By Kent Cullom Santa Monica
Anne Eggebroten is fooling herself if she thinks a (Virginia Tech-)type incident couldn’t happen here (“Shooter wouldn’t have lasted,” April 19, letters). Let’s say a killer, unseen, enters 100 Wilshire and kills two people and gets away before the police arrive. Santa Monica has a great police department, but they would still do basically the same thing that was done at VT.
They would cordon off the scene, probably the whole building and maybe the whole block, and do their investigation. Since the shooter was unseen, he walks away to the post office at Fifth Street and Arizona Avenue, mails his package and continues walking to Santa Monica High School, enters the campus and does his thing. Don’t say it couldn’t happen just because Santa Monica has a great police department, because it could.
Virginia Tech is a large campus with lots of students, just like densely populated Santa Monica, and Santa Monica doesn’t have enough police to be everywhere. When a major crime is committed in Santa Monica and a large number of police officers respond, that means that there is a sizable area that now has reduced police protection.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 20, 2007. Read the original PDF.