No alert of shooting extremely disturbing
A man was shot roughly 500 feet from campus close to midnight on Friday and neither Reno Police Department or University Police Department thought to tell anyone on campus about it.
It was at a non-student house, and no students were injured, thus no one needed to know about it, they thought, even though questioning and pursuit of the shooters led police across the street from the residence halls.
What student or parent wouldn’t want to know about this?
This extreme and inexcusable lack of judgment baffles us. Our anger is almost uncontainable.
This campus is still very much in the grips of last year’s violence, from the Halloween party shooting that resulted in a student death to Brianna Denison’s murder. Pepper spray bottles still dangle from key chains and “Guarded by the Pack” bracelets still adorn many students’ wrists.
We do not kid ourselves about living in the safest part of Reno, but we still need to know when violence happens so close to home.
Events like these, while tragic, also serve as wake-up calls. It reminds us to be vigilant. They serve an important function in making sure we watch ourselves.
But police did not plan to tell students about the incident. UNRPD’s response did not even appear on the blotter this week.
UNRPD Cmdr. Todd Renwick said the decision not to send out an e-mail warning came because students were not directly targeted in the attack and they didn’t think students would be targeted in the future.
But violence will strike regardless of enrollment status. Our worry, as is likely the worry of students and parents everywhere, is that a student would simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And this violence happened in a place heavily populated by students. The articles’ first comment on The Nevada Sagebrush Web site was from a student who lived close to the party house. The Nevada Sagebrush learned of the shooting because a student reporter drove past the party Friday night.
Any advance warning we can get to help us avoid those “wrong place, wrong time” scenarios are among the most basic functions of a professional police department.
It is an incredible disservice for us not to know about this shooting. We have had enough tragic lessons in just the past two years for another violent crime to almost go unreported.
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on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 1:18 am and is filed under Perspectives.
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