It was a dark and stormy night, so I spent my time surfing the web, looking for Columbine-related info. I came across this website-- www.mipt.org/ --and applied to access two publications they had on Columbine. I thought they were internet downloads, but they came through the mail. One of them was a 36-page copy of a manuscript entitled "The Shootings at Columbine High School: Responding to a New Kind of Terrorism" It was written by
"Susan Rosegrant for Richard Falkenrath, Assistant Professor in Public Policy, and Arnold Howitt, Executive Director, Taubman Center for State and Local Government, for use at the Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Funding was provided by the Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice.(0301)"
Most of it consists of making excuses as to LE's slow response--confusion, communication problems, etc.--but they did have a pretty good analysis of the chain of command during the incident.
INCIDENT COMMAND STRUCTURE
pg3
"....in 1997, while still a commissioner, Stone had helped organize a trip to Emmitsburg, Maryland, for county representatives and local organization leaders to attend a Federal Emergency Management agency(FEMA) disaster training course. ..... The four-day session, which FEMA designed specially to address the needs of Jefferson County, Stone says, included training and "tabletop" exercises that had improved the county's implementation of "incident command" --a clearly defined incident management structure designating, among other things, command roles, tasks to be accomplished, and a system to assign responsibility for each task."
[Comment: How very nice of FEMA. I wonder about the exact nature of these 'exercises.' I wonder if any school officials attended.]
pg1
"Over the next few hours, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and other law enforcement agencies FIRST secured the perimeter of the building so that the shooters could not escape---THEN stuggled to evacuate students, teachers, and staff...."(emphasis mine)
pg7
".....at least eight JeffCo deputies... stationed themselves around Columbine, forming an INNER PERIMETER to watch the building's 25 exterior doors. Captain Robert Armstrong, the on-call commander for the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office, and perhaps the most experienced commander on scene, stepped in and directed Denver police and the Colorado State Patrol to form a SECOND PERIMETER away from the school to further secure the area..... (emphasis mine)
pg6
Lt. Manwaring, JeffCo SWAT, was first command level representative present (at 11:36am).
pg7
"At 11:45am JeffCo Lieutenant Dave Walcher, the top-ranked JeffCo representative on scene, drove up... and assumed command upon arrival and told Terry Manwaring to get SWAT members into the school as soon as possible. A few minutes later, JeffCo Undersheriff John Dunaway arrived. Dunaway officially appointed Lieutenant Walcher as incident commander....."
[Comment: There you have it, Walcher was officially in command after 11:45am]
pg10
"Chief Pessemier and JeffCo Lieutenant Dave Walcher, meanwhile, set up a unified command--incorporating both the medical and the law enforcement response."
pg13
"By 12:40, JeffCo's moblie command bus had arrived, and instead of grouping around Sgt. Phil Hy's patrol car, the command post operation moved inside the bus. In addition to JeffCo's incident commander, Lieutenant Dave Walcher--who was often joined by Undersheriff Dunaway, and sometimes by Sheriff Stone--command level representatives included Captain Robert Armstrong from Arapahoe; Division Chief Gerry Whitman from the Denver Police; Major John Wise from the Colorado State Patrol; Commander Bob Brandt from the Littleton Police; and either Chief Pessemier or Division Chief Chuch Burdick representing Littleton Fire.
"According to Sheriff Stone, JeffCo established incident command using the same basic management model that the JeffCo representatives had studied and trained on during the four-day FEMA workshop a year-and-a-half earlier. 'My position in this thing was almost like a symphony director,' Stone says. 'You're watching every one of these things going on, but you have to make sure every instrument's playing properly.' With Walcher handling incident command, Stone says, Dunaway took charge of operations, while he, himself, was 'trying to do all the support stuff, get the investigation going, get the county involved, the media, and all these other support things that you hve to do.' "
pg13
"Everybody asked questions like, 'Who's actually in charge?' recalls one command level officer. 'Well, quite frankly, I couldn't tell you. If I had to guess from being around the command post, I would say it was a combination of Gerry Whitman, Robert Armstrong, John Dunaway, and Walcher. Those would be the key four.' "
pg13
"In addition, some responders say, Dunaway and Stone didn't give Walcher the support he needed."
pg14
"Dunaway, however, spent a lot of time outside the command post talking with school administrators, law enforcement and county officials, and others who had come to the vehicle. .... And although Dunaway was in charge of operations for the inident, neither he nor anyone else appeared to have assumed full responsibility for assigning jobs such as traffic control, logistics, communications, and officer relief--all key pieces fo incident command."
pg14
"As for Sheriff Stone, one law enforcement official recalls, 'He looked pretty much shell shocked.' "
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Anyway here are some other tidbits and oddities:
pg1
"Witnesses were providing conflicting reports about the number of armed attackers, their location in the building, and their ages.
[Comment: Remember a few witnesses thought one of the gunman was as old as his early thirties.]
pg5
"None of the students(huddling behind patrol cars) could identify Harris or Klebold as the perpetrators, nor did they know if the shooters were high-school age or older."
[Comment: There's that 'age' thing again.]
pg2
"It would be months more before some investigators accepted that the carnage unleashed that day had been the work of just those two."
[Comment: I knew Stone was dragging his feet on this, but who were the other IOs who refused to believe the official story? Interesting]
pg3
Undersheriff John Dunaway(a friend of Stone who had served with him in the Lakewood PD years before) "had most recently served as director of the JeffCo Public School District's Risk Management Department, responsible, in part, for physical security in the schools."
[Comment: I was aware of this, but its good to be reminded]
pg4
"When students and staff first heard shots at 11:19* that morning, many assumed it was part of Senior Prank Day, or that the two... were filming a video."
[*It was actually at 11:15 that the shooting started]
pg4
"Due to legal proceedings related to the shootings at Columbine, many law enforcement responders declined to be interviewed for this case study." (the essay was copywrited in 2001)
pg6
"....several of the first Denver and Littleton police officers to arrive had children in the school."
pg6
"Dispatch had reported a possible suspect on the football field, ....and the possibility of hostages being held inside."
pg7
"The student holed up in the kitchen with a cell phone(Depew) told the Denver police officer on the line(Lietz) that he could hear a gunman nearby with school keys and a walkie talkie." (later ascribed to custodians)
pg9
Littleton Fire Department Battalion Chief Ray Rahne, shift commander, arrived at 11:34, and "he soon spotted a girl sitting on the corner across the street from the school who had been shot in the ankle (probably Stephanie Munson), and took her to a private ambulance. ...."I stayed in front of the school, set up command, and said, 'I need police officers for command in front of the school,' " Rahne recalls, "and nobody came."
"They just literally took two bodies and threw them in one rescue, basically right on top of each other... "...the ambulences that had sped out from behind the school pulled up, and the paramedics jumped out screaming for help. 'They opened up the back of the ambulance and the blood was just running out of it,' Rahne says. "
pg12
"...almost from the moment the first SWAT team entered(at about 12:06pm), the actual targets were gone."
[Comment: Interesting use of words: the suspects were not 'dead', they were 'gone.' Possible references to escaped gunmen?]
pg12
"Although law enforcement and the media initially seized on the Trench Coat Mafia angle, students identified with this set were later found to be so loosely organized that they didn't constitue a real group, and Harris and Klebold weren't even members of that crowd."
[Comment: Yeah, yeah, I've heard it all before.]
pg13
"The bomb that initially exploded in the field was inside a backpack, and detonated after a road worker picked up the bag and tossed it aside. A bomb in a second backpack nearby exploded soon after, probably ignited by the fire."
[Comment: So there was definitely a second bomb in that second backpack left at the South Wadsworth location. This is the first I've heard that the second device also detonated.]
MEDIA
pg22
"By the time he got to Columbine at about 11:45, (JeffCo public information officer Steve)Davis says, there were at least two television crews and a radio station on scene."
pg16
"At 11:47, a local television station ran the first report of possible shootings at Columbine High School. By noon, area TV stations had switched to full-time coverage...."
pg18
"Because of the bomb outside the west doors, the SWAT team didn't enter there. Nor did it go through the open emergency exit door leading straight to the library, out of which a number of distraught students had escaped about an hour-and-a-half earlier, because there was a bomb visible there."
[Comment: Another bomb 'blocking' the north library exit door? This is the first I've heard of this.]
pg12
"At 12:14, although in reality Harris and Klebold were already dead, students on a cell phone in the school reported to 911 that the shooters were nearby."
pg18
"Although Harris and Klebold had been dead for more than a half hour, the command post was still receiving regular cell phone reports of gunshots and explosions from students and staff hidden thoughout the school; which further complicated the search.*
*Investigators later speculated that those hidden were actually hearing the sounds of SWAT teams breaking down doors."
pg19
"By 1:15, investigators had gone to both students'(H&K) houses."
pg21
Reports of earlier gunman sightings coming in at the same time as more up-to-date reports led responders to "think there were six or more shooters in the school."
SANDERS
pg24
"Shortly before 2:00, (JeffCo SWAT Barry)Williams had received the first reports from dispatch alluding to the critically injured Dave Sanders, one alerting him to an injured teacher in the science area, while another--later found to have identified the wrong room--said a male was doing CPR on a victim in the library, and that a blue and white shirt was hanging from the door knob to signal the victim's presence. ...From the reports he had received, it wasn't even clear whether there was just one victim, or a few in different parts of the school."
[Comment: I don't remember anybody giving Sanders or anyone else CPR. Do you?]
pg25
"According to one report, the Lakewood SWAT team which had positioned itself south of the school, volunteered to try to rescue the bleeding victim upstairs, having seen the sign in the window. But incident commander Walcher vetoed the attempt, claiming there would be too much risk of surpising teams already inside and precipitating dangerous crossfire."
pg26
"At 2:42, William's team finally reached the critically injured teacher, Dave Sanders.... (they) waited for a paramedic to arrive. .... After the two SWAT members waited for about 20 to 30 minutes, a Denver paramedic finally arrived... and... declared that he had died."
pg27
"The only untoward occurence of the second sweep(of SWAT) was when a SWAT team used frangible slugs fired from a shotgun to blow the hinges off a locked door without warning the other teams in advance, sparking a short-lived ARMED RESPONSE." (emphasis mine)
[Comment: This is interesting. A stand-off between LE teams? I wonder if this has anything to do with the shots heard from the gym aroung 3:30pm, which some reports indicate resulted in police casualties.]
pg28
"...responders came from half a dozen sheriff's offices..... 20 area police departments....etc,etc,... and the Colorado National Guard."
[Comment: I would like to see the after-action report of the National Guard.]
pg29
"...an overly tired technician lowering a pipe bomb into a special disposal trailer at abut 10:40pm bumped the device into the side, setting off an explosion that threw 15 live bombs out of the trailer."
pg30
"Although (Arapahoe Bomb Squad)Joe Dempsey says one of the timed bombs intended to trigger a propane tank did go off, either because the timer worked or because a pipe bomb tossed near it set it off, it didn't detonate with the force necessay to puncture and ignite the propane tank."
"The Truth is out there"
I scoured Rebdomine420's index of names from the 11k, looking for interviews for the above names in the command structure. However, there is no interview for JCSO Stone, Dunaway, or Walcher, LFD Pessemier, Rahne, or Burdick, ACSO Armstrong or Campbell, LPD Brandt*, CSP Major John Wise, or DPDO Gerry Whitman. So when they tried to piece together what happened on 420, they apparently didn't bother to interview the people in charge during the incident.
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*Though there is a short, undetailed synopsis of Littleton Police Commander Brandt's duties that day on page 9144,
