Police may have used Columbine tactics

POLICE responding to the deadly Virginia Tech shootings may have been using tactics learned after the Columbine killings in Colorado in 1999.

Police at many college campuses across the nation have trained in so-called “active shooter response” — aimed at quickly isolating attackers at often sprawling educational facilities.

“The first thing is to put the guy in a box,” said security analyst Kelly McCann. Quickly “isolate, contain and control” the threat while gathering as much intelligence on the attacker as possible, said McCann and other security experts.

Memories of a murder-suicide this month at the Seattle campus of the University of Washington remain fresh in the mind of assistant police chief Ray Wittmier.

Wittmier and other officers responded to initial reports of gunfire by searching the school’s architecture building floor by floor, guns drawn and not knowing what attacker or attackers might be hiding behind each door.

Officers found the victim dead on the floor, shot multiple times. Her killer and former boyfriend was behind a desk, with a gunshot wound to the head.

“You might be outnumbered,” said Wittmier. “You’re not taking as much time to find out more about the threat.”

You might get yourself into something bigger than you realise,” he said.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold stormed through Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado, killing 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide in one of the worst school shootings in US history.

Police were criticised for waiting too long before moving into the building.

That attack changed the way colleges and universities respond to similar threats, security analysts said. “You could end up in there and find there could be two or three shooters, coming at you from multiple directions,” Wittmier said. “There could be booby traps set up, such as explosive devices.”

When assessing their security needs, according to campus security experts, college and university police look at the number of students at the school, crime activity level in the area, square footage and any sensitive facilities or high-security laboratories nearby.

The open nature of a college campus makes it impossible to totally secure, as University of North Carolina at Greensboro police discovered on March 24.

Police said a gunman was let into a dormitory by an unwitting resident, leading to a shooting that left a freshman student wounded. Two men who were not students at the school were later charged in the attack, police said.

“We tell residents that it’s important to remember that they’re responsible for their own safety and the safety of everybody else that lives there,” said Major Jamie Herring, assistant campus police chief.

Herring said his officers have been trained in active shooter response.

“The training calls for the first four officers on the scene to make contact with the shooter or shooters,” said Herring. “Their primary responsibility is not rescue, their primary responsibility is to make contact and to stop people from being shot.”