THE RECENT RELEASE of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office report on the Columbine High School murders provides a great deal of horrifying detail about the tragedy — but carefully finesses the police inaction that gave the killers a free hand inside the school building.
The report (which is available at the Denver Post website and can be purchased on CD/ROM) appears to have been created with litigation in mind. A major preview was given to Salon.com last September, along with public statements that the report would be released in November. Then in December, the Rocky Mountain News got its own preview, enough for a week’s worth of stories. The public was told that the report would be out in January.
But the report was finally released only after the one-year tort statute of limitations had passed, on April 20, 2000. On that day, all of the claims made by families wishing to sue the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office were known.
“My reaction to this version of events is that they must have hired a fiction writer,” opined Peter Grenier, the lawyer for Angela Sanders, daughter of science teacher Dave Sanders who bled to death while waiting for hours to be rescued. Sanders had been shot while he was holding a door open for students to run to safety. Locked in a second-story room with two Eagle Scouts and other students, Sanders likely would have survived if he had received medical attention before three o’clock (when the sheriff’s report says a paramedic finally reached him) or four o’clock (the time the attorney for Sanders’s family says help arrived). The sheriff’s report fails to mention the fact that the students in the room with Sanders were in constant communication with 911 operators and told the operators about his deteriorating condition.
According to the report, nothing law enforcement could have done differently would have saved any lives. This claim is dubious, even based on the report’s version of the facts.
The two killers began their shooting outside the school entrance and were quickly confronted by the sheriff’s deputy assigned to the school. A gun battle ensued, with neither side scoring any hits, as they were shooting from 60 yards apart. The killers then entered the building and began shooting students in the hallway; then they went into the library, where they started to execute 10 students and wound 12 more.
By 11:30 A.M., when the library killings were just beginning, five more deputies were on the scene. Why didn’t any of the deputies pursue the killers into the building? The report doesn’t say. At the press conference releasing the report, the Jefferson County spokesperson said that the decision not to enter was beyond the scope of the report.
The main door to the library is about 15 steps away from where the killers entered the building. Inside the library was teacher Patti Nielson with 55 students. She called 911 at 11:25 and begged, “We need police here.” The 911 operator responded, “Okay, we’re getting them there.” The operator ordered Nielson to keep the students in the library.
The report admits that the police did not enter the library until four hours later, at 3:22 P.M. What if the 911 operator had told Nielson the real situation: “Some police are already at the school, and lots more are coming. But the police won’t enter the library — even if the killers are known to be there — for several more hours.”
Had Nielson known that the police were not coming, she could have led the students out of the library’s emergency exit. Then, every one of the 10 students who died in the library would have lived. The killers did not enter the library until 11:29 — four minutes after the 911 operator told Nielson to keep the students in place because the police were coming.
According to the report’s timeline, the library killings ended within 8 minutes of the murderers’ entering the room. The killers then roamed the building, tried to ignite bombs but failed, and returned to the library before noon. They shot out the window at some police on the ground who were tending to wounded students. The police returned gunfire, and the killers retreated from the window.
While the Rocky Mountain News has for much of the last year been extremely uncurious about possible mistakes made by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, the report appears to have changed attitudes, at least on the editorial side. As the Rocky pointed out in its lead editorial, the 911 connection from the library made it clear that the killers were there and that killing was taking place. When the killers temporarily left the library, the students who were able to flee did so and told the police what had happened. When the gunfire from the library resumed around noon, it was again apparent that the killers were in the library.
Yet the library turned out to be the last place in the entire building that police would enter — over three hours after the killers had committed suicide. Still, the report contends, “The number of law enforcement officers on scene within minutes of the reported shootings plus the entry of SWAT inside the school minutes before their suicides denied the gunmen additional time to plan further actions or take other lives or hostages.”
In fact, the first SWAT team entered the building at 12:06, on the east side, as far from the library as possible. The first SWAT team to go in the west side of the building did not enter until after 1:00.
Why didn’t any deputy or SWAT officer ever go through the west entrance, just a few feet from the library door? The report claims that a “live” bomb at the doorway prevented anyone from going in. But the report elsewhere acknowledges that many students fled the school through that very door.
Why was the last place the killers were spotted also the last place to be secured? The report does not specifically say. But the real reason may appear elsewhere in the report: The police commanders were worried that “some type of terrorist unit” could be taking hostages or preparing an ambush.
An extremely reasonable concern, given the chaos of the situation. Yet as Randy Brown, father of a Columbine student asks, “Why don’t people get mad? Don’t they get it? They let children die.”
The events of April 20, 1999, suggest that government employees — even police officers who are paid to take risks and teachers responsible for the welfare of children — will not automatically risk their lives when put to the ultimate test. Patti Nielson rejected the 911 operator’s instruction to get out from under a table and lock the library door while the two killers were outside in the hallway. She explained — and who doesn’t sympathize? — “I’ve got three kids.”
A willingness to risk all in the line of duty demands the heroism of a Dave Sanders. But such self-sacrifice is more apt to be forthcoming from those whose training prepares them for it. Fortunately, some law enforcement agencies are learning lessons from Columbine, even though Jefferson County pretends that nothing could have been done better. Writing in the Daily Oklahoman, Ken McNair, chief of the Putnam City Campus Police Department, acknowledges that “Columbine was a very hard lesson for the law enforcement strategy of limiting responding officers to perimeter control.” Because perimeter control brought disastrous results at Columbine, new tactics are being tried in Oklahoma. Writes McNair, “The gist of the Oklahoma approach by the responding officer is to engage and neutralize any threats until supported or relieved.” In other words, keep trying to kill the perpetrators; if they get away, follow them.
These changes in Oklahoma deserve at least as much attention as the spin control coming from Colorado. Nobody is safer if we allow ourselves to believe — as Janet Reno claimed in a statement quoted at the beginning of the sheriff’s report — that the Columbine events have “shown the nation and the world America’s finest in crisis.”
David B. Kopel is research director at the Independence Institute, a Colorado think tank.
