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Fish In A Barrel
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Time to fight crime with armed protection.
Concealed weapons by the faculty and students will be deter than the current "helpless fish in a barrel" policy!!!!!!
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Dave O
AOL
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It would be interesting to do a poll of all universities, colleges, community colleges, and trade/vocational schools in the area to see how many of them allow students who are certified law enforcement officers to carry their weapons on campus. I would think that this might deter some of these type of incidents.6521
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Dave O
AOL
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It would be interesting to conduct a poll of all the colleges, votechs, and community colleges in the area to determine if they allow students who are law enforcement officers to carry their weapons on campus. I would think that if they do it would act as a deterrent to some of these incidents.
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Hmm
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It would be interesting to know which drug this young man had been taking...
Why would police withhold this info? Fear of being manhandled by the drug companies???
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Lola
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Dave O wrote: It would be interesting to conduct a poll of all the colleges, votechs, and community colleges in the area to determine if they allow students who are law enforcement officers to carry their weapons on campus. I would think that if they do it would act as a deterrent to some of these incidents. I doubt there woukld be enough officers taking classes ( and carrying a weapon) to be in place in every classroom and door in every college campus. Sadly,I would suspect someone with mental health issues won't be concerned about someone with a weapon who could shoot back.As I recall, the shooters in all campus killings have indeed shot themselves. An armed person who happens to be where the violence is happening might be able to intercede which would cut down the number of victims.Can you imagine the carnage if several armed people started shooting at the same time while "helping". I don't think there is an easy solution to dealing with mental illness.
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Sean
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Lola said: "Can you imagine the carnage if several armed people started shooting at the same time while "helping"."
Yes, I can imagine. There might be alot less dead students and more dead crazed gunmen. I suppose cowering under a desk waiting for your bullett is better than letting adults take responsibility for thier own safety.
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Mo Lubee
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I agree that students and teachers who have valid permits should be allowed, with stipulations, to carry guns on campus.
They should be required to be concealed.
A class on the unique dangers and responsibility of carrying a weapon on campus should also be requuired.
A review and approval of each application should be conducted by a Faculty/Police Review Committee. with an eye to the stability and past conduct of the applicant.
Otherwise all the hyperbole about "alert systems" is just that, hyperbole. These incidents erupt and are over in minutes, far too quickly for any response team to reach the incident site before deaths have occurred. By the time they are reported, kids are dead.
The only two defenses would be to fence everything and metal detect all who enter, creating a prison camp atmosphere, or too allow properly licensed people to carry guns on campus.
You don't see these nuts bursting into police stations, because they know the cops will make them dead quick.
They atttack universities because universities have unprotected targets that represent the success of the society they hate. Successful parents send successful kids to college. Failures hate success.
Let the targets protect themselves, the perpetrators will never know who may be armed, and this nonsense will stop. We can let students protect themselves, or we can wring our hands whenever one of these nuts decides to shoot some fish in the barrel.
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University Police Officer
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I would just love to speak out to the public about this topic. Too bad I am barred from doing so in an open forum with my name and face attached.
First, University Police Departments have been on the back burner and the red-headed step child of Law Enforcement and the legislature for so long, it is nearly impossible to catch up now. During these tight times with budget cuts, the money needed just to bring staff and training to minimum levels is not available. It would take at least 2-3 million per University to provide the staff, training, and equipment needed to be on par with their city and county counterparts.
When it comes time to divide up the budget money at the beginning of the year, University Police are ranked just ahead of the custodians and right after the grounds crews.
Most formal recommendations from organizations such as the International Chief's of Police, etc. include 1 sworn police officer for every 500 persons (i.e. students, faculty, staff, and guests). With a school such as UCF, that would mean there would be a need for 100+ police officers. UCF currently has about 60-65 depending on the turnover during the period looked at. UF has 93 sworn officers for the same number of students and staff. UCF has a larger main campus enrollment than UF as well. Each school has about 12,000 residents living in their jurisdictions and in University controlled housing.
Why does UF have 93 officers and UCF much less? It appears for 3 reasons. 1) UF is the states' Flagship school. 2) They suffered from great tragedy with the Danny Rollings murders about 15 years ago. 3) They have a large stadium and concert venue locations. Well, I have news for everyone, UCF may not be THE flagship school, but they are now a flagship school none the less. UCF now has a large stadium and HUGE concert venue that is used nearly 250 times a year for various events. Do we need to wait for tragedy to happen at UCF before the support comes?
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University Police Officer
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Part 2
UCF is centered in an area that is more metropolitan and has more crime than Gainesville. Anyone been down and around Alafaya Trail or University Blvd. lately or listened to the news? Traffic problems, drugs, and violent crime are are the norm in the area.
An example of UCF not having enough officers would be when an event is held at the new 10,000 seat Arena that requires between 20-25 officers to work. This would be 1/3-1/2 of the UCF Police Department sworn staff. They are often not filled and require mandated assignment by unwilling staff. Do we want unwilling staff working in an important role? Imagine OPD having an event that required 450 officers or OCSO that would require 900 deputies (half their respective departments). This would put tremendous pressure of thier departments and staff.
UCF PD does not receive ANY budget WHATSOEVER for overtime and training costs. They have to beg and borrow from other areas and cut corners. There is one lump sum of money that covers basic salaries and BASIC equipment. There is no step pay plan to provide incentive to stay and most officers leave UCF for OPD, OCSO, etc. A 5 year UCF Officer makes just pennies more than an officer starting out. If you pay for quality, you will receive quality. A competative step plan with OCSO and OPD would keep officers at UCF and gasp...god forbid if they actually started attracting already trained officers and deputies FROM those agencies.
Unfortunately, Universities are often left with "security guard minded" and "parking nazi minded" Police Officers rather than individuals who are committed and devoted to preventing crime, violent crime, and building solid relationships with the community. It is a never-ending vicious cycle.
I hope everyone who reads this post will call the UCF Board of Trustees, President Hitt, and your local legislative representatives to voice your support. Many of us want to be the best trained and provide the best level of service to you and your community. It is up to you to help us accomplish this task.
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University Police Officer
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This was supposed to go before the other post. Sorry.
Part 1
I would just love to speak out to the public about this topic. Too bad I am barred from doing so in an open forum with my name and face attached.
First, University Police Departments have been on the back burner and the red-headed step child of Law Enforcement and the legislature for so long, it is nearly impossible to catch up now. During these tight times with budget cuts, the money needed just to bring staff and training to minimum levels is not available. It would take at least 2-3 million per University to provide the staff, training, and equipment needed to be on par with their city and county counterparts.
When it comes time to divide up the budget money at the beginning of the year, University Police are ranked just ahead of the custodians and right after the grounds crews.
Most formal recommendations from organizations such as the International Chief's of Police, etc. include 1 sworn police officer for every 500 persons (i.e. students, faculty, staff, and guests). With a school such as UCF, that would mean there would be a need for 100+ police officers. UCF currently has about 60-65 depending on the turnover during the period looked at. UF has 93 sworn officers for the same number of students and staff. UCF has a larger main campus enrollment than UF as well. Each school has about 12,000 residents living in their jurisdictions and in University controlled housing.
Why does UF have 93 officers and UCF much less? It appears for 3 reasons. 1) UF is the states' Flagship school. 2) They suffered from great tragedy with the Danny Rollings murders about 15 years ago. 3) They have a large stadium and concert venue locations. Well, I have news for everyone, UCF may not be THE flagship school, but they are now a flagship school none the less. UCF now has a large stadium and HUGE concert venue that is used nearly 250 times a year for various events. Do we need to wait for tragedy to happen at UCF before the support comes?
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Univ Police Officer
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Part 2
UCF is centered in an area that is more metropolitan and has more crime than Gainesville. Anyone been down and around Alafaya Trail or University Blvd. lately or listened to the news? Traffic problems, drugs, and violent crime are are the norm in the area.
An example of UCF not having enough officers would be when an event is held at the new 10,000 seat Arena that requires between 20-25 officers to work. This would be 1/3-1/2 of the UCF Police Department sworn staff. They are often not filled and require mandated assignment by unwilling staff. Do we want unwilling staff working in an important role? Imagine OPD having an event that required 450 officers or OCSO that would require 900 deputies (half their respective departments). This would put tremendous pressure of thier departments and staff.
UCF PD does not receive ANY budget WHATSOEVER for overtime and training costs. They have to beg and borrow from other areas and cut corners. There is one lump sum of money that covers basic salaries and BASIC equipment. There is no step pay plan to provide incentive to stay and most officers leave UCF for OPD, OCSO, etc. A 5 year UCF Officer makes just pennies more than an officer starting out. If you pay for quality, you will receive quality. A competative step plan with OCSO and OPD would keep officers at UCF and gasp...god forbid if they actually started attracting already trained officers and deputies FROM those agencies.
Unfortunately, Universities are often left with "security guard minded" and "parking nazi minded" Police Officers rather than individuals who are committed and devoted to preventing crime, violent crime, and building solid relationships with the community. It is a never-ending vicious cycle.
I hope everyone who reads this post will call the UCF Board of Trustees, President Hitt, and your local legislative representatives to voice your support. Many of us want to be the best trained and provide the best level of service to you and your community. It is up to you to help us accomplish this task.
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Madness
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The public doesn't want to hear this, but the solution they seek is not possible with active shooters. They don't want it to happen at all and for any lives to be lost.
If a person wants to kill, they will. It doesn't matter if the person sitting right next to them has a concealed firearm to use.
Action is faster than reaction.
I do not think some of you want an 18-22 year old with a gun. Many of them are very immature and are often drunk, under the influence of drugs, in emotionally youthful relationships, etc. Not the best people to have guns.
I can only imagine what the discussion would be if concealed weapons were allowed to be carried and one of the people who began carrying for protection from an active shooter, became the active shooter in a fit of rage. How would the gun supporters react then?
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Steve
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After the Virg. Tech shootings, I suggested this to several politicians, and nothing has been done. I suggest in every state that a higher-tiered concealed weapon permitting be put in place. To obtain this higher rated concealed weapon permit, which would allow the licensee to carry anywhere, the bar would be set higher. It should require psychological testing, yearly combat training, etc. in addition to everything involved in the regular concealed weapon permitting. When these people go crazy, they aren't that crazy, they don't go to police stations or Army bases and open fire, no they go where they know there is no one to shoot back. Putting an armed guard in every classroom wouldn't be the answer, they'd just shoot him first. When is our society going to wake up and become pragmatic and do what is necessary?
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Mo Lubee
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University Police Officer wrote: I would just love to speak out to the public about this topic. Too bad I am barred from doing so in an open forum with my name and face attached.
First, University Police Departments have been on the back burner and the red-headed step child of Law Enforcement and the legislature for so long, it is nearly impossible to catch up now. During these tight times with budget cuts, the money needed just to bring staff and training to minimum levels is not available. It would take at least 2-3 million per University to provide the staff, training, and equipment needed to be on par with their city and county counterparts.
When it comes time to divide up the budget money at the beginning of the year, University Police are ranked just ahead of the custodians and right after the grounds crews.
Most formal recommendations from organizations such as the International Chief's of Police, etc. include 1 sworn police officer for every 500 persons (i.e. students, faculty, staff, and guests). With a school such as UCF, that would mean there would be a need for 100+ police officers. UCF currently has about 60-65 depending on the turnover during the period looked at. UF has 93 sworn officers for the same number of students and staff. UCF has a larger main campus enrollment than UF as well. Each school has about 12,000 residents living in their jurisdictions and in University controlled housing.
Why does UF have 93 officers and UCF much less? It appears for 3 reasons. 1) UF is the states' Flagship school. 2) They suffered from great tragedy with the Danny Rollings murders about 15 years ago. 3) They have a large stadium and concert venue locations. Well, I have news for everyone, UCF may not be THE flagship school, but they are now a flagship school none the less. UCF now has a large stadium and HUGE concert venue that is used nearly 250 times a year for various events. Do we need to wait for tragedy to happen at UCF before the support comes? I can't disagree with you on wanting Campus Police beefed up. Simply a higher profile on-campus presence would act as somewhat of a deterrent. I do not agree however that it would have any real effect on what went on this week at Northern Illinois University. An adequately manned, trained and eqipped Campus Police is an absolute neccesity, and so is allowing permit holding students and faculty members to carry firearms. Police generally have the mentality and perspective that nobody but them should have guns, I hope recent occurrences will get us beyond that narrow-minded outlook. In this day and age, cops can't always be where they need to be... and nuts do have guns.
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GAKnight
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There appears to be only one "sane" comment of the lot. SEE LOLA from Illinois. We are one messed up country when we think the solution to everything is retaliation, reaction, armed violence. How's that working for us so far?
The question here is, "how did a resident of Illinois get a permit to own a handgun, and thereby purchase four, when he had spent over a year in a mental institution"? The law was well-intended but the system was broken.
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Mike
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I salute the hard work of police officers—one of my cousins is a cop and two others are EMTs and I know they are in harm's way every day they go to work. However, as a college student, I am wondering what university police can even do really short of having a fence and metal detectors at every campus? Even then, when you're talking about a crazed killer like the one at NIU or Virginia Tech, what's to say he won't just shoot the poor cop at the gate too before proceeding onwards? In both cases the young gunmen apparently intended to die so why would they care if they had to shoot one or two more people? And their weapons in these cases were more than ample to outgun surprised officers who had no warning of what was coming.
I am unsure how I feel, even though I am a gunowner myself, of the concept of carrying weapons on campus. For every situation an armed student or faculty member might prevent, there is an incident which might in fact be caused by having more guns around. I have seen some pretty heated arguments break out on college campuses, including UF's: what if someone pulls a gun in the heat of anger?
The first thing I want to see is more funding to both police and to mental health professionals to try to see why school shootings have become nearly an endemic situation. It took the FBI about five years for their mental health experts to come out with a report about the Columbine shootings and in the time leading up to that a lot of misinformation was floating around in the media. Maybe we need to start at the middle-school level and see what is happening with contemporary young men that is leading to some of them becoming such dangers to society?
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Diogenes
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Judged:
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1
Sean wrote: Lola said: "Can you imagine the carnage if several armed people started shooting at the same time while "helping"."
Yes, I can imagine. There might be alot less dead students and more dead crazed gunmen. I suppose cowering under a desk waiting for your bullett is better than letting adults take responsibility for thier own safety. You're right up to a point but I can't agree with you totally. I can see a program similar to air marshals that are on planes. There could be a program that students sign up for, men and women alike, where they would volunteer to undergo mental evaluations and training to carry conceled weapons. They would be trained how to handle specific instances such as this and how to shoot when there are other people in the area. If we had enough of these students that there was at least one in each class the chances of an insane person like this getting more that a couple students would be slim. True, the ideal situation is no guns for anyone. But that won't happen. Other than frisking every person who comes on to a campus, you might have to fight fire with fire.
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Thug
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Sean wrote: Lola said: "Can you imagine the carnage if several armed people started shooting at the same time while "helping"."
Yes, I can imagine. There might be alot less dead students and more dead crazed gunmen. I suppose cowering under a desk waiting for your bullett is better than letting adults take responsibility for thier own safety. The only problem with that logic is how do the police know who's the bad guy, and whom to shoot.
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Mike
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Diogenes wrote: <quoted text>
You're right up to a point but I can't agree with you totally.
I can see a program similar to air marshals that are on planes. There could be a program that students sign up for, men and women alike, where they would volunteer to undergo mental evaluations and training to carry conceled weapons. I can't agree with this: I think it would fail for two reasons: First, the training these volunteers would require would be about the same as a sworn officer and the legal liability and other issues germane to such a program would be such a hornets' nest it would never get off the ground. It would be far better to hire more campus cops than run some volunteer program. Secondly, in a situation akin to the one at NIU, you would have to gamble one of your volunteers would be happen to be in that classroom where the gunman opened fire. Also, you have to gamble that your volunteer would be a good enough shot to take out the gunman and no matter how much training your volunteers have, that can be a tricky matter in any crowded interior environment. Personally, I have about as much training with small arms as anyone outside of a SWAT team or special forces unit could and still I would never welcome the day I have to intercept a crazed gunman in a crowded lecture hall. It's about the worst situation you can imagine because getting a clear shot without the chance of hitting an innocent bystander is really tough in something like that: it's not like playing a video game, folks. Let me add one more thing to that: your volunteers might carry their weapons to class every day but especially here in Florida they wouldn't have body armor. They would be in more danger, lacking armor and radio ability to work with police as a police force would in an interceptor capacity : simply, it's a plan that would not work. To me the bottom line is that if we want a safer society we hire more police, especially on campuses, and we pay them what they are worth. Isn't someone who protects your safety and is highly-trained to do so worth at least around $60,000 a year? We pay information technology specialists about that because we feel that computer systems are so valued we can't cut corners in taking care of them ... aren't our own lives worth as much?
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NOT SURPRISED
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We are going to continue hearing this story time after time until we finally make it harder to purchase guns in this country. Until we do that, we can't be sure of anyone's safety anywhere. If we are really concerned about the safety of our children we need to contact our lawmakers and make them change the laws about stricter gun control. Until then, we should all be purchasing bullet proof vests.
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Judge it!
