BREAKING NEWS : Shooting reported at Northern Illinois University

[UtahProtectionForce]

New: Shooting reported at Northern Illinois University


By The Chronicle News Group
Comments (No comments posted.)
DeKALB — At least two people have been shot at Northern Illinois University, according to information heard Thursday afternoon on a police scanner .

Shortly after 3 p.m., calls started coming over a police scanner about a white, male shooter with a shotgun and pistol.

Reports have said the shooter is down, but an alert on the university's Web site instructed people on campus to take cover.

http://www.kcchronicle.com/articles/...1731609942.txt

"There has been a report of a possible gunman on campus. Get to a safe area and take precautions until given the all clear. Avoid the King Commons and all buildings in that vicinity," the alert states.

Rescue crews from surrounding villages and cities, including Maple Park, Burlington, Geneva, Hampshire, Sugar Grove and Kaneville, have been called to the scene.

A university spokeswoman said at 3:10 p.m. she had just heard about the shooting and could not immediately comment on the situation.

[Jeremy]

I know the perfect solution!!!! Looks like we need more responsible, trained CCW permit holding citizens on campus (Or malls / schools need to hire more ARMED Security Officers)

People don't understand that the more "gun free zones" you have (A.K.A Victim disarmament zones), the easier you make it for crazies to come on campus and have a spree with no risk of getting shot. Because by the time the police get there...and the feds get there....and the feds tell the police to stand down....and they wait around infront of the school for hours putting on body armor and hiding behind trees, You'll have 20+ people dead and a shooter roaming around murdering unarmed people with pure pleasure.

Do you think when a shooter goes to enter a mall / school and sees that big sign that says "NO GUN POLICY" "GUN FREE ZONE" "NO WEAPONS" They just turn around and say "Aw shucks" and leave? Does anyone honestly expect them to honor this policy?

I'm too lazy to dig up the sources and articles for this, but there has been cases from the 50's-80's of students who had rifles / weapons in their personal vehicles or nearby, or on their person who have shot would-be shooters at school before they killed or killed more people.

It's too early to speak, but did this campus have armed guards? When it comes to malls and schools, if they still want to restrict CCW, FINE...But at least provide armed guards. Then again....armed guards cost more money than unarmed guards.

You could have metal detectors, X-Ray baggage machines, locked doors, keycards, vehicle patrols, CCTV Cameras everywhere and 100 Unarmed Officers with radios and you still wouldn't be able to stop a gunman from shooting people who are standing in line for the metal detector, or from shooting the security guards.

[Limo LA]

I think it was another campus shooting (Girl shot girls) on TN last week too.

I agree that laws take guns from hand of good guys and outlaws don't care for laws (that's why they are called outlaws).

I watched one episode of "most shocking..." or "Amazing..." on true TV (formerly Court TV).
that was a man with knife walked in to Supermarket and start stabbing Ex-Wife. Man keep stabbing at bleeding woman down on the floor at behind counter. .
Then un-known bystander in suit went over counter and drew his sidearm then shot and terminated the guy.

TV didn't say if he was Off duty P/O or civilian CCW but either way, if he wasn't there, she was the one who lost life instead of bad guy.
( I assume he was civilian CCW because if he was off-duty P/O, this kind of show always interview to them)

I also feel that we need to educate people.
Because I also see a lot of episodes on same Show which was liquor store employee (or owner) fought with broom stick or baseball bat against armed rob.
Give them money then claim to Insurance. Don't fight with broom stick against gunman.

[Jeremy]

Looks like 17 people were injured or dead? Saw a new article on yahoo! News

Very sad and tragic, my prayers go out to the families.

Campus cops can't be everywhere at 1 time or even necessairly armed. Some campus cops wouldn't want to confront or storm a lecture hall to neutralize a gunman either.... Me? If I was an armed campus cop, I would risk my life and run right in there to "neutralize" that scumbag.

See our current culture scares people of guns. People are terrified. Tons of TV shows have aired were they associated guns with the worst things on earth.... "He was a child molester, AND he owned a gun..." "He beat his wife AND he had a rifle.".... No one is educated and some people freak out if they come over your house and see a gun up on the wall in a rack and be completetly afriad of it.

Years ago when we had a strong gun culture, we had the most feared infantry soldiers because they grew up shooting with their grandfather and fathers. They could go into battle and KNOW how to shoot accurately, seeing as though boys would train with firearms as a kid and be familiar with them. We had lower crime, and these mass shootings were unheard of. Because if you walked into townsquare shooting, you'd be dead quick. Most women carried little pistols in their purses....Shop keepers had rifles and guns under the counter...

[Tennsix]

Some campus cops wouldn't want to confront or storm a lecture hall to neutralize a gunman either....

Why would you think that? A cop is a cop. A university cop is no different than any other.

[Chucky]

More guns and cops don't solve all the world problems. Below is a paragraph that may change your thinking. The real answer is more shrinks and consulars. You could have all the cops in China at your local Unv one at every door yet for the mentally gifted student that gets a few wires in the cranium twisted if so inclined he will preform his evil.

VA tech was a place that needed more shrinks that would follow up on the kid that was acting very weird prior to his dirty work. What if one of the 11 below decided to take a million folks with him and had the knowledge and access to the 2nd largest nuke plant at a U.S. University? These type of things need a better approach than guns and cops.

"Since 1990, 11 Massachusetts Institute of Technology students have committed suicide, an "alarming" number for a university of its size, say health experts and students at the prestigious school.

In fact, many at the school feel the high suicide rate, an average of about one per year, calls into question the adequacy of MIT's mental health services, according to The Boston Globe. Of the 11 suicides, 10 were undergraduates. The school's annual undergraduate enrollment is about 4,400 students, but the total enrollment is about 9,800 students".

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m..._2/ai_79961273

[Jedi]

More guns and cops don't solve all the world problems. Below is a paragraph that may change your thinking. The real answer is more shrinks and consulars. You could have all the cops in China at your local Unv one at every door yet for the mentally gifted student that gets a few wires in the cranium twisted if so inclined he will preform his evil.

Both solutions work hand in hand. Think about this in the guise of Disaster Preparedness / Emergency Management. The four phases of which are: Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery.

I will, without a doubt, agree that mitigation is crucial. Offering additional mental health services, designing early detection protocols, and educating staff to critical behaviors will work to mitigate some of these type of violent incidents. Unfortunately, you can not stop planning with the mitigation phase because you will never be able to prevent 100% of the situations. So, you need to move on to preparedness.

This is where additional campus police/security comes into play. Knowing that we can not prevent every situation, we must turn our attention to lessoning the impact of a situation once it does occur. Having the necessary officers to address the situation immediately will, hopefully, bring the event to a close with a reduced loss. Case in point: After the Columbine High School shooting incident, MANY police departments realized that the "wait them out" way of dealing with active shooters doesn't work and only promotes the negative outcome. Based on this, departments around the country trained their patrol officers to act immediately to put down the threat. These departments went from having a limited number of resources capable of dealing with the problem (SWAT) to having a complete department of responders.

Even if the campus police expanded to have a 1:20 ratio of officers, they can't be everywhere... and that is where the armed citizen comes in. On flight 93, it wasn't a plane loaded with police officers that stood up and gave their own life to put an end to the terrorist plot, it was the average citizen, in this case unarmed due to FAA regulations. The same type of hero exists in every classroom at that university. Allowing them to have the tools necessary to overcome the threat immediately is empowering them to save lives. If one student in the science lab at Virginia Tech had the ability to drop the hammer on the gun wielding maniac who entered their classroom, many people would be alive today.

I won't touch on the response and recovery to this incident, as I don't have enough details to comment on it.

[UtahProtectionForce]

BTW i heard on the radio 5 of the victims have died

[Mr. Security]

The reality is that nothing will stop these school shootings. Tightened security simply addresses the symptoms, not the root of the problem. The real problem is one of moral and mental decay that has affected the hearts and minds of so many today. You can't "fix" the problem anymore that a cancer surgeon can cure end stage terminal cancer.

[LPAjh9558]

I agree that the problem can't be fixed just by adding more security.....
Also, the issues of morality and mental decay are somewhat complexed. These are the 2 biggest arguments that are going around.

I for one, would support allowing teachers and/or students to "legally" carry a concealed weapon on campuses. But then again that in itself presents another issue...and brings up another shooting where the teacher shot and killed 2 students then herself. How are we supposed to know who should & shouldn't be carrying? I also agree that maybe there should be more counselors or something that's available to the students & staff. But there also, how do we know who needs help when sometimes these people aren't getting any help at all.

From everything that I keep seeing and hearing, most of these people are already getting some form of help but it doesn't appear to be helping. It seems to me that there's more to this problem than just moral & mental decay...and security problems...

I do remember reading in our local newspaper where, if I'm correct, Utah is the only state that does allow the students & staff to carry on campus. I believe that it was also mentioned that currently there are several other states considering this same type of law.

[Pheonix]

Out of control

Thing is, the pressures associated with paying on average of 20k a year, and $80-90k by the time one is through with school, does not account for the pressure a college student endures. Unless you are well equipped to deal with stress strategically, there is little to keep a student from 'snapping' these days. Counselors are every bit as likely to learn of these live wires as the President of the school is.
Just like the airlines, perhaps we should consider a Marshall being in every classroom during lecture? The cost of such an endeavor may not be realistic, but it may be more attractive than allowing faculty and staff to have a firearm on campus.
Experts say that this particular problem with students doing these types of things is not going to go away. They also say that the occurances are only going to increase.
I like the idea of students needing to key in with a pass card. The problem is cost effectiveness. How long before students just opt for on-line education as a result?
Last week alone,"The shooting was the fourth at a U.S. school within a week."

On Feb. 8, a woman shot two fellow students to death before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tenn., a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, Calif., junior high school has been declared brain dead.

Excite news.

The cost alone of higher ed should alarm anyone concerned with catastropic episodes such as shootings on College Campuses. The average student is (as mentioned before) graduating with ubundant debt. Half of that debt is collecting - on average - 9-12% interest relative to Libor. Most students with private debt will pay in interest near equal to what the loan is worth. That does not even touch on the federal loans used. It's not the same where you have dense populations here and there buying into a bogus mortgage. These students, in an effort to 'survive' are going to find it near impossible to get ahead after they graduate. Within a decade, there will be milliions of college grads with unmanagable debt. That is a huge problem and just part of the issue with they loosing thier sense.

[jeff194307]

I am a college security officer, and reactionary fixes will not make this problem go away. Also, arming the unarmed will do nothing to stop this problem. An armed proffessor, student or security officer can only react to the imediate threat, not prevent the threat. What will work is for students to have a means of alerting the school of other students having problems that cause them to not act as usual. I am not a psych tech, so I will stay away from their area of expertise, but I am sure that there are ways to tell if an individual is prone to do these things. Hopefully the administrators will devise some sort of plan of action on this before we have more problems.

[Mr. Chaple]

The issue with reporting potential shooters before hand is that the people in a position to notices the signs that some one is in trouble are the people close to them. No one wants to believe that their best friends is a capable of something like this. When we see the signs we rationalize them away.

From "The Big Chill"
Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex.
Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex.
Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?

[Pheonix]

USA today: 19 Feb. 08

"There were no red flags," Grady said. Kazmierczak, he said, was an "outstanding student" when he attended the university in the spring of 2007 and was "revered by the faculty, staff and students alike."

This kid gave no indication he was going to do such a thing. His girlfriend did not even know, and they were cohabitating. Peers policing peers would be great- if it would bring the facts of suspicious behaviors to authorities.

If the average student is between 18 and 24, what skill do they have really in identifying a possible murderer? Parking management would probably be more reliable for picking out suspicious behaviors in students.

What authorities in this case might consider is the correlation between the purchase of a firearm and murder of this type is what the person owes in debt and thier age. If this kid was 27, and was near to completeing Graduate school, what do you suppose he owed in student loans and how long will it take him to pay them off? How much compounded interest will the student have to pay vs. his salary projection for the next 25 years? This should provide the window to some valuable information as to what would drive this student to accomplish what he did. Just sitting next to a student in lecture is not going to give one information like this. It is my belief that students with substantial debt need to be monitored and mentored on a consistent basis. They will sell their nose despite thier face for a shot at survival with a degree.
Let's look at the student again breifly. Again, what do you think the height of his earning potential as a Social Worker? Let's be generous and say that in 15 years, if Steve got a job with the state, he could be making 40-43k a year. I would guess that he owes a little less than 50k in student loans. How long will it take Steve to pay them back? Not less than 25 years. Take a minute to digest that and think again what his motive was.

[OccamsRazor]

So, Pheonix, let me get this straight...You propose that the current trend of campus shootings stems from the idea the college students today pay too much for their education, and thus, burdened with the thought of future debt, go on shooting sprees?

So, free tuition would result in no campus violence, and BC would be carrying a rose in his holster?