1,000 institutional members representing institutions of higher education in the U.S. and worldwide and its 1,700 professional members, IACLEA extends its deepest condolences to the families of the victims who lost their lives today. To the Virginia Tech University community, IACLEA wishes to offer its sympathy and support in this troubling time.

IACLEA is a professional association that advances the campus safety profession by providing educational resources, advocacy, and professional development programs and services.

Campus public safety departments are charged with the important responsibility to protect the lives of millions of students, faculty, staff, and visitors to our college and university campuses. Campus public safety leaders must constantly examine and strengthen the training they provide to their officers and staff to ensure that they are doing all they can to protect the precious lives entrusted to them. While tragic, this incident can provide an opportunity for campus public safety departments and campus administrators to examine their policies and procedures and, if necessary, to make changes to enhance the protection they provide against acts of violence on our campuses.

While incidents of shootings on college campuses are rare, each life lost is unacceptable and represents a promising future sadly shortened. IACLEA has initiated a number of programs and professional development workshops to assist campus public safety leaders in protecting campuses against acts of violence. Through funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, IACLEA offers a Threat and Risk Assessment tool, a three-day Critical Incident Command class that trains command-level staff in managing incidents involving terrorism and other catastrophic events on campus, and a one-day WMD Awareness class. With these grants, IACLEA has also developed model emergency operations plans and guides for communicating and collaborating with mutual aid partners. With the support from the Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, the National Advisory Board for Campus Public Safety is developing a model for a future National Center for Campus Public Safety. This center will serve as the focal point for policies, practices, and best practices. IACLEA also offers professional development programs on school violence prevention at its Annual Conference and other conferences.

While these training programs are important, campus public safety leaders must continue to work with our campus administrations and policy makers to ensure that adequate policies, training programs, and resources are in place to prevent violence on our campuses.

IACLEA stands ready to work with all campus public safety constituents to prevent the kind of senseless acts of violence we have witnessed today.

Media Contact:
Christopher G. Blake, Associate Director
860.586.7517, ext. 565 –info@iaclea.org

Va. Tech and school security

I have spent enough time at Virginia Tech in years past to feel particularly saddened by the nightmare that unfolded there yesterday. I’ve read about the dead, learned the disturbing details we are gradually finding out about the killer, and contemplated what anyone could, or should, have done to prevent it.

I’m afraid the answer is no different than it was after Columbine or any of the other shootings in recent years: not much. We can try harder to identify outcasts with delusions of murderous grandeur. We can work to keep guns out of the hands of potential madmen. We can implement emergency lockdowns, and use them when called for.

But in the end, there is nothing to be done except for each and every one of us to reach out to the forlorn — and to fight back in any way we can if danger looms. I’d rather die trying to stop a shooter than die cowering behind a desk. And I’m sure some of the dead in Blacksburg did just that.