Police Admit Comm Issues After Campus Shooting

Ten months after a University of Texas–Austin student used an AK-47 to shoot up the campus and then killed himself, the university police department has issued a report outlining how it handled the incident, including communications among officers, students and other agencies. Colton Tooley never fired any of his 11 rounds at other people, or menaced anyone. But his actions set off a four-hour lockdown of the huge campus until his suicide could be confirmed. In the 19-page report issued today, UT police said incident command, operational strategy and tactics and police-to-student communications worked well. The two-position police comm center was immediately upstaffed with previously-trained civilians, and dispatchers fielded 14 calls to 911 and 511 calls to the 7-digit non-emergency numbers in the three hours after the first call reporting Tooley’s gunfire. They activated warning messages to the campus using text messages, closed-circuit television and warning sirens. But the report noted that incoming calls overwhelmed the phone lines, limiting out-going calls, and the center became too crowded with personnel, making it difficult to hear radio and telephone calls. There was confusion on which notification methods had already been used, and the university and Austin city police department, “did not coordinate well,” the report said. Download (pdf) the full report for more information about the incident and recommendations.