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1950s Thinking

April 17th, 2007 · 1 Comment

Garance Franke-Ruta detects “1950s thinking” in the police decision not to immediately warn students about a killer on the loose at VA Tech. This seems uncharitable. Obviously, in hindsight, we all wish a warning had been issued and the campus closed. But most people who kill someone don’t then go on a shooting spree. And there are genuine costs on both sides: Making an announcement will induce public panic—which may result in distracting false leads being called in—and depending on the circumstances and how much information is released, may induce the killer to go to ground. So it’s not crazy that the police would attempt to evaluate how much of an immediate threat the killer was likely to pose to third parties. Obviously, in this instance, they got it horribly, horribly wrong. But surely the parallel conclusion would be correct in most cases of apparently “private” disputes—between former lovers of whatever gender, guys who came to blows over gambling debts, or any number of other homicidal permutations. It seems a leap to conclude that the decisive factor in the decision was a cavalier attitude toward “domestic violence” as such rather than a mistaken inference about the motivation and probable further threat posed by the killer, which might have been drawn in a variety of situations.

Addendum: To be clear, I’m not denying this was the wrong decision, even without the benefits of hindsight. Just that I’m not sure it reveals anything interesting in particular about antiquated attitudes toward domestic violence. For that we’d have to know whether police would have reacted differently if they’d come on the scene and interpreted it as some other sort of personal-vendetta killing.

Tags: Sexual Politics


       

 

1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Lester Hunt // Apr 17, 2007 at 5:00 pm

    Julian, For the first time ever (well, just about) I am inclined to disagree with you. The then-unknown gunman had killed two people in a college dorm in which he was not a resident. They authorities should not have assumed (supposing they did) that both deaths were the result of a private dispute. One of them could well have been motivated by a desire to cover up the other one. They had reason to warn people that there is a killer loose who has to be considered armed and extremely dangerous. Maybe their real reason was, as you suggest, worry about “starting a panic,” but given that we are not talking about a crowded theater or soccer stadium, but a college campus full of unarmed kids, I don’t see what harm the resulting fear could have caused. Plus, they should have been afraid.