Armed man on UR campus
From NBC12: Richmond, Henrico and University of Richmond Police have responded to a report of an armed person on the U-of-R campus. A university spokesman says that students and faculty are being told to stay where they are and to lock their doors. Police are looking for a white male with sandy blond hair. The […]
From NBC12:
Richmond, Henrico and University of Richmond Police have responded to a report of an armed person on the U-of-R campus. A university spokesman says that students and faculty are being told to stay where they are and to lock their doors. Police are looking for a white male with sandy blond hair. The suspect is said to have been wearing a brown or black jacket with “Sheriff” written across the back and was carrying a firearm.
Faculty/Staff are being escorted to their cars by police. Luckily I think this week students are not on campus?
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Ross Catrow
Founder and publisher of RVANews.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
Uh….Brown jacket with SHERIFF across the back? That is what the Sheriff and Deputies wear. Could this just be a case of a local Deputy visiting the campus in his work clothes? They do have a bunch of local law enforcement taking classes over there in their Emergency Management program.
This sounds like an over-reaction, typical of the keystone cops over at U of Richmond. A similar screw-up happened recently at Radford, where a fellow with a concealed carry permit was on his way to his car and someone spotted the pistol under his jacket. The man was legally and peacefully carrying a firearm for his personal defense, in accordance with his Second Amendment rights.
People carry firearms safely and legally all of the time. We have created so much hysteria since the Tech shootings, just the sight of someone with a pistol sends lefties into paroxysms of fear.
The fact is, that had some other students at Tech had access to weapons while on campus, that crazy Korean kid would have had to think twice about shooting his fellow students. This policy of banning weapons from campuses only creates a target rich environment for every lunatic that comes along.
Up at the Appalachian School of Law, long before the Tech case, a crazy African tried to shoot the place up, but several students ran to their cars and got their guns. The students subdued the crazy African guy, without killing him or innocent by-standers. This story was reported in the main stream leftist media, but they suppressed the part about the fact that the armed students thwarted the crazy African’s scheme to kill as many faculty and students as he had ammunition for.
An armed society is a polite society.
I just wrote like ten different versions of the same rant but then erased them, but I would like to point out a couple facts just so that we are clear:
1. Classes aren’t in session right now, so no public safety students (which is who you’re talking about) should be on campus.
2. The guy was spotted ditching a disguise (involving a beard) under a bush.
3. The students who aren’t going to be able to graduate were just told they weren’t going to be able to graduate and a few of them were VERY surprised and angry.
4. The actual police were called, who you’d think would check around to see if anybody was missing a sheriff.
5. An armed society of 18-22 year old drunk college students is a polite society is THE stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m sorry to be so disrespectful, I guess you’re entitled to your Appalachian rule opinions, but you know like two facts courtesy of nbc12.com and you’re jumping to a whole lot of conclusions.
More info from UR:
At approximately 2:30-2:45 p.m. today a suspicious person wearing a holster containing some type of handgun was seen on the University of Richmond campus in Boatwright Library. University of Richmond, Henrico County and City of Richmond police responded and searched the campus for the suspect.
Police do not know if the gun was real or not. The suspect did not threaten anyone on campus with the gun. The suspect is described as a white male, 5’11”, in his mid-twenties with short blond hair and a slender build.
When he was first spotted on campus, the suspect was wearing a fake beard, a brown jacket with “Sheriff” written across the back, and carrying a green bag. Library employees asked the suspect to leave the building and they immediately notified the UR police. The suspect was later seen removing the fake beard and brown jacket. The suspect was last seen wearing a navy blue tee-shirt.
it’s better to have it and not need it then to need it and not have it…
Let’s review:
1) No one was hurt by any gunmen.
2) No one’s rights were violated by any policemen.
So, what are we all excited about again?
Over-reacting!!! I heard about this yesterday from my daughter – a freshman at U. Richmond – who, luckily is off campus with many of her friends. Dear Ms. Appalachia, when you have children of your own, perhaps you will sing a different tune, Politeness and being armed are not synomymous and, given the world we currently inhabit, I am all for erring on the side of caution – as, I am sure are the parents of the VA Tech victims and all the other innocent victims in our recent, tragic history of higer ED genocide!!
This would have been a big, angry mess had UR, like all schools, not implemented an alert system for everyone on campus. Maybe it was a test to see if it worked? An odd, fake-bearded test.
One-armed man on U of R campus? Where’s Richard Kimble?
Maureen- “…higher ED genocide!!” Get a grip, girlfriend.
I have college-aged children and I will not have them attend schools like UR that subject the students to 24/7 surveillance, deny them basic Constitutional rights, and just make wild presumptions based on their big-brother style surveillance system, all under the auspices of creating a risk free environment.
I will not have my daughters watched by the paid voyeurs at UR nor will they be subjected to chicken-little style hysteria fomented by their looney squad of Barney Fifes.
Some of you have missed the point from the Appalachian School of Law case; that surveillance and hysteria did not save their students, but fellow students with access to their own weapons saved both faculty and student lives. Tech could have turned out as just such a minor event, had administrators there not exacerbated Cho’s mental state in the first place by ostracizing him, and if the Tech administrators had not created a target-rich environment by banning weapons from campus, so that law-abiding citizens were left defenseless against a crazy Korean guy with a gun.
VCU has an alarm warning siren that they have been testing.
Maybe U of R needs one.
I suspect U of will not dare test a siren near Windsor Farms the same way that VCU blasts its siren around the Fan and Oregon Hill.
Pingback: J’s Notes » VCU To Test Emergency Siren System Today
Does anyone know if UR activated thier alarm system yesterday? I live within the UR sound zone and did not hear it.
Wow! Here’s my vote for most well-written string of comments yet.
Will there be a category for that?
Also, mush.
My other half often references a town someplace west of here wherein every head of household is required by local ordinance to have a firearm at home. Signs are posted along the roads leading into this town that say as such. Supposedly the crime stats there tanked. He’s a police officer, hence his interest in the example. I tried to find something online. Found this: http://www.logipundit.com/2007/04/gun-town-usa-vs-gun-free-zone.html
They didn’t do the alarm thing (which I never hear over in my building when they test it) – I think that’s to indicate severe weather or something anyway, but they activated their new alert system, which calls you, emails you, AND sends you a text message. That was put into practice post-VT, and who knows, maybe it worked. Everyone was vigilant and locked their doors, etc.
I don’t want to have a gun. Am I allowed to say that? I feel like saying that “if we only were allowed to have guns on campus” implies that any of us WANT to have guns on campus! And not just on campus, we’d have to carry them around all the time. Right? I mean the Appalachia story with the “crazy African” involves students going to their cars to get their guns. Wouldn’t, according to the description of your utopia where everyone is armed and blissfully happy and safe, the VT students have had to carry their guns with them to class? Or would just the very idea that all of those kids (and faculty) had guns on campus strike enough fear into that guy’s heart that he would decide not to take his automatic weapon into those classrooms and kill all those people? And why would it? He was bent on killing himself too. Psychotic is psychotic no matter what, and your eagerness to blame an entire political side of the spectrum for the murderous intent of some mentally ill assholes is downright terrifying.
And let’s think of this situation, which somebody in my office constructed after I told them about your suggestion for how to make our campus more Constitutional and less voyeuristic (I’m not sure why one would think UR is any more or less concerned with safety than anyone else — not allowing guns on campus isn’t exactly some sort of revolutionary hippie movement). If Crazy Student A, blinded by rage, walks into the dorm room of Student B brandishing a gun, and Student B in turn pulls out HIS gun, what happens when Student C walks into the room, sees two guys holding guns at each other? Who does he shoot with HIS gun?
I’m trying hard to understand where you’re coming from, and in an example like BP’s, it makes more sense to me. But the reasoning behind arming an entire campus to deter crime assumes that people like Seung-Hui Cho are logical and concerned with consequences.
Either way, I do resent the idea that the UR police and the community police were overreacting by alerting us, locking our doors, and walking us to our cars. On the contrary, it makes me feel valued as a staff member. And I have a hard time believing that if someone had been shot, you would still be saying “Ugh, they SO overreacted.” Because that just hurts my feelings.
Beadro caught, fyi peeps.
more details are up at nearwestendnews.net
Susan, beautiful response and well written.
Is it fair to summarize this comments thread by saying that some of us just don’t want to shoot the sherrif?
Susan, you have a reading comprehension problem.
Cho didn’t use an automatic weapon. He used a semi-automatic pistol that fired one round at a time. The REASON he was able to kill so many was because Tech had forbidden law-abiding citizens from bringing arms to campus.
In typical leftist fashion you restate the case in the absurd instead of making a rational analysis of facts. NOBODY advocated that an entire campus be armed, nor have they said anyone would be required to be armed. Just the availability of weapons for citizens would provide plenty of deterrent to the sane, and for the insane, having weapons nearby that can be accessed in an emergency would end the threat promptly and save lives.
As for UR, they should be ashamed for their irrational response to a teenager with a BB gun. Their self-induced hysteria could have gotten Seth killed, or any number of your treasured fellow staff who just happened to look like the description given to the herd of responders from the three police organizations.
To make this problem more clear, consider if the “suspicious person” had been a woman, and that she just happened to dress in a similar way to you on that day. Because of URs overreaction to the kid with a BB gun, one of the responding officers could have shot you, as you emerged from one of the buildings, as you reached for your cell phone or car keys. The after-action report would have read, “The officer thought she was reaching for a weapon, so he shot her through the chest.”
Back to reality: There was a teenager with a BB gun who came and went without incident. The UR response was an unprofessional circus that put people at risk and induced additional hysteria at nearby schools.
It doesn’t help that at UR anyone who isn’t wearing a Polo shirt is considered suspicious by their police.
Clairese, this was not just “a teenager with a BB gun who came and went without incident.” From the Richmond Times Dispatch: http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.apx.-content-articles-RTD-2008-05-08-0201.html
“According to the warrant to search the home of Seth A. Newman, a UR library employee said the suspect was wearing a sheriff’s jacket ‘stated to her that he was a police officer, and that he had heard that people had been fornicating in the library and that he needed to spend the night.’ The worker ‘asked for identification, he did not produce any, and then left the building.’ […] Staffers notified police because they were concerned about his appearance and because he seemed to have a weapon.”
It disgusts me that you’re calling this response irrational. If someone with what looks like a gun tries to force their way past me into my workplace by impersonating a cop, and I DON’T call the police, I deserve to be fired. I don’t care if I work at the University of Richmond library or the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.
I’m pretty sure (although I might have a reading comprehension problem) that I was just mocked for treasuring (read “considering the safety of”) my 1000+ colleagues. That’s a wrap, everybody!
Yeah, I’d say it’s over since Clarisse had to resort to the “UR hates everyone not wearing polo shirts” argument.
I went to UR for 4 years, rarely wore a polo shirt, and was never pursued by the police.
Guns, real or not, tend to make people nervous…
Did Clarisse just use the point that police officers mistakenly shoot people they THINK are armed, in the process of arguing that more people should ACTUALLY be armed? Does that make sense?
Seems to me if most people on a campus are carrying firearms, then the police have an even bigger reason to be nervous when responding to any calls.
Well, as long as you can pretend that the UR cops weren’t watching you on video cameras all day long, you can pretend their motives are pure, and that they are competent, too.
I keep having to return you back to reality. In your fantasy version, Seth was Osama Jr. “forcing his way into your workplace” with evil intentions toward all. What really happened by all accounts is that a kid playing dress-up walked in and out of the library without incident, followed by mass hysteria by the chicken-little fans in the UR Administration. Had Seth been wearing funny nose and glasses in addition to that party-gag beard, I suppose UR would have called in the National Guard.
Yeah, those BB guns are dangerous, especially those “realistic looking” ones. However, although their pellet can sting like Hell, in this time of mass hysteria, the danger was to Seth, who would have likely been gunned down by responding police officers who were frothing at the mouth at the prospect that they would get to kill a real live terrorist.
There is no rational basis for anyone to flip-out merely at seeing someone with a gun. Someone with a gun in a weird outfit warrants guarded concern, but certainly not panic. When the response is based on hysteria, as was the case at UR, the possibility that responding police will shoot someone other than the suspect, who just looks like, or dresses like the person of interest, becomes a significant risk.
Once the UR Administration stops hyperventilating over this, perhaps someone will hold additional training that will promote a more measured response in the future.
I am glad nobody got shot and I look forward to hearing what was going through Seth’s mind. At least he was not killed by the police, so we have the opportunity to find out what the devil he was thinking.
As for Polo shirts: For those not familiar with UR, this is a well known fashion stereotype and a point of humor for many who have attended classes there. A few years ago, there was a heated debate in the The Collegian, and among the Greeks, as to whether it was still cool to wear the collar turned up, or if that was passe’. At least back in those days the Administration was a bit more laid back, or just better medicated than they are now.
1. He wasn’t a kid. He was 19, i.e. an adult and capable of understanding right and wrong.
2. Claiming to be a police officer is not “playing dress-up.”
I don’t understand why I (who was there) keep telling you (who wasn’t there) that there were no hysterics, but you keep saying mass hysteria. To what hysterics do you refer? Someone felt uncomfortable, called the cops, the cops told the administration to let us know to keep on alert, we worked as normal the rest of the afternoon, and they walked us to our cars just in case, and eventually apprehended the guy. Nobody went crazy and shot anyone. Hardly anyone on campus even mentioned the whole thing. More hysterics happened in our office when we thought a kid wasn’t going to graduate on time. I mean, if you mean the media picking it up and saying things like “terrifying incident”, I can wholeheartedly agree with you. I think you might mean that, to some extent, right?
In fact, most of what we’ve heard from the administration is, “This was a great way to test our new electronic alert system in case there had been a really pressing emergency” and that kind of thing. The story you’re reading about has been filtered through local news people who want a story.
No one sits and watches that video camera in the library all day. That’s in case someone runs out and steals something and they need to look at it later. Or in case they come in impersonating a cop and scaring a staff member into alerting the (Richmond and/or Henrico) police, who caution the staff.
To me, mass hysteria is running to your car, getting your gun, and taking matters into your own hands before you even know what’s going on. I think Seth’s life was as much in danger as any suspicious person being investigated by police, who we trust to be able to handle these things. I just can’t make myself see how reporting a suspicious person to the police and then sitting back and letting them investigate it translates as a hysterical manhunt. Anyway, I’m no good at debating, I take everything so personally. I keep thinking “this person really doesn’t care if all of us over here live or die” when that can’t possibly be the case — I think maybe we’re arguing two different topics.
One thing I definitely won’t argue with you about is that article in the Collegian about popped collars. That happened!
Rational: ruled by facts.
Hysteria: ruled by emotions and escalating illogical conclusions based on the emotions of others.
1. The initial report to police was that an armed man with a “duffle bag” was in the library. The image that the initial report provided was that there was imminent danger to the people from this so-called, armed gunman.
In reality, there was a teenager who had come and gone without incident, threatened nobody and had committed no crime, unless they are going to stick him with impersonating a deputy. Wearing a crappy fake beard isn’t concealing identity, unless you also refuse to identify yourself and carrying a BB gun is not a violation. He didn’t even have a “duffle bag” but carried a bike messenger bag, that could not conceal the heavy armament that one might carry in a one of those huge duffle bags.
While you are congratulating yourselves on having had a fun opportunity to test your panic button system, there is a teenager who has likely had his life irreparably harmed, all for a goofy stunt that in all likelihood was intended to harm nobody. Watch the movie, V is for Vendetta and you will get an idea of why a teenager might go around in a disguise. By the way, UR should brace for another wave of fake beards and disguises coming up around October 31, 2008.
An overreaction such as occurred at UR, with three police agencies responding, placed others at risk of being shot by mistake. These mistaken police homicides can happen whenever police are called and officers have been primed with descriptions that paint the person of interest as an imminent threat, as you did at UR. Consequently, responders arrived with the preconception that they would face and armed man and that deadly force would be necessary. Of course some in the police will claim that they are always cool, but the corpses of citizens who reached for a wallet of cell phone at the wrong time prove the contrary to be true.
In summary, when you see someone walking with a gun on their person, this in itself is not cause for alarm. If the person is pretending to be a cop, a more elevated sense of concern should certainly be employed, but not the red alert, lock-down employed by UR. A single officer could have dealt with this matter efficiently and effectively, but that would have required a rational assessment of the situation.
If you want to trust the police to shoot only the right people, I suggest you consult with citizens in our Black community, where police have a terrible record of shooting Blacks only to have to explain later that the person was unarmed and most often, not even the suspect being sought.
Police should be treated like rare wine; only rarely brought out and only when absolutely nothing else will suffice.
I advocate a limited, rational approach, in lieu of the hysterical response that UR employed.
This is my last post on this subject. I hope that Seth Newman will not have his life scarred by this goofy act.
FYI wearing a mask in public is against the law in Virginia.
Question: is wearing a fake beard against the law?
Question 2: should I wear a fake bear to supplement my existing beard?
yes
According to my dictionary (Webster’s Unabridged, 2nd Edition (Nabokov’s favorite)),rational is defined as “of, based on, or derived from reasoning,” and hysteria as “any outbreaak of wild, uncontrolled excitement or feeling, such as fits of laughing and crying.”
In neither is the word “facts” mentioned. Why? Because the facts, as they happen, are slippery and difficult to discern. All we have is our ability to look at a situation as objectively as possible and come to a reasonable decision. By these definitions, UR officials and local police acted rationally and avoided hysteria.
Let us not redefine words to support our arguments; that tactic smacks of moral relativism and is not very conducive to good discourse.
Also, remember when folks were wearing TWO Polo shirts of differing colors and “popping” both collars? Sheesh.
I love when they wear two popped collars. Especially two green popped collars, it looks like they have lettuce neck.
fashion is always boring…
Suspect has been unarmed.
Clairese silenced the lambs.
Linden Tower Television
Clairese – do you know your local police officers? Do they know you? In communities where the PD-community relations are strong and positive, the notion that the PD should be called as a last resort is not at all maintained. Indeed, PD’s often suggest folks call in anything suspicious, as deployment of resources (preventative, for instance) is based in part upon call data. And considering they put themselves in crazy situations to protect and serve when called upon to do so, I’d give them a bit more respect.
I will also say that some police I know believe in good deterrence measures (e.g., sessions on deterrence through environmental design are starting to pop up), because let’s face it, sometimes 3 mins can be too long.