I thought they did it for hitler's birthday.. and the cops not going in changed response procedure across the country.
I remember watching and thinking "why aren't they going in?"
Yes, well, unfortunately not at Parkland last year. School officer knew there was shooting going on inside and he waited outside, far away from the building, till other police came. Hard choice, yes, but if you're taking on that job, you need to be prepared to do what's necessary, I guess.
TBH I don't remember all the details about Columbine any more, and don't want to look them up.
The post script to that post is several years back, the mother of one of the shooters decided maybe she wanted to finally speak about it. A major magazine was preparing to interview her, and someone there remembered my comments years back (they also knew me as a semi-regular on that show). They wanted to be really responsible and not seek a sensationalist article if possible. I was asked to have a phone call with the mother to see if she felt comfortable talking to me as they wanted to do a series of three-way interviews: the mother, the journalist, and me. I did, and was not sure she was ready to deal with the media onslaught that absolutely would follow the publication of the interview. After a couple of responsible discussions among the mother, the journalist, the editor, and me, we mutually agreed to call the whole thing off.
The thing is, it was heartrending but fascinating to hear her talk about the past, and those events, even as preliminarily as she did in those calls. It would have made fascinating reading, I'm sure... and it was clearly and totally not the right thing to do for anyone concerned. As high and good as her motives clearly were, she would have been savaged in the media for sure, and we all agreed she'd gone through enough hell when the shootings first happened.
I felt relieved and glad not to have gone forward with that. End of story.
