Commission Says Police Mishandled Columbine

The chairman of the Columbine Review Commission said Friday that authorities ignored warnings of the high school shooting attack and responded improperly after it began.

“There was a massive amount of facts that would allow any ordinary person to know an attack was coming,” William Erickson said at the final meeting of the governor-appointed Columbine Review Commission.

Erickson, a retired Colorado Supreme Court justice, previously has said a law enforcement policy in effect at the time of the attack was one reason police didn’t try to storm the school and stop the killers.

On Friday, Erickson emphasized the commission’s role was not to assign blame but to chronicle the attack and recommend ways to prevent similar tragedies.

“It is not our endeavor to condemn any action taken by any agency,” he said.

The panel, formed a few months after the April 1999 massacre, is scheduled to release its report May 17 to Gov. Bill Owens.

Students Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris opened fire and set off bombs at Columbine on April 20, 1999, killing 12 classmates and a teacher and wounding 26 before committing suicide in the school library.

Several Columbine victims’ families and survivors have sued the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and Jefferson County School District, alleging they ignored warnings and mishandled the rescue.

“I think there were certainly many times that, had somebody intervened, this could have been prevented,” said James Rouse, an attorney for Columbine victims.

A hearing on the lawsuit was underway Friday in U.S. District Court in Denver.

At Friday’s meeting, Erickson said authorities at Columbine improperly used a perimeter technique typical for such situations as a bank robbery involving hostages.

By establishing a ring of officers around the school, authorities forced Harris and Klebold inside, where they “went about unfettered as no one approached them or prevented them from carrying out their systematic shootings.”

The Sheriff’s Department has since changed its training, and deputies are now taught to respond to similar situations by going after an attacker rather than waiting for help.

Erickson did not specifically say who should have responded to the warning signs, but he mentioned Harris’ violent rantings on the Internet and pipe bombs found in a field near his house a year before the attack, as well as a violent essay written by Klebold.

He also cited recently released material that shows deputies wanted to search Harris’ home a year before the attack but never submitted an affidavit to a judge.

“We had all this information and nobody acted on it,” he said.

School Superintendent Jane Hammond said educators had no way of knowing Harris and Klebold were capable of such a crime.