Published: April 22, 2007 01:29 am      

PUBLIC SAFETY: Secure as we can be

The keepers of large gathering places in Niagara County are looking again at their security plans in light of the mass shooting incident last week at Virginia Technical Institute. What they’ll likely find is they’re doing the best they can to be prepared for the unthinkable — and that it’s all they can do.

There’s been some second-guessing of the way Virginia Tech administration managed public safety after 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui killed two students in a dormitory, then re-emerged several hours later to kill another 30 students in an academic hall.

The second-guessing has some local institutions eyeing the balance between safety and liberty. It seems to insist Cho could have been stopped before his re-emergence, when review of the incidents says otherwise — and it puts pressure on security providers to shoot for an impossible goal.

“When something like this happens, you realize it could be anyplace,” Artpark president George Osborne said. “And I’m not sure, in all honesty, that we could do anything to prevent it, short of turning ourselves into a 100 percent police state.”

If public venues submit to ever more cameras, detectors, pat-downs and invasive scrutiny of individuals in the hopes of preventing a random incident, “the implications of that are scary,” he said. “All we can do is have a plan to be prepared if an issue does arise.”

Between the wave of public shooting incidents over the past 10 to 15 years and security mandates handed down after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, public institutions seem attuned to regular review of their emergency plans. Artpark security reviews its plan “constantly” and makes adjustments based on crowd size and experience, Osborne said.

Niagara University also conducts regular plan review and started another round right after the Virginia Tech shootings, according to LInus Ormsby, Niagara University’s director of public relations. While that review is under way, he said, the Niagara team has to be mindful of the civil balance.

“We have an emergency preparedness plan in place to account for all kinds of scenarios ... but what happened at Virginia Tech seems beyond the realm of anyone to plan for,” he said. “It’s a wake-up call to us to constantly monitor and constantly improve our plan, but a balance has to be maintained between what’s necessary and what’s overbearing. ... You have to do what’s practical while preserving the free and open nature of the campus. You can’t run it like a prison.”

‘Two eyes, two ears’

Tech students and parents’ second-guessing is natural, but Ormsby suggested incessant media amplification of the story stokes public paranoia. Lost in the wave is the fact that these kinds of incidents are exceedingly rare.

“Twenty-four/seven media outlets are not helping the situation. There’s too much news hole, and not enough news, so they beat the story to death,” Ormsby said. “All of the outlets are working it and they’re all looking for different angles. When you’re inundated with it, you can’t frame things in a proper perspective.”

Bruce Fraser, recently retired superintendent of the roughly 4,800-student Lockport City School District, agreed. Local districts all have increased and tweaked their security measures repeatedly in response to grade-school shootings around the country, and will keep on doing so, but sometimes it seems reason is lost in the fear of what if.

“It’s easy to lose sight of the fact, the safest place, statistically, students will spend time is at school. Compare it to the time children spend at home after school, unsupervised, when their parents aren’t home from work yet. ... You’ve got to put things in perspective. That’s hard to do in emotional circumstances.”

It’s equally hard to accept the fact that even the tightest security measures don’t guarantee complete safety, he said.

“There are limits to what you can do to protect yourself from someone who’s willing to die and take people with him. That’s the problem of terrorism. Look at (the recent incident in) the Iraqi parliament building. The news reports indicate the bomber got through six checkpoints. ... There is always some pressure in the community to spend more on security, out of legitimate concerns, but we know the technology can be bypassed. And (for publicly funded institutions) there are not unlimited resources for security. You have to make realistic choices.”

Attention to “low tech” security measures might do more to prevent violence in the long run, Fraser suggested.

“You can have video, locked doors, ID badges and more technological measures, but ultimately the real safety of a building comes from the commitment of the people in the community,” he said. “It comes from the willingness of people to report (alarming) behavior — and the willingness of people in positions of authority to follow up. Two eyes and two ears are more important than anything you can invest in technology-wise.”

going too far?

Dr. Donna Levin, a professor of psychology at Hilbert College, would agree with the eyes-and-ears approach, but she also worries it can go too far.

In the aftermath of a school shooting spree, she said, high school and college students tend to be “much more attentive to other students who give off signals of rage or depression. Kids are going to be super-vigilant. Teachers are going to be super-vigilant.”

That can be good and bad, she said.

“At this point, my concern is for the kind-of quirky kid in class. He could be targeted. It’s a fine line,” she said. “In high-school and, especially, middle-school age students, (anti-social behavior) is not unusual. ... If we start singling out the one who always sits off to the side by himself, that just magnifies the isolation that he already feels. If only we were so mature to know how to reach out in kind ways.”

Emerging details of Cho’s mental state suggest his mindset worsened over a lengthy period and Levin sees a lesson in the accounting. It’s tough reaching out to an oddball, especially one who doesn’t want to be reached — but had he been shown some compassion early on, he might not have ended up so tormented, she suggested.

“This guy didn’t wake up one day and start this plan. My guess is, from early childhood, this person was gearing up to be this enraged person. He needed help 10, 15 years ago,” she said. “By the time he reached this age, he was out of anybody’s grasp.”