VIRGINIA TECH AND THE NRA

I am publishing the following chapter from David Robb’s upcoming book Virginia Tech and the NRA: Putting Guns into the Hands of Children, with the author’s permission. Mr. Robb is a noted journalist and is the author of Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies, and The Gumshoe and the Shrink: The Secret History of the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon Election.

            Mr. Robb was the chief labor, legal and investigative reporter at Hollywood's trade papers -- Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter -- for 20 years. He has published articles in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and in numerous other newspapers and magazine.

 

Virginia Tech and the NRA:

Putting Guns into the Hands of Children

By David Robb

     Virginia Tech, the site of the deadliest school shooting massacre in American history, has designated itself a “gun-free zone,” but that hasn’t stopped the university from putting guns into the hands of thousands of Virginia school children.

     Last year alone, Virginia Tech, in partnership with the National Rifle Association and the state of Virginia’s 4-H program, taught more than 1,000 kids, ages 9-19, how to shoot guns. According to data provided by 4-H, this included 764 children who were trained to shoot .22 caliber rifles; 350 who were taught how to shoot 9mm pistols, and 215 who were shown how to fire shotguns.

    4-H is a federal program of youth development that’s administered by the nation’s 109 land-grant universities under the auspices of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Next year, the National 4-H organization, formed by an act of Congress in 1914, will celebrate its 100^th anniversary.

     In Virginia, all 4-H programs – including all 4-H shooting sports activities – are administered by Virginia Tech. Today, there are six 4-H educational centers in Virginia and more some 1,000 4-H clubs – including 38 shooting clubs – serving nearly 200,000 youths. 

     Since the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, the college has helped more than 7,000 children learn how to shoot guns.

          In 2010 – three years after the Virginia Tech massacre – Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, flanked by NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, Virginia Tech official John C. Rocovich Jr., and Hokie Bird, the Virginia Tech mascot, took part in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new $1.3 million indoor shooting sports complex at the W.E. Skelton 4-H Center at Smith Mountain Lake. Rocovich, who serves on the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors, told the audience of 500, which included Virginia Tech president Charles Steger, that the NRA was one of the largest donors to the regional shooting complex.       

          

    The W.E. Skelton 4-H Center, is named after a former regent of Virginia Tech, and its shooting sports complex is named in honor of Rocovich, a member of Virginia Tech’s governing body, the 14-member Board of Visitors.

     Rocovich, who served as Rector (chairman) of the Board of Visitors from 2002-04, is a longtime member of the NRA and is a member of the NRA’s “Ring of Freedom,” the gun lobby’s premier donor recognition society.

     Speaking at the dedication ceremony, LaPierre said that more people in the U.S. participate in shooting sports than fish, golf or swim. The 4-H center, he said, is a perfect site for the shooting complex, which he said will help teach life skills to young people

    Since its opening three years ago, thousands of school children have been given guns to shoot there.

     Mike Pohle, whose son Mike Jr. was one of the 32 people killed during the Virginia Tech massacre, is shocked that Virginia Tech is arming children, and was appalled at the sight of a high-ranking Virginia Tech official and Hokie Bird standing next to Wayne LaPierre at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a Virginia Tech-sponsored shooting range.

    “Words are impossible for me to think of that could ever explain the feeling of disgust and hurt that a picture like this creates when I see the that a leader of the same school where my son was brutally murdered acts in such a hypocritical manner and strongly supports an organization that simply wants to encourage young children to become future gun owners,” he said. “I fully expect this behavior from LaPierre and even McDonnell, but for this to be financially supported by Virginia Tech is a travesty. Their actions are simply horrible. How could they?” 

     Virginia Tech provides liability insurance for any 4-H campers who might be accidentally – or intentionally – shot at the shooting range, and in the event of a shooting, the camp’s policy handbook requires that all shooting instructors “will have a two-way radio and first aid kit and will be certified in first aid/CPR.”  The handbook also requires that all accidental shootings and “near-misses” be reported to the Virginia Tech Office of Risk Management.

      Cathy Sutphin, associate director of 4-H in Virginia, said that two or three years ago, a 4-H camper was accidentally shot in the chest at a 4-H shooting sports event in the state. The child was hospitalized, but survived.

     Safety guidelines at a 4-H shooting camp in Tennessee try to prepare their staff and volunteers for the death of a camper on the shooting range.

     “Could it happen? YES!” the Tennessee guidelines state.

     “What would you say when parents come to camp to find out what happened to their dead son or daughter?” the guidelines grimly ask the staff and volunteers. “How would you face them?”

     “Nothing,” the guidelines state, “would ruin a camp and future camps any quicker than serious injury or death at a 4-H camp.”

     Officials at the Airfield 4-H Educational Center in Wakefield, Virginia – which is also overseen by Virginia Tech – have found a legal solution to those troublesome questions.

      At a “4-H/NRA Youth Shooting Camp” held there in 2009, campers and their parents were required to sign a liability release form that read: “We understand that the camp is conducted by volunteers who have the best interest of our child at heart and we hold them blameless for any unforeseen mishaps. Likewise, we hold blameless the Airfield 4-H Education Center, and the National Rifle Association.”

     The NRA, the Fairfax-based gun lobby for more than 5 million gun owners, has played a vital role in funding 4-H shooting sports in Virginia and in all the other 46 states that have 4-H shooting sports programs. Only Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island don’t have gun-shooting activities, and as a result, don’t have to ask the NRA and the firearms industry for money and support.

      On its official website, the NRA even lists the W.E. Skelton 4-H Educational Center as an “NRA Club.” And according to the NRA, the objectives of all NRA Youth Clubs “must be consistent with those of the NRA.”

     The NRA co-sponsors the annual “Virginia 4-H/NRA Shooting Education Camp at Holiday Lake 4-H Center,” and through the NRA Foundation and the Virginia Friends of the NRA, funds dozens of 4-H clubs and educational centers throughout the state.

     On its website, the Freeland 4-H Shooting Club notes that “the NRA is Freeland’s largest financial backer.”

     In 2009 alone, records of the Virginia Friends of the NRA show that it gave $3,700 to the Smith Mountain Lake 4-H Camp; $6,489 to the Holiday Lake 4-H Summer Shooting Camp; $4,923 to the Southeast 4-H Camp; $2,000 to the Virginia 4-H Shooting Education Council; $2,341 to the Virginia 4-H Shotgun Team; $3,285 to the Fauquier Junior 4-H Gun Club; $1,810 to the Virginia 4-H Small-bore Rifle Team, $1,000 to the Goochland 4-H Shooting Education Club, and $20,000 more to eight other 4-H shooting clubs around the state.

     In May of 2006, Virginia Friends of the NRA was honored by the Virginia Cooperative Extension – the agency that connects Virginia’s two land-grant universities, Virginia Tech and the Virginia State University, to the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture – for “its ongoing support of the Virginia Cooperative Extension.”

     NRA, Virginia 4-H, and Virginia Cooperative Extension websites are replete with reports of NRA funding, support and co-sponsorship of Virginia 4-H shooting programs. 

     

     In 2011, Jennifer Bowen, a Virginia Tech employee and Extension Agent for 4-H Youth Development, wrote in a quarterly report that “the Prince Edward 4-H Shooting Education Club received a grant from the NRA for $1,174 to expand from air rifles to .22 rifles.” Earlier this year she wrote: “The Prince Edward 4-H Shooting Education Club received a grant from the NRA Foundation for $1,761.08 to support the shotgun program.”

     In its 2012 annual report, the NRA Foundation, disclosed that it had helped fund the shooting sports programs that year at more than 370 4-H Clubs around the country, including 20 in Virginia.

     The NRA and 4-H share a history dating back to the mid-1970s, when 4-H first started its national shooting program.

     The alliance began in Texas, when Tom Davison, an NRA member and a past Assistant Director of Extension at 4-H, developed a youth shooting program there.

     Hearing about the program, Bill Stevens, an executive at the Federal Cartridge Company – a manufacturer of shotgun shells and bullets – called Wayne Sheets, director of the NRA’s Education and Training Division, and asked him to come to Texas to have a look. Impressed with what he saw, Sheets agreed to help expand Davison’s program. A team of NRA volunteers was organized to take the shooting program state-wide.

     In 1979, using the Texas program as a model, the NRA hosted an organizational meeting to expand the 4-H shooting program nationwide. In attendance were 4-H representatives from Texas, Minnesota, New York, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland. A top USDA official – Kemp Swiney, the USDA’s Program Leader for 4-H and Youth – was also on hand.

     Representing the NRA were Wayne Sheets; Jim Norine, director of the NRA’s Hunter Services, and Joe Nava, an NRA-Certified shooting instructor who’d had the name of his street in Fairbanks, Alaska, officially changed to NRA Lane.

     One of the many organizational recommendations coming out of this initial meeting was “that the program should have a hard-hitting, saleable title – 4-H Shooting Sports” – so that the program could garner the “private sector support” needed to fund it.

     Much of that private funding would end up coming from the NRA, from gun manufacturers, and from the firearms industry’s trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which is based in Newtown, Connecticut, just a few miles from the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. Like the NRA, the NSSF is stridently opposed to gun control efforts.

     Today, the 4-H shooting sports program is one of the largest youth shooting sports programs in the United States.

    Minutes of annual National 4-H Shootings Sports Committee meetings show that in the early days of the program, NRA officials were frequently in attendance at committee meetings, and that NRA officials even sat as members of the committee, including Sandra Froman, the NRA’s 2^nd vice president and future president, and Matt Szramoski, the NRA’s manager of Youth Development.

     Some years later, a non-profit organization was formed to help fund 4-H shooting sports clubs around the country. It was called the National 4-H Shooting Sports Foundation – the same as the gun manufacturing lobby, only with ‘4-H’ added.

     And like its namesake, the board of directors of the 4-H Shooting Sports Foundation was dominated by representatives from the firearms industry, including Sandy Froman, vice president and future president of the NRA; Doug Painter, president of the NSSF; Eric Johanson, vice president of the NRA Foundation; and David Kulivan, the NRA’s program coordinator for Youth Programs, who in 2002 wrote a column that appeared in the second issue of the National 4-H Shooting Sports Newsletter touting the NRA’s support of 4-H shooting programs.

     “The NRA has been the largest single financial contributor to 4-H Shooting Sports,” he wrote, “and we anticipate more productive years of cooperative efforts between our organizations. At both the national and local level, the NRA and 4-H are a winning combination. Through the NRA Foundation, we have provided over $2 million in support of 4-H educational programs and continue to contribute more money to local 4-H groups than any other organization. For the year 2001 alone, 4-H was awarded more than $600,000 in grants through the NRA Foundation.”

     Also serving on the National 4-H Shooting Sports Foundation’s board were G. Patrick McDonald, Beretta USA’s vice president of sales and marketing; Bill Stevens of the Federal Cartridge Company; Margaret Hornady-David, vice president of Hornady Manufacturing, makers of “accurate, deadly and dependable” ammunition, and Rob Coburn, president and CEO of Savage Sports, a firearms manufacturing company.

      In 2005, Coburn, who was the chairman of the Foundation’s board, attended the NRA board of directors meeting in Houston to present them with a “special recognition award” for their support of 4-H shooting programs.

     “The NRA and 4-H have teamed for over 25 years to give youngsters the opportunity to grow in the shooting sports," he said. “Today, more than 300,000 youths and 40,000-plus instructors participate in 4-H shooting sports across the U.S. This amazing success could not have been achieved without the help of the National Rifle Association and The NRA Foundation.”

     Commenting on the award, NRA President Sandra Froman, who was also the immediate past President of the 4-H Shooting Sports Foundation, said, “I’m pleased that the NRA, its Board of Directors and staff have been involved with 4-H shooting sports from the very beginning. They have a lot to be proud of, and NRA is honoured by their recognition."

     The National 4-H Shooting Sports Foundation was dissolved in 2007 by Cathann Kress, 4-H director of Youth Development and 4-H, and the USDA’s liaison to the National 4-H Shootings Sports Foundation.

     Margaret Hornady, the National 4-H Shooting Sports Foundation’s first president, said that it was dissolved, not because it was dominated by representatives of the firearms industry, but after its executive director, John “Johnny K” Kvasnicka, had gotten into a heated dispute with Kress.

     “They quarreled,” she said. “Kress dissolved us among a bunch of sturm and drang (storm and stress). There were some misunderstandings. We were using the 4-H logo without what she considered adequate permission. We were also using National 4-H’s 501c3. That might have been part of the issue.”

     Kress declined comment, as did Lisa Lauxman, her replacement at the USDA.

     After the foundation was dissolved, the National 4-H Council was named to be “the primary facilitator of resource development for 4-H at the national level, including soliciting, maintaining and disbursing funds in support of 4-H programs.”

      Unlike its predecessor, the National 4-H Council is not dominated by representatives of the firearms industry, although it still seeks their support.

     In its 2008 annual report, the Council noted that the NRA and the NSSF – the trade association for America’s gun-makers and distributors – had each donated “up to $24,999”  to 4-H shooting sports that year. The NSSF was listed in the Council’s “Honor Roll” in 2009, 2010, and 2012 for having donated $50,000-$99,999 in each of those years.

     Finding money to fund its shooting sports activities is a top priority for the 4-H shooting program in Virginia. To do that, Virginia Tech is constantly reaching out to the NRA and to the firearms industry for support, and alerting its 4-H clubs of approaching application deadlines for NRA grants.

     Virginia Tech also has faculty and staff who are familiar with cajoling money from the NRA. One such faculty member is Jason Fisher, who has served on the faculty of Virginia Tech since 2002. In that capacity, he serves as an Extension Agent and Unit Coordinator of 4-H Youth Development in Halifax County, a position he has held since 2003. From 2002-03, he was Extension Agent and Acting Unit Coordinator of 4-H Youth Development in Halifax County, and from 1996-2002, he was Associate Extension for 4-H Youth Development in Halifax County.

     During this time, he also served on the state grant allocations committee of the Virginia Friends of the National Rifle Association (2000-2005), and from 1999-2001, served as the chair of the southern region of the Virginia Friends of the NRA.

    By law, 4-H is a non-political federal program of youth development, but many of its leaders share similar views on guns and gun control as NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre.

     After mass killings at Virginia Tech, Columbine and Sandy Hook, LaPierre repeatedly argued that easy access to guns was not the cause of school shootings.

     The National 4-H Shooting Sports Committee agrees.

     In a position statement titled “Kids ‘n’ Guns,” the 4-H committee concluded that “easy access to firearms” is not one of the reasons for “the violent behavior we’ve seen in Columbine and other shooting accidents.”

     “Access is not the issue,” the committee argued. “The safest location for a responsible gun owner to store a firearm is the secure environment of his or her home.”

     In fact, the vast majority of all guns used by children under the age of 16 in accidental or intentional shootings are obtained from the home of a parent, friend or relative.

     The committee also concluded that “America has a peaceful gun culture” – a claim belied by the fact that more than 31,000 Americans were killed and another 73,000 injured by guns in 2010; that firearms were used in more than 11,000 homicides in the U.S. that year; and that on average, 33 Americans are killed every day by firearms, which are the third-leading cause of injury-related deaths, after poisoning and motor vehicle accidents.

     Like LaPierre, the National 4-H Shooting Sports Committee also believes that “hunting is an ideal and common family practice,” and that “a well-placed shot by a skilled marksman is a more humane cause of death than natural causes experienced by wildlife” – a claim that is disputed by many wildlife and conservation groups.

     LaPierre’s claim that the United Nations is “a club of global thugs” bent on “a campaign to establish a permanent system to disarm and subjugate citizens,” is also echoed in the views expressed recently by Sam Lionberger Jr., vice president of facilities at the Skelton 4-H Center, in an August 28, 2013, letter he wrote to the Franklin News-Post.

    After the U.S. Senate failed to ratify the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, Lionberger wrote: “The bill had been pushed hard by the Obama Administration and would have effectively placed a global ban on the import and export of small firearms. It also contained language that would have implemented an international gun registry on all privately owned guns and ammunition.

    The NRA led the effort to defeat this treaty; however, our two Virginia Senators, (Mark) Warner and (Tom) Kaine, voted in favor of the bill – and against our 4th Amendment rights granted in our Constitution. Something to remember the next time they are up for re-election.”

     In 2011, LaPierre wrote that “over the past three years, the Obama administration and its anti-gun allies have been engaged in a silent but sophisticated long-term conspiracy to... prosecute a full-scale, sustained, all-out campaign to excise the Second Amendment from our Bill of Rights.”

      If true, this would violate the President’s oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States – a treasonable offense.

      Former President George H.W. Bush, on the other hand, was so outraged by comments that LaPierre made in 1995 – about federal law enforcement agents being “jackbooted thugs...wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms – that he resigned his membership in the NRA in protest.

     But still the USDA and its boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, continued to allow 4-H to accept money and support from the NRA. And Virginia Tech and the Virginia 4-H program kept receiving it.

     “Since its beginnings in 1993, the Friends of the NRA program has given $400,000 in support of Virginia 4-H Shooting Education programs,” stated an article in the fall 2006 issue of Connections, a publication of Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

     Over the years, LaPierre has outraged many parents of the victims of mass school shootings with his incendiary opposition to common sense gun control measures like universal background checks and limits on the number of bullets in semi-automatic pistol and rifle magazines. His response is always the same: “We should put armed security in every school.”

      And when his calls for more guns at schools are met with resistance from teachers and school administrators across the country, he blames them for putting children’s lives at risk from future shooters.

    “Of all the places where good people are denied the right to protect themselves against bad people,” he said, “probably the most tragic results have come at the hands of the academic ruling class at our schools and colleges.”

     Despite this, Virginia 4-H and Virginia Tech continued to accept the NRA’s funding and support.

     Eleven days after the 1999 Columbine shootings in Colorado, LaPierre took to the stage at an NRA convention a few miles away in Denver and declared, to the outrage of many of the family members of the murder victims, that more guns was the answer to gun violence.

    “A lawful, properly-permitted citizen who chooses to carry a concealed firearm not only deserves that right, but is a deterrent to crime,” he said.

     In 2012, three days after a gunman, armed with a semi-automatic assault rifle with a 100-round magazine, a shotgun, and two semiautomatic pistols, killed 12 and wounded 70 others at a theater in Aurora, Colorado, LaPierre sent out a fundraising letter saying that President Obama’s re-election would result in the “confiscation of our firearms” and potentially lead to a “ban on semi-automatic weapons.”

     That same year, after the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School that took the lives of 20 first-graders and six adults, LaPierre blamed “a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and sows violence against its own people.” He wasn’t talking about the NRA and the gun industry – he was talking about the video game industry.

     He blamed Hollywood for “bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes.”

     And he blamed politicians who “pass laws for gun-free school zones. They issue press releases bragging about them. They post signs advertising them. And in so doing, they tell every insane killer in America that schools are their safest place to inflict maximum mayhem with minimum risk.”

     Hundreds of millions of guns and gun owners who allow their children easy access to firearms were not the problem; the answer, he said, was more guns. “I call on Congress today to act immediately,” he said, “to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school.”

     Perhaps stationing armed police at every school in the country would reduce the number of school shootings and lower the body-counts. But there is no shortage of other soft targets for deranged gunmen to choose from. There are movie theaters (gunman kills 12, wounds 70 in Aurora theater); houses of worship (gunman kills six at Sikh temple in Wisconsin; gunman kills seven, wounds four at the Living Church of God in Wisconsin); diners (gunman kills 23, wounds 27 at Luby’s Cafeteria in Texas); fast-food restaurants (gunman kills 21, wounds 19 at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, Ca.); hair and nail salons (gunman kills eight at beauty parlor in Seal Beach, Ca.); rest homes (gunman kills eight at nursing home in North Carolina); motels (gunman kills nine at a Howard Johnson motel in New Orleans); law offices (gunman kills eight at San Francisco  law firm), department stores (gunman kills eight shoppers at Westroads Mall in Omaha), and post offices (gunman kills 14 at post office in Oklahoma; gunman kills four at post office in Michigan).

     There have been mass shootings in offices, factories, warehouses, hospitals and bars. There have been mass shootings in barber shops, pawn shops, gas stations, convenience stores and spas. There have been mass shootings in playgrounds, night clubs, parking lots, toy stores and zoos. There have been mass shootings in hospitals, funeral parlors, pool rooms, bowling alleys, casinos and gyms. There have been mass shootings at rock concerts, county fairs, rifle ranges, bus stops, and parades.

     To protect them all with armed police and security guards would create the type of “jack-booted” police state that LaPierre professes to hate.

     For LaPierre, gun control is not the answer, nor is limiting the magazine-size of semiautomatic rifles and pistols.

   In 2011, after a gunman armed with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol killed six and gravely wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona, LaPierre said: “When they tell you that a government ban on certain firearms or magazines will somehow make you safer, don’t buy it, not for one second.”

     He said the same thing after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, in which a gunman brought two semi-automatic pistols and a backpack full of 10- and 15-round magazines and nearly 400 rounds of ammunition to the school campus that day.

     “Whether (the shooter) carried five 10s (10-round magazines] or 10 fives, does it really make a difference? Anybody who thinks that’s the issue is kidding themselves.”

     And through it all, Virginia Tech and the 4-H program it administers has continued its association with the NRA.

   Amy McCune, NIFA’s National Program Leader in the Division of Youth and 4-H, sees nothing wrong with the 4-H program’s long association with the NRA.

     “I did not find any reference to 4-H on the NRA website that would indicate any formal relationship between the two organizations or any indication that either organization was endorsing the other,” she said.

     In fact, a Texas 4-H club’s website urged its members to “please join the NRA,” echoing Wayne LaPierre’s plea: “Join the NRA, America!”

     The NRA has also used the 4-H name and emblem to show an affiliation of the two groups.  

       

     On one Friends of the NRA website, for instance, the 4-H name and emblem appear directly under the Missouri Friends of the NRA name and emblem.

   

      The 4-H name and emblem – a green four-leaf clover – are protected under federal statute Title 18, U.S. Code 707, which affords the 4-H name and emblem the same protection as the Seal of the President of the United States.

     McCune also found nothing wrong with the NRA website listing over 100 4-H organizations – including four in Virginia – as NRA Clubs, even though stewardship of the 4-H name and emblem is given, by law, to her boss – the Secretary of Agriculture.

     “The 4-H name and emblem is known and recognized the world over,” NIFA states on its website. “The popularity and reputation of the 4-H name and emblem makes it a desirable target for exploitation by commercial vendors, web sites, organizations, etc.”

     NIFA’s list of entities that have received approval from USDA to use the 4-H name and emblem includes nearly 100 companies and organizations. The National Rifle Association, which is listed on 4-H and Virginia Tech websites as a co-sponsor of numerous 4-H shooting activities, is not one of them. 

VIRGINIA SUPREME COURT ERROR

Patricia L. Harrington, Clerk of Court

Virginia Supreme Court

P.O. Box 1315

100 North Ninth Street, 5^th Floor

Richmond, Virginia 23219-1315

            Ref: Freedom of Information Request

Ms. Harrington—

With reference to Judge Cleo E. Powell’s opinion issued on October 31, 2013 reversing the jury findings of the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Virginia that Virginia Tech had a duty to warn the staff, faculty, and students on April 16, 2007 following the double homicide at West Ambler Johnston Hall, I would like to clear up what appears to be a factual error. On page 2 of Judge Powell’s decision she writes:

            “Although officers from the Virginia Tech Police Department were the first on scene, the Blacksburg Police department led the investigation.”

According to The Governor’s Review Panel Report (the final version known as The Addendum), Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell Flinchum was in charge and asked the Blacksburg Police Department for assistance in his investigation several times.

           1.   “7:51 a.m.  Chief Flinchum contacts the Blacksburg Police Department (BPD) and requests a BPD evidence technician and BPD detective to assist with the investigation.”

           2.   “8:11 a.m.  BPD Chief Kim Crannis arrives on the scene.”

           3.   “8:13 a.m.  Chief Flinchum requests additional VTPD and BPD officials to assist with securing WAJ entrances and the investigation. He also orders recall of all off-shift personnel.”

            4.   “8:15 a.m.  Chief Flinchum requests the VTPD Emergency Response Tea (ERT) to respond to the scene and then to stage in Blacksburg in the event an arrest is needed or a search warrant is to be

executed.”

I have found no reference in The Addendum to Blacksburg Police Chief Crannis being put in charge of the investigation.

According to the Incident Command System, a part of FEMA, “a formal transfer of command at an incident always requires a transfer of command briefing for the incoming Incident Commander.”

Would you send me the documents or documentation proving that such a change of command took place so I can correct my research and writing? Specifically, I need to know at what point in time the command passed from Chief Flinchum to Chief Crannis. If you cannot send me the documents, would you tell me where Judge Powell’s assertion came from so I can track down the source?

Thanking you in advance—

                                                                                    Yours sincerely,

                                                                                    David Cariens

DEEDS TRAGEDY

Richmond Times-Dispatch

December 2, 2013

Editor:

The tragedy that struck the Creigh Deeds family on November 19^th is, in part, the result of failed Virginia policy toward mental health. Both sides of the aisle are to blame.

            Following the Virginia Tech massacre, state officials promised more money and more emphasis on mental health. They kept their promise—for one year. Virginia now spends less on mental health than it did on April 16, 2007. Governor McDonnell’s policy of privatizing the state’s mental health care is an attack on the most vulnerable segment of society, the portion of the population least able to defend themselves—the mentally ill.

            Privatization is not advocated in order to improve health care. It is pursued to curry favor with the far right wing of the political spectrum who want to minimize government no matter what the cost—in this case, a human life.

            Young Austin Deeds was a victim of political machinations in Richmond. Politicians who have backed cuts in mental health treatment and the privatization of the state’s mental health care share part of the blame for the calamity that struck the Deeds family.

David Cariens

PETITION FOR REHEARING

The parents of Julia Pryde and Erin Peterson say the Supreme Court reinterpreted the jury’s findings.

by

TONIA MOXLEY |

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

The parents of two women slain at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, have asked the state Supreme Court to reconsider its recent decision to overturn a jury finding of negligence against the state.

The plaintiffs in the case — the parents of the late Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde — have filed a petition for rehearing with the high court.

On Halloween, seven of the court’s justices overturned a combined $8 million jury award for the plaintiffs that was handed down by a Montgomery County Circuit Court jury in 2012.

“This Court should respect the jury’s findings on these issues,” the plaintiffs wrote in their rehearing petition.

The seven justices who heard the case originally will do an administrative review of the petition and issue an order at a later date, Deputy Clerk Lesley Smith said Tuesday.

Smith said there is no specific timeline for the court to issue an order on the plaintiffs’ petition.

Tech spokesman Larry Hincker declined to comment on the petition for rehearing. Brian Gottstein, spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The attorney general’s office mounted the defense in the case.

The Montgomery County jury found in 2012 that Tech officials were negligent for failing to warn the campus of a shooter on the loose after a fatal early morning shooting in a dormitory on April 16.

Less than three hours later, the same shooter chained shut the doors of Norris Hall and opened fire in second floor classrooms. An email notification short on details was sent out moments be-fore the second shooting began.

In all, 33 people — including shooter Seung-Hui Cho and Peterson and Pryde — died. More than a dozen other people were injured.

The tragedy is still considered the highest-casualty school shooting in U.S. history.

The jury award was reduced last year by the lower court to a combined $200,000 award under a Virginia law that caps damages against the state.

But the state appealed the lower court ruling, asking the state Supreme Court to overturn the jury verdict. The appeal alleged that the presiding judge in the case made a handful of erroneous rulings during the trial.

The Supreme Court found in favor of the defense, saying that Tech officials had no duty under Virginia law to warn Peterson and Pryde of potential third-party criminal acts.

According to the plaintiffs’ petition for rehearing, the justices ignored a legal standard requiring them to view the “evidence and all reasonable inferences flowing therefrom … in the light most favorable to the prevailing party.”

“Only by discarding venerable principles of appellate review can the Court conclude that administrators justifiably felt that there was no danger after the initial shootings,” the petition stated.

“Where a jury resolves disputed facts, this Court should, and must, stand aside and respect those findings.”

Instead, the petition argues, the justices “viewed the evidence in a light most favorable to the party who lost at trial, and based on that flawed view of the evidence, has reached the mistaken conclusion.”

Virginia Supreme Court Undermines Justice

            The Virginia Supreme Court’s decision to reverse the verdict of a jury trial in the circuit court that found Virginia Tech negligent for not warning the campus that a killer was on the loose on the morning of April 16, 2007, appears to be politically motivated and is a skillful manipulation of facts, evidence, and language.

            Judge Cleo Powell wrote the decision. In the opening paragraph she writes,

“… even in this case, we hold even if there was a special relationship between the Commonwealth and students of Virginia Tech, under the facts of this case, there was no duty for the Commonwealth to warn students about the potential for criminal acts by third parties.”

This sentence is a cynical and insidious in the way it plays with English syntax. The above sentence is intentionally vague. Under the rules of standard English for conditional sentences you are to use “was” if what you are saying is factually correct; you are to use “were” if what you are saying is not factually correct. When I say, “If I were the King of England, I would give everyone a Bentley.” I use “were” because I am not the King of England. In the Virginia Tech case, Judge Powell, by using “was” is admitting that a special relationship did and does exist between Virginia Tech and its students. Judge Powell should have used a straightforward, declarative, active voice sentence if she wanted her meaning to be clear, but apparently she needed to leave herself some wiggle room.

One of the arguments the state has made in the past is that a special relationship did not exist. Clearly, Judge Powell wanted to play a game with the readers and decided to admit that fact, but used a sentence structure that obscured this critical point. In fact, Judge Powell, in her attempt to obscure, may have set a legal precedent that Virginia Tech (and by implication all institutions in the state) has a special relationship with its students. Instead of playing grammar games,  Judge Powell should have, at minimum, had the moral courage to be candid in asserting that a special relationship does exist, and then argue why the Virginia Tech massacre is an exception. 

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            Now, looking at the second half of the judge’s sentence we need to closely examine the facts of the case. In the section entitled “Facts and Proceedings,” the second paragraph, first and second sentences read:

            “During the investigation, police came to believe that they were investigating a domestic homicide because there were no signs of forced entry or robbery. They believed that a “targeted shooting” had occurred …”

            1. The fact is that the police did not do their duty. This was not a love triangle or “domestic homicide.” The dead male student was gay. One simple question about the relationship between the two victims to any student whose room was near the crime scene would have debunked the love triangle or “domestic homicide” theory. 

2.   The fact is that you had bloody footprints leading away from the crime scene, and a bloody thumbprint on a door leading to the stairway, in a building in the middle of the campus.

3.   The fact is there was no evidence that the killer had left the campus. The fact is that Virginia Tech set its own precedent for warning a few months earlier when a killer, William Morva, was on the loose in Blacksburg. There was no evidence he was on the campus and yet the school locked down and warned the staff, faculty, and students.

4.   The fact is that portions of the school took the initiative and complied with Virginia Tech’s rules and locked down and warned.  Those parts of Virginia Tech were complying with the school’s own rules and the Clery Act; President Steger and Police Chief Wendell Flinchum were not.

5.   The fact is that the school had warned the campus before on numerous occasions for such things as mold and the flu, why not for murder?

6.   The fact is that Judge Powell and the Supreme Court accepted the explanation that the West Ambler Johnston Hall murders was an “… isolated incident and posed no danger to others …”  without asking what made the police think that someone who has murdered one student and wounded another is not a threat to others?

7.  The fact is that there is evidence that Virginia Tech Police Chief Wendell

Flinchum was not telling the truth on the witness stand (during the Pryde and Peterson trial) about discussions which occurred on whether or not to warn and lock down the campus following the double homicide at Ambler West Johnston Hall.  

            8.  The fact is that Judge Powell was wrong when she said on page two of her opinion that “…the Blacksburg Police Department led the investigation.” The 7:51 a.m. entry in the Governor’s Review Panel Report states that “Chief Flinchum contacts the Blacksburg Police Department (BPD) and requests a BPC evidence technician and BPD detective to assist with the investigation.” The report repeated has Chief Flinchum calling the shots and asking the BPD for officers and assistance.

      On the witness stand Chief Flinchum admitted that he had the authority to issue a warning but indicated he never raised the subject with the school’s senior administrative group (called into session to discuss the murders). Flinchum’s denial that a warning or lockdown was discussed that morning stands at odds with the deposition taken from two note takers at the meeting, Kim O’Rourke and Lisa Wilkes.  Ms. O’Rourke’s notes are especially damning. She wrote, “… police (read Chief Flinchum because he was the one communicating with the administrative group) don’t believe a lockdown is necessary at this time.”

The Supreme Court also did not consider the fact that a lockdown would have saved lives. Two students were allowed to leave Ambler West Johnston Hall and go their French class in Norris hall where they were slaughtered. A lockdown, then, would have saved a minimum of two lives; there is no disputing that fact. Judge Powell ignored it or was just plain ignorant of that detail.

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            In the “Facts and Proceedings” the Judge ends with the sentence “Police also learned that the female’s boyfriend was a gun enthusiast.” Judge Powell makes no further comment. I would ask Judge Powell to consider that probably more than half of the male students on the Virginia Tech campus are gun enthusiasts. So what is the point, judge? If being a gun enthusiast is cause for suspicion, the definitely the campus should have been locked down and warned.

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            Paragraph six consists of two puzzling sentences. “Police subsequently executed a search warrant of the home of the boyfriend of the female victim found in West Ambler Johnston Hall. They found nothing.” The reader is not told that the search of the boyfriend’s townhouse took place some six hours after Cho was dead. No one has ever explained that fact. The police already knew who the killer was and that the killer was dead. Furthermore, the police violated the law by entering the house without showing the Thornhills the search warrant. What is the point of this paragraph? Reference to the search of Thornhill’s townhouse is not logical and makes no sense and draws attention to the police violating the law. It is actually counter-productive unless by leaving out the timing of the search, Judge Powell was trying to play up the idea that the police were conducting an intensive investigation, when in fat they were harassing a grieving young man and his family.

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          Paragraph seven of the ruling ends with this:  “… the shootings appeared targeted, likely domestic in nature, and that the shooter had likely left the campus.”  These words are particularly repugnant. Judge Powell combines the false assertion of a domestic crime, with the incorrect use of “targeted” killing, and ends with the indefensible assertion that “the shooter had likely left the campus.”

           As pointed out earlier, there is no way this could have been a domestic crime. Now, Judge Powell accepts the incorrect use of “targeted” killing. In fact, “targeted killing” is a concept used by experts and defined as “people far from any battlefield who are determined to be enemies of the state and are killed without charge or trial.” For a Virginia Supreme Court justice not to know the definition of “targeted killings” is inexplicable and troubling.

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            Judge Powell twists her logic into a pretzel in order to accept Ralph Byers, Virginia Tech’s Executive Director for Government Relations explanation for backing away from the 8:45 a.m. assertion in an email to the Governor’s office: “gunman on the loose ….” Judge Powell never explains why the school administration was correct in warning the Governor’s office some 150 miles away, and not warning the campus. The excuse that the school wanted to notify the next of kin before releasing information to the public is specious. You can withhold the names of those killed and still warn the campus.

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            Judge Powell’s handling of the doctrine of foreseeability is proof that her conservative ideology dictated the decision, not logic and law. Powell and the rest of the state Supreme Court was apparently unwilling to consider other court’s definitions of “foreseeability” and ignored the definition of “foreseeability” as spelled out in Turpin v. Granieri 985 P. 2d 669 (Id. 1999) in which the court wrote:

            “Foreseeability is a flexible concept which varies with the circumstances of each case. Where the degree of result or harm is great, but preventing it not difficult, a relative low degree of foreseeability is required. … Thus foreseeability is to be measured by just what is more probable than not, but also include whatever result is likely enough in the setting of modern life that a reasonable prudent person would take such into account in guiding reasonable conduct … We only engage in balancing of the harm in those rare situations when we are called upon to extend a duty beyond the scope previously imposed or when a duty has not been previously recognized.”

            The New York Supreme Court has ruled that the fact that a defendant could not anticipate the precise manner of an accident or incident, or the exact extent of injuries does not preclude liability as a matter of law where the general risk and character of injuries are foreseeable.  The New York court hit the nail on the head. In dealing with an unstable person such as Cho (or any murderer) the exact nature of the violent behavior or when or how it will occur cannot be predicted. But that he or she will be violent is predictable and preventive measures, including warnings and lockdowns, can be taken.

            Virginia Tech official Ralph Byers used the words, “killer on the loose.” More violence, then, was foreseeable. The exact time and place of that violence may not have been predictable, but it most definitely was foreseeable and therefore there was a duty to warn.

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            In the Analysis section, Judge Powell lays out the Commonwealth’s argument for dismissing the case. She writes on page eleven that “… we have imposed a duty to warn of a third party criminal acts [sic.] only where there was ‘an imminent probability of injury’ from a third party act.”  What greater indication of imminent violence does the Virginia Supreme Court need than Ralph Byers words at 8:45 a.m. that there is a killer on the loose?

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            On page 15, the final page of the decision, Judge Powell writes “Most importantly based on information available at that time, the defendants believed that the shooter had fled the area and posed no danger to others.” This sentence is one of the most disturbing and bogus in the report.

1.   There was absolutely no evidence that the killer had left the campus.

2.    There was absolutely no evidence the double homicide was the result of lovers’ triangle.

3.    There was absolutely no evidence the killer was not a threat to others on the Virginia Tech campus.

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Judge Powell also writes, “Based on the limited information available to the Commonwealth prior to the shootings in Norris Hall, it cannot be said that it was or reasonably foreseeable that students in Norris Hall would fall victim to criminal harm. Thus, as a matter of law, the Commonwealth did not have a duty to protect students against third party criminal acts.”

            If you buy the incorrect definition of words, concepts and facts that Judge Powell lays out then the above is correct. But, unfortunately her words run counter to facts, evidence, and the truth.

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            The conclusion of the decision reads: “Assuming without deciding that a special relationship existed between the Commonwealth and Virginia Tech students, based on the specific facts of this case, as a matter of law, no duty to warn students of harm by a third party criminal arose. Thus, we will reverse the trial court’s judgment holding that a duty arose and enter final judgment in favor of the Commonwealth.

Reversed and final judgment.

            Judge Powell did admit that there is a special relationship exists between Tech and its students in the opening paragraph based on the rules of standard American English. She is wrong on that point, just as she and the court are wrong on the facts of the case. There is no doubt—Virginia Tech had a duty to warn the staff, faculty, and students on the morning of April 16^th.

            The Virginia Supreme Court’s judgment is the latest in a long series of decisions refusing to recognize the responsibility of a business proprietor, in this case Virginia Tech, to protect “its invitees from unreasonable risk of physical harm.” If that is the case, then you have to ask if schools do not have a responsibility to warn then why do they advertise themselves as a safe learning environment, why do they have police forces, why do they have elaborate and expensive warning systems, why do they warn and close down when a murderer is close by?

           

            The state’s defense is so weak and so full of holes that Judge Powell had to play with or ignore evidence and accept the state’s argument without question, and most troubling she showed no intellectual curiosity when there was evidence that a key witness in the trial may have perjured himself. The most plausible explanation for the court’s miscarriage of justice is that the decision is politically motivated; a decision designed to protect the largest financial engine in southwest Virginia from liability.

           

           

Virginia Supreme Court: Miscarriage of Justice

Having spent 11 years researching and writing about the two school shootings here in Virginia (the Appalachian School of Law and Virginia Tech), I am disgusted with the Supreme Court's decision. The Governor's Review Panel Report is riddled with errors (Justice Powell and the court draw on that badly flawed document), and there is evidence that Police Chief Wendell Flinchum did not tell the truth about warning the campus (from a state witness who was never called to testify because he would have badly undercut the Commonwealth's case). There is clear evidence that a lockdown would have saved lives--two students were allowed to leave Ambler West Johnston Hall and go to their French class where both were slaughtered. A lockdown/warning would have saved--a minimum--two lives. That fact cannot be disputed. Judge Cleo Powell and the Virginia Supreme Court have shown an alarming lack of fairness and intellectual curiosity in dealing with the worst school shooting in this nation's history.

Judge Cleo Powell’s stunningly poorly written decision shows that the Virginia Supreme Court places right-wing ideology ahead of facts, evidence, and justice. Judge Powell has shown that the average “Jane” and “Joe” will not stand a chance in the Virginia legal system until 2023 when her term ends.