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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
.....you may find this educational. http://www.vpc.org/press/0605amroul.htm
First of all, the subcategory is not 100,000 incidents of domestic violence -- it's more like the 1,200 yearly fatalities caused by domestic violence. And if you look at the state-by-state data, it's not unusual to find at least 10% of domestic violence disputes involving multiple homicides. That's not a small chance.
Most murder-suicides with three or more victims involved a �family annihilator��a subcategory of intimate partner murder-suicide. Family annihilators are murderers who kill not only their wives/girlfriends and children, but often other family members as well, before killing themselves.
But you don't even need the numbers or the stats. If law enforcement were thinking, they'd realize that one person who has just used a gun to kill two people is likely to use it again. You should tell people he's out there, find him and stop him. That's just common sense. The only thing that stopped VT/local cops from thinking like logical law enforcement is that they had a prejudice that "domestic disputes" somehow created less of a need for a response. Even if two people died, and even if there were bomb threats the week before. They could have seen it, but didn't, because they didn't consider domestic violence a real crime and the perpetrator a real criminal.
"You should tell people he's out there, find him and stop him. That's just common sense."
He who? That's the whole point. The suspect wasn't identified. So, they're supposed to tell everybody (including the gunman) that there's an unidentified murderer roaming the campus? I'm glad you were not in charge.
"The only thing that stopped VT/local cops from thinking like logical law enforcement is that they had a prejudice that "domestic disputes" somehow created less of a need for a response. Even if two people died, and even if there were bomb threats the week before. They could have seen it, but didn't, because they didn't consider domestic violence a real crime and the perpetrator a real criminal."
Oh c'mon now, this angle is a bit much and your speaking on behalf of "logical" law enforcement is dubious. You have no evidence whatsoever that such a "prejudice" existed in this case and to say that they didn't consider the first incident a real crime and the perpetrator a real criminal is, frankly, absurd. They responded to the crime and, in concert with the university, shut down the dorm and notified the campus and started to question potential witnesses. To imply that it's logical that they should have known that something else was going to happen two hours later when they first got there is really pushing it and to state that they didn't issue a "stronger" response because of some inbred prejudice against doemstic violence victims and cases is borderline slanderous.
"By around 7:15 a.m. Monday, Cho had left his Harper Hall dorm for West Ambler Johnston dormitory. There he went to see Emily Hilscher, described as a friend by officials. Hilscher and the resident advisor, who came to investigate, were shot to death.
As police investigated, Cho was on the move. He had a backpack containing knives and ammo magazines, sources said. He was armed with two handguns.
One, a .22-caliber handgun, was bought in February at JND Pawn in Blacksburg, federal sources said. The other gun, a 9-mm Glock, was bought from a Roanoke firearms store.
After leaving the scene of the first shooting, Cho telephoned authorities with a threat, saying there was a bomb at Norris Hall, about half a mile away from Johnston.
At Norris, officials said Cho barricaded the doors with chains, then began shooting people. Thirty were killed before Cho turned the gun on himself, officials said."
I'm sorry but this guy was very methodical and well prepared. While the cops were investigating his first crime, he distracts them with a bomb threat, then he chains Norris Hall shut and shoots up the place. Those poor kids didn't have a chance and, absent Jack Bauer "24" fantasies, neither did the cops.
If someone already said this, forgive me (102 letters are tough to read through, I did some skimming), but as far as the "domestic dispute" goes: at first the cops thought that it was a MURDER/SUICIDE. When they didn't find a gun, then they went on to looking for the gunman, who they apparently thought had left the campus.
I think that assuming nobody cared about a "domestic dispute" is naive and somewhat beside the point. In this case, they thought initially that they had the whole situation. And if it had been a murder/suicide, locking down the campus wouldn't have made any sense at all.
Blame the school, blame the liberals (gun control), blame the NRA, blame the victims. Watching people balance their politics on the backs of 30 dead teenagers is an ugly sight.
In response to "actually it happens pretty often":
I don't pretend to have any knowledge about these statistics beyond the results of half-assed google searches. However, quoting from your post "Most murder-suicides with three or more victims involved a family annihilator". In other words, they are not RANDOM shootings. So, if police were responding based on the statistics that you are quoting, they definitely should have warned people close to the shooter (had they known who he was). However, they still would not have any reason to think that he was going to go on a random shooting spree. I am fairly certain that this probability is very small, even given the knowledge that the person had already committed some murders.
Again, it is not a matter that the police didn't take it seriously because it was apparently domestic violence. It was that nothing about the crime scene indicated that the shooter was going on a random shooting spree.
I ask for the third time: Do you think that communities should respond to all domestic violence murders as if they were random killing sprees in progress? If not, what information did VA Tech decision makers have to indicate that this particular incident was different?
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