Another Whack at NIU Pres and Police Chief Friday Statements

Saturday I repeated a bit of what NIU’s president and police chief said at their morning after the massacre press conference:

The president of Northern Illinois University is “pleased at the professionalism of the response.”

“We did everything we could.”

The campus police chief said, “…was not anything we could have done differently…”

I caught some heat for my criticism of these NIU officials praising themselves for succeeding in process (notifying students quickly, getting to the room quickly), while ignoring that they failed in their goal to prevent their students from being killed by a satanically tattooed former student, it turns out, off his Prozac.

Finally reading Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times Monday, I see columnist Neil Steinberg and I are in agreement…at least on the “crowing about how competent they are.”

”…watching a parade of officials over and over praise their own response, emphasizing how extremely proud they are of themselves and their organizations, cite what a good job everybody did—there’s something unseemly about it.

“With six dead students and more gravely injured, perhaps they should save the infomercial for another day….”

The column may be enlarged by clicking on it.


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