It's amazing to me that the Columbine High School massacre was ten years ago today. How could ten years have already zoomed by? Heck, I was still six months away from meeting my wife.
I caught the second half of a History Channel special on the massacre, and the one thing that stood out to me upon revisiting that horrible day was the - and I don't use this term lightly - cowardly demeanor of the police on scene.
It is a common procedure that when there is a hostage situation in a building, the police hang back and negotiate. But once shooting of hostages begins, that's when the police go in. At Columbine, there was no hostage situation; the bad guys proceeded directly to the shooting part. For three hours, the police did not enter that building, even though they were mere yards away from the windows of the school library where most of the killings took place. The police could hear the shooters methodically dispatching their victims. In the aftermath, the police had every excuse in the book: We didn't know how many shooters there were, there were explosive devices, so on and so forth. Sorry, but police get paid to put their lives on the line, and this was one of those moments where it was clearly necessary. For God's sake, even after the two murderers had killed themselves, the police didn't enter the building for another hour, and didn't reach the library where the police knew the killing was taking place until three and a half hours after the killers had offed themselves.
I went on YouTube to try to find some kind of tribute to the victims to honor them on this sad day, but I had trouble finding a tribute that didn't mention the names of the two subhumans who perpetrated this horrific crime. Heck some misguided souls even posted victim tributes that showed photos of the two killers as if they were fellow victims. As for me, I hope they are rotting in Hell. Thankfully, I finally found what I was looking for. Here are the people who should be remembered on this day:
Good Day to You, Sir
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
3 comments:
As a former cop I have to agree with you. I remember sitting in roll call and discussing it with my fellow officers. We all agreed that there was no way we would have stood by while kids were being killed inside. We couldn't imagine what accounted for it other than paralyzing indecision or fear.
Law and Order Teacher: The police should move when lives are in danger. At my current school, I know the nearest way out of the building, no matter where I am. What concerns me it the security around schools has gotten lax, and this could happen in another school. The security is okay, but not what I would call outstanding.
Thank you for that. I still don't understand why the police did what they did. It boggles the mind.
What bothers me, is that ten years later, we still don't have enough procedures in place to protect students and staff from disturbed students. There are kids that arrive in our building who send out all the warning signs, but they still have the "right" to be in the classroom with everyone else until we can get parent approval to get them tested for emotional disturbance. Funny, but these are the same kids who move every nine weeks and never get help. And they're among us.
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