Reply #26: Difference in how cops view their job

[one-eyed fat man]

...the Dawson College shooter was thwarted because there happened to be a couple of cops in the building...

They went after the shooter, they did not wait for the SWAT team. Contrast that to Columbine. Contrast that to Virginia Tech. Listen to the tapes, look at the video

There is cell phone footage where you can hear Cho shooting in the background. You see the campus police "securing the perimeter" shooing students away while waiting for the city's SWAT team to show up.

The shooting is slow, methodical, punctuated by pauses where he reloaded. Cho had almost a half hour to wander the building expending 174 rounds before "real police" entered the building. He reloaded 17 times using "ban legal" 10 round magazines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkrDYR-pd7I

This is roughly the last three minutes of the rampage recorded by a student with his cell phone. Note the stalwart campus cops milling about with no apparent sense of direction or urgency waiting for the "real" police while occasionally yelling at students to "Get away." Remember, this is after Cho came back on campus after mailing his manifesto to NBC news. Dressed in "de rigueur" black trenchcoat and backpack, like he came from central casting, Cho walks past the campus constabulary unnoticed.

Listen to the shots. There are a couple spots where wind noise overpowers the audio, but close to the end you hear a blast where SWAT finally breaches the barricaded door. They rush in and almost immediately, in the face of an armed response, Cho kills himself.