Columbine: What Else Did They Get Wrong?
Maybe, instead of just racing to get the story out, the media should have waited until law enforcement released all the facts (in their due time) before racing to dramatic conclusions that were wrong.
They weren’t goths or loners.
That story about a student being shot in the head after she said she believed in God? Never happened, the FBI says now.
A decade after Harris and Klebold made Columbine a synonym for rage, new information — including several books that analyze the tragedy through diaries, e-mails, appointment books, videotape, police affidavits and interviews with witnesses, friends and survivors — indicate that much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong.
So we can’t trust the law and/or the media. That being the case, I wonder how much (more) of Michael Moore’s movie is wrong?
h/t Nick B
April 14th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
So they were psychopaths. Pretty much what some have been saying for years.
April 14th, 2009 at 10:04 pm
Harris a psychopath, eh? Michael Moore can really relate.
April 15th, 2009 at 1:18 am
If you want to find out what really happened at Columbine I suggest you read what the eyewitnesses had to say:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/columbineeight.php
April 15th, 2009 at 6:26 am
Research has determined that from the Moment of Commitment (the point when a student pulls their weapon) to the Moment of Completion (when the last round is fired) is only 5 seconds. If it is the intent of a school district to react to this violence, they will do so over the wounded and/or slain bodies of students, teachers and administrators.
Educational institutions clearly want safe and secure schools. Administrators are perennially queried by parents about the safety of their schools. The commonplace answers, intended to reassure anxious parents, focus on the school resource officers and emergency procedures. While useful, these less than adequate efforts do not begin to provide a definitive answer to preventing school violence, nor do they make a school safe and secure.
Traditionally school districts have relied upon the mental health community or local police to keep schools safe, yet one of the key shortcomings has been the lack of a system that involves teachers, administrators, parents and students in the identification and communication process. Recently, colleges, universities and community colleges are forming Behavioral Intervention Teams with representatives from all these constituencies. Higher Education has changed their safety/security policies, procedures, or surveillance systems, yet K-12 have yet to incorporate Behavioral Intervention Teams. K-12 schools continue spending excessive amounts of money to put in place many of the physical security options. Sadly, they are reactionary only and do little to prevent aggression because they are designed exclusively to react to existing conflict, threat and violence. These schools reflect a national blindspot, which prefers hardening targets through enhanced security versus preventing violence with efforts directed at aggressors. Security gets all the focus and money, but this only makes us feel safe, rather than to actually make us safer.
Some law enforcement agencies use profiling as a means to identify an aggressor. According to the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Education’s report on Targeted Violence in Schools, there is a significant difference between “profiling” and identifying and measuring emerging aggression; “The use of profiles is not effective either for identifying students who may pose a risk for targeted violence at school or – once a student has been identified – for assessing the risk that a particular student may pose for school-based targeted violence.” It continues; “An inquiry should focus instead on a student’s behaviors and communications to determine if the student appears to be planning or preparing for an attack.” We can and must assess objective, culturally neutral, identifiable criteria of emerging aggression.
For a comprehensive look at the problem and its solution, http://www.aggressionmanagement.com/White_Paper_K-12/
April 15th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
“So we can’t trust the law and/or the media. That being the case, I wonder how much (more) of Michael Moore’s movie is wrong?”
and I’d love to hear Moore’s REACTION to that, as well as the reaction from my high school civics teacher who suggested I WATCH Michael Moore’s “bowling” filth…
I still remember Columbine as well, pretty good, I suppose the way I remember 9/11. It was pretty damn vivid for me, I’d never seen something like that before. crazy..crazy..CRAZY stuff, unimaginable in my mind.
April 15th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
One thing I learned in my rather short stint as law enforcement:
The eyewitness is the worst witness.
July 19th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
[...] Columbine: What Else Did They Get Wrong? [...]