It took 80 minutes for the Princeton campus alert system to notify students of a possible gunman on campus. (h/t to SayUncle).

With HB 1893 and SB 1164 up for consideration in the Texas Legislature, and after having spoken with my Texas State Representative about this, maybe we can look deeper into these campus safety systems.

From the article:

Greil then called Public Safety at 11:24 p.m. and spoke with them for 13 minutes, according to her phone records.

Within one minute of Greil’s call, Public Safety had contacted Borough Police, Cliatt said. Minutes later, Public Safety and Borough Police officers were canvassing the area. The officers had already begun their patrol at 11:29 p.m. when Public Safety received a second call with a similar report.

So basically, call goes in and it takes about 5 minutes before formalized law enforcement shows up on scene to start working. If we look at the Virginia Tech data, every minute Cho killed at least 3 people and shot a total of 4. So in 5 minutes of response time, a little math shows us that 20 people would be shot, at least 15 killed.  Now, it took 80 minutes before the campus alert system notified the students. Go ahead, do some math.

The article continues:

At 12:40 a.m., when the threat was found to be credible, the University sent out the first warning messages via the Princeton Telephone and E-mail Notification System (PTENS). Students told the ‘Prince’ that they received the message between 12:45 and 12:48 a.m.

So it took 76 minutes for them to determine the threat was credible. Then it took an additional 5-8 minutes before students received word. Go ahead, do the math.

The article continues:

Executive Vice President Mark Burstein said he was “extremely satisfied” with the emergency response. “Both our Public Safety department and the Borough Police reacted quickly. The speed with which they responded was very reassuring,” Burstein said in an interview at around 2:30 a.m. Saturday. “Our notification systems worked well.”

Well, I guess the system functioned correctly, but even then 5-8 minutes is a very long time. Again, do the math.

The article continues:

Cliatt also praised the University’s response, adding that she did not believe the 80-minute gap between the first report and the notification of the campus community was unnecessarily long.

“The things that took place in that time period obviously took 80 minutes,” she said, noting that all “action steps” taken during this period were necessary. “Canvassing the area, getting access to prox information to see if various dorms had been accessed, convening the task force, putting together the alert message, all those things take time,” she explained.

All those things take time. Killing at least 3 people and shooting a total of 4 every minute… that takes time too.

The article continues:

Cliatt also emphasized that the University considers the fear and anxiety caused by emergency alerts when deciding whether a threat is sufficiently credible to merit issuing an alert. “The safety of our community is our top priority, and that includes both the physical and the emotional safety of our campus,” she said.

Ah, the emotional scarring of our children. Because fear and anxiety of the sheeple is more concerning and emotionally scarring than seeing your friend die in your arms, or a parent dealing with the loss of their child.

 

Thankfully in this situation it was just someone exercising poor judgement and I hope they are dealt with accordingly. But it still demonstrates failure of these systems to truly keep people safe.