Police response

After reading so much about Columbine and the SWAT team's failure to enter the building until three hours after the first shot, resulting in more deaths, it's really impressive (and a whole lot sad too; that school shootings are such a common thing that police train for this and know what to do, unlike in 1999 with Columbine) that police entered within 5 minutes, in time to hear Cho's suicide shot especially considering the doors were chained shut

I think it's because the police school shooting procedures have been set in place after Columbine. Officers responding to shooting incidents are now trained to interviene early; the "Imminent threats" procedure.

Do we have a list of police response times to shootings which happened before Columbine?

Can't recall what it was at Thurston and I appreciate they were different circumstances (the kids there had already captured Kip).

Draw_It_White wrote:

Do we have a list of police response times to shootings which happened before Columbine?

Can't recall what it was at Thurston and I appreciate they were different circumstances (the kids there had already captured Kip).

The response time to Columbine wasn't really that long, they start shooting kids on the grassy fields/near the cafeteria and before they managed to make their way inside, Neil Garderner was engaging them (at least) (the kill count at that point was 2 dead, 10 injured, so not as much damage as Kinkel) - I always thought the police responded quickly to the Thurston High School shooting.

Cho started his second attack at 9:40am , at 9:42am the first call to the police came and cho's suicide took place at 9:51 am shortly after the cops made their way into the University which means he had 11 minutes time to execute everyone.

Seung Hui Cho also left Bomb Threat notes on the chained doors so they must of had to confirm first that it was safe before busting in, its a large well known campus it probably had a police force stationed there or nearby. and also The police arrived fairly fast for columbine but didn't go in due to the policies of an active shooter situation back then, they had to contain the threat not rush to engage it.

Agree the police response time was phenomenal. I wonder how long the police used on dealing with the doors chained shut

Well considering Cho killed Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark at 7:15 before going to Norris Hall at 9 am and he killed the other 30 victims in 12 minutes, I don't think the police did too good. He managed to kill people for 12 minutes before the police got to him despite a shooting already happening (and the police were already there when Cho just got back to his dorm room and was changing his clothes) and because of how bad the crime was the police should've already been there and if they weren't (I don't know why they wouldn't though) Virginia Tech probably has campus security or a police station on campus (like what Jared Lee Loughner showed in his video "My Genocide School" which got him kicked out of Pima Community College) so I don't think the police response time was as good as a lot of people think. But maybe that's just me.

InsaneIntruder wrote:

Well considering Cho killed Emily Hilscher and Ryan Clark at 7:15 before going to Norris Hall at 9 am and he killed the other 30 victims in 12 minutes, I don't think the police did too good. He managed to kill people for 12 minutes before the police got to him despite a shooting already happening (and the police were already there when Cho just got back to his dorm room and was changing his clothes) and because of how bad the crime was the police should've already been there and if they weren't (I don't know why they wouldn't though) Virginia Tech probably has campus security or a police station on campus (like what Jared Lee Loughner showed in his video "My Genocide School" which got him kicked out of Pima Community College) so I don't think the police response time was as good as a lot of people think. But maybe that's just me.

No you are completely right I didn´t even think of the first shooting that there would police response already at the school to that one. I was just thinking of the police response from when the second attack started