[From the official message on the incident:]
To the Yale Community:
As we announced to you via the Yale Alert system, the University has lifted the lockdown for campus.
The incident began when an anonymous call was placed from a phone booth off-campus to the New Haven Police at 9:48 a.m.. The caller, who did not identify himself, told New Haven Police that his roommate had a gun on the Yale campus. New Haven police shared this information with Yale Police, and both responded immediately, scouring the campus and the location of the phone booth off campus from which the anonymous call was placed.
A few minutes after the Yale Alert was sent to the campus community, a Yale employee called police to report that she saw a man walking on Old Campus with a rifle. It now appears that the man she saw may have been one of the early responding police officers carrying a rifle.
Besides this caller, no one reported seeing a shooter or a person with a gun on campus. Nevertheless, we kept the campus on lock down while the search for a potential gunman continued.
The combined police forces combed the area and have found no suspicious person. However, the police are taking nothing for granted. They are working to track down who made the first (anonymous) phone call and to interview thoroughly everyone involved. As the Chief of New Haven Police made clear in the news conference this afternoon, if it was a prank call that started this chain of events, the authorities intend to prosecute the individual to the fullest extent of the law.
The safety of our community is our paramount priority. I want to underscore our collective thanks to the superb mobilization of the Yale, New Haven, and State Police, and the FBI, as well as Yale’s own Emergency Response team.
I know this has been a stressful day for many, and I am grateful for the cooperation and patience of our entire community.
Sincerely,
Linda Koch Lorimer
Vice President, Yale University
Any big tests at Yale today?
Modern day version of pulling the fire alarm?
As said many times already in the other threads, NO. School was out for the holidays.
I’m sorry (not really), but some people just need to be punched in the face, hard, for intractable stupidity. Starting with that Lorimer woman.
That is all.
Tom
The woman that called in the LEO with a rifle needs punched in the face twice. I don’t believe in hitting women, but this one needs some sense knocked into her.
Was he an LEO in traditional and easily recognised uniform or was he one of those balaklava wearing sports that looks like an IRA gunman? I would hold off ridiculing the woman til I knew which.
Ah, so there was the “confirmation” of the phone call.
This women called following the anon call from the phone booth.
“As the Chief of New Haven Police made clear in the news conference this afternoon, if it was a prank call that started this chain of events, the authorities intend to prosecute the individual to the fullest extent of the law.”
About time somebody stepped up to the plate. Let just hope he follows through.
He won’t. He’s the former chief in Providence and was known to be a perpetual bullshitter with delusions of adequacy.
lmao. I see a place in Barry’s admin for him.
“delusions of adequacy”…. that is just excellent in every way. I’m still laughing as I type this.
If it was a prank, I hope they find them, and I hope they’re serious, notwithstanding what Ralph said above.
It’s funny, 20 years ago, I would have been OK with “It was just a childish prank” and a slap on the wrist. But not anymore. Shit just got real, and I’m in no mood for nonsense.
This highlights a huge potential problem. Terrorists don’t actually have to attack a location: they can just call in an anonymous
lie“tip” and shut that location down. Even worse, a group of terrorists could place multiple calls indicating an imminent attack at multiple locations and spread law enforcement resources thin … only to launch a real attack some place else.The only real answer to this is lots of armed citizens everywhere — the militia in the truest sense of the word. I don’t mean to make an attack sound like a trivial matter, but it becomes a lot less terrible if lots of people are already armed on site.
“… a group of terrorists could place multiple calls indicating an imminent attack at multiple locations and spread law enforcement resources thin … only to launch a real attack some place else.”
Congratulations, you have just described the scenario that gives the planners at DHS and FBI ulcers. The one that is NEVER practiced. Because there is no winner. Ever.
Jus Bill,
Because no one is clairvoyant, we will never be able to prevent determined, violent criminals/terrorists from attacking. The best that we can do is be prepared to respond within seconds with firearms to minimize casualties. And the only way that can happen almost every time is if lots of citizens are armed. We have all heard the saying that the police cannot be everywhere. That is a true statement. As it turns out, citizens are everywhere. Thus citizens are the only “force” that are always positioned to respond to attacks within seconds. However they cannot respond to effectively stop an attack unless they armed themselves. And that is why I say we need lots of armed citizens.
Bad guys will always have the advantage of choosing the most effective place and time for their attack. Of course they will have the element of surprise as well. No one can do anything about that. That is why we (good citizens) should carry everywhere.
Absolutely correct.
The reason there are no winners in the planners’ minds is that they never factor in the possibility of armed citizens “handling matters” locally. That can’t be funded or contracted out.
a group of bank robbers could place multiple calls indicating an imminent attack at multiple locations and spread law enforcement resources thin … only to rob a bank across town is another scenario that comes to mind.
What he said.
This very thing happened in Liberty County, GA last week. Three men set off a small incendiary device in a car in the parking lot of the elementary school (no injuries, only damage was to the clunker they stole to put the device in). While every cop in town was securing the school, the suspects robbed a bank. They obviously watch The Getaway with Steve McQueen.
I agree completely. Us armed citizens are the real defense to any atack.
They always have been. Out Constitution acknowledges that very fact.
Translation: It was all a crock, you chickensh1t Ivy League idiots.
Mass hoplophobia!
What popped into my head when I read that:
lmao
On a sorta-related note, I just clicked on that link on my phone and got the message “That video is not available in your country”
What the hell? I’m not in Narnia, I’m in my living room, on my wifi, on the same network as the PC I posted it from.
I had to go straight to youtube to play it.
Curious. It works flawlessly on my PC. Just a notched out 5 second clip in the middle of the video. Oh well.
who are you calling the idiots here and why?
Good question…
Perhaps the functional idiots that locked down the campus and did a door to door search of the dorms based on an anon call from an off campus phone booth.
tell me though, if there was a ‘Shelter In Place’ in your neighborhood, wouldn’t that make you WANT to go outside to check things out?
I’d have a REALLY hard time not going out to check things out! I’d rather inform myself as to whether or not there was a real danger, of just the authorities playing the Panic Card.
I was thinking this, but also wondering if they’d hesitate to open fire on you ass-u-me-ing that you’re the alleged “man with a gun”
If they did a Shelter in Place on my property, I’d be outside checking things out. I’d have my AR-15 hanging from my harness ready for anything, but it’s my property…they can’t force me to stay inside my house on my property. Anyhow, if someone is outside shooting, my house isn’t made of steel…it’s wood meaning being inside is not really that much safer than outside.
I guess in Mass they can since everyone is “legally” unarmed hence the Boston “Storm TROopers.”
“There’s a man with a gun over there telling me I’ve got to beware.”
OK. This is 2013. They’ve simplified it. You just have to afraid all the time. Because we said so. “We’ll protect you, ’cause we’ve decided you can’t be trusted to protect you.” They went to New Haven CC. You go to Yale. Obviously they know better than you. Get used to it.
Never mind!
I will never comply with a so-called ‘shelter in place’ order so long as I breathe air. Of course I don’t go to or live in target-rich environments either.
Tom
Wait! There’s a pay phone in New Haven? O M G
All they have to do is check for fingerprints on the only quarter in the payphone.
Oh wait…911 is probably a free call.
If it is in town, then there are probably 3 different cameras that shot video of the caller. We all have to assume that we are on camera just about everywhere we go today.
“The incident began when an anonymous call was placed from a phone booth…”
Now there’s the real revelation. Living out here in flyover country I haven’t seen a phone booth in at least a decade, but I guess my elitist Ivy League betters haven’t yet moved on to cell phones?
Out here in the People’s Democratic Republic of Mexifornia they have outdoor telephones with a sort of little awning, or cowl, over them, but I wouldn’t call it a “booth.” Remember Superman the Movie? The ones here are like that, but aluminum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HN7OBEd5hRM 1:30
Oh. Wait. Can’t do that in snow country.
Never mind.
They used to have those around here, but I haven’t seen one in a while.
Pay-phones have pretty much disappeared in my neck of the woods. I haven’t seen one in a long time, and those that I knew about at one time are just a memory now.
Soooooo someone wanted out of a test or something?
Welcome to the party. You’re late. Like, so late that the only thing left is flat beer in half empty Solo cups.
School was out for the holiday already. Nobody was getting out of a test. There were few students actually on campus.
It was probably an intern for the local community organizer group looking to drum up some sweet sweet fear. Watch that booth be the one part of town without a camera pointing at it, or it mysteriously broke at the time.
As a few have hinted at it I’ll go ahead and say it.
Many of these MWG calls begin with an anon. tip phone call or the like and the police find nobody. Many of these happen around schools, malls, etc. where there is a high percentage of young people.
If I were a govt. intent on conditioning my populace to see armed govt agents monitoring them day and night the first thing I would do would be to make sure the younger generation sees them as a normal presence.
Ah yes, the future leaders of America, the Ivy Leaguers who supposedly know sooooo much more than the rest of us.
Stereotypical educated idiots.