It’s probably difficult for folks outside the Denver area to know how obsessed some folks here still are over the April 1999 Columbine shootings.
Most of the official reports, re-reports, re-examination of reports, and pontification over the reports are over. Now all that’s left are the law suits. Of course.
I, for one, am willing to give the various law enforcement groups that reported to the scene something of a break. I remember the chaos, just in the news reports. There was a shooter. No, two. No, three. No, four. Bombs were set to go off. Bombs did go off. Bullets were flying. People were screaming. Police were trying to help people get away, while at the same time trying to make sure that the folks getting away weren’t the shooters.
So while I have a lot of sympathy for the families who lost loved ones in the crime, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for “Well, somebody has to pay!” sorts of law suits.
For example, we have Dave Sanders, a teacher who helped kids escape, who was then shot and who bled to death inside the school. A true hero.
His daughter is suing Jefferson Co. and the sheriff’s department because they didn’t run in and rescue him — in fact, they kept the perimeter secure for hours before they went in and found him, now dead.
The Jeffco Sheriffs Dept. has shot itself in the foot, so to speak, during this process by being as secretive and truth-avoiding as a bunch of Catholic bishops. Rather than say, “Hey, it was a hellish day, we weren’t ready for something like this, we did our best, honest mistakes made under stress and with lack of information were made, we’re sorry,” they’ve let all of those mistakes get dragged out, one by painful one. Idiots.
Despite that, like I say, I’m willing to cut the guys on the scene a lot of slack. Nobody knew how many shooters there were. Nobody knew they were dead. Nobody knew what sorts of explosive devices were on timers, or where set up as booby traps.
That’s why it bugs me when the Jeffco lawyers turn around and ask for the suit to be dismissed on the incredibly stupid grounds that the unprecedented nature of the Columbine attacks meant the sheriffs didn’t know they could be sued if they didn’t immediately send someone in to rescue folks.
“The individual defendants could not have anticipated, based on the case law as it existed at the time, that their failure to rescue Sanders (who was only one of hundreds of persons to be rescued) from an unprecedented attack would subject them to suit.”
Who thought up that defense? What are they saying — that if they had known they’d be sued, they would have done it? That in the future they’ll understand such issues of civil liability and act differently? Such heroes!
The bottom line is, the question of liability and law suits should never have entered the minds of the sheriffs on the scene. Their decisions should not have been made with any consideration of such things.
That’s the defense they should be making.