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Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

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Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#261

Post by hga »

tibbon wrote: post #62
ghc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gun violence is a very uncommon thing in Boston or Cambridge...it's big news here every time it happens. Now outside the city, in the areas where poor people live, it's a different story...but MIT and Harvard are located in some of the wealthiest, safest areas of Cambridge.

Agreed. I generally feel incredibly safe around Cambridge in general- let alone on Boylston St near the library, or anywhere on MIT's campus. At most I'd expect to have something stolen, car broken into or a common mugging around there- not a random shooter running around.

Hmmm, it was a year after I left the area, but in 1992 a student was stabbed to death in front of the main library by a local juvenile sociopath (who only served 10 years, Massachusetts "justice" being what it is), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yngve_Raustein. And that was not much of a surprise based on the dozen years I'd spent in and around MIT before I left.

Has it really gotten a lot safer. not counting this unique sort of incident?

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#262

Post by toyg »

omegaham wrote: post #121
ra wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having never lived in the US, I find it astounding that you could make a comment like that and get so many nods. I've never even heard a gunshot, and I don't know anyone who ever has.

I shoot pretty regularly, so gunshots aren't foreign to me at all. But I would be seriously, seriously disturbed if I heard them off-range. Generally, Americans do the "Out of sight, out of mind" thing when they hear about violence. They only care when it's happening in situations where they could see themselves. Kid gets shot walking on the sidewalk in inner-city Camden for wearing the wrong color shirt? Meh, he was…

For a minute I thought you were talking about England there. Just replace "Americans" with "Brits" and the post still makes perfect sense.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#263

Post by smackfu »

a_p wrote: post #147
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #143

Breakdown of what is happening on this reddit thread [1]. You can listen to the police scanner here [2]. Live steaming video here [3]. For those listening on the scanner this is the area/streets they are talking about [4]. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cnwms/mods_removed_th... [2] http://tunein.com/radio/Boston-Police-Fire-and-EMS-Scanner-s... [3] http://www1.whdh.com/video/7newslive [4] https://maps.goo…

The most accurate information may be gleaned from police scanners. News cameras may give you pictures of the amount of police officers at the scene, but they cannot get close enough to give you video of what's actually happening. The irony is that of those three sources of information (Web site, radio, news camera), the best source of "real time" information is the oldest. Yes, it's true that the scanner is being bro…

Only problem here is that people take the police scanner as gospel, even though the police may be as confused as anyone else. And because it's not a news source, no one feels the need to explicitly correct things that are wrong.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#264

Post by hga »

jlgreco wrote: post #148
ra wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having never lived in the US, I find it astounding that you could make a comment like that and get so many nods. I've never even heard a gunshot, and I don't know anyone who ever has.

When I used to live in Philadelphia, summer holiday nights used to be very unnerving. Previously I had thought that firing guns wildly into the air in some form of celebration was something that was only done in underdeveloped countries... I grew up in a very rural area where there were lots of guns, but nobody was that irresponsible with them.

I grew up in a less rural area, edge of Joplin, MO, across a significant road there was a working farm, turn left 90 degrees the local college, and while I've heard utility gun fire (often ours), don't think I've ever heard a shot in anger. Which would also include the dozen years I spent in and around MIT and then another dozen in the D.C. area.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#265

Post by hga »

jpdoctor wrote: post #44
MichaelSalib wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was at MIT, I don't recall a single on-campus shooting.

Me neither, I was there from 1982-1996. There was one knifing on Mem Drive during that period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Yngve_Raustein

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#266

Post by bconway »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #143

Breakdown of what is happening on this reddit thread [1]. You can listen to the police scanner here [2]. Live steaming video here [3]. For those listening on the scanner this is the area/streets they are talking about [4]. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cnwms/mods_removed_th... [2] http://tunein.com/radio/Boston-Police-Fire-and-EMS-Scanner-s... [3] http://www1.whdh.com/video/7newslive [4] https://maps.goo…

Say what you want about the "enlightened liberal sensibilities" of the northeast, the Massachusetts death penalty sure is swift and efficient.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#267

Post by ra »

a_p wrote: post #147
WestCoastJustin wrote: post #143

Breakdown of what is happening on this reddit thread [1]. You can listen to the police scanner here [2]. Live steaming video here [3]. For those listening on the scanner this is the area/streets they are talking about [4]. [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cnwms/mods_removed_th... [2] http://tunein.com/radio/Boston-Police-Fire-and-EMS-Scanner-s... [3] http://www1.whdh.com/video/7newslive [4] https://maps.goo…

The most accurate information may be gleaned from police scanners. News cameras may give you pictures of the amount of police officers at the scene, but they cannot get close enough to give you video of what's actually happening. The irony is that of those three sources of information (Web site, radio, news camera), the best source of "real time" information is the oldest. Yes, it's true that the scanner is being bro…

The scanner feeds on tunein and broadcastify seem to have been cut? That's consistent with reports that the perp was last seen using a laptop and SWAT were surrounding his location. Also the press have been asked to stop tweeting what they hear on their scanners.

Anyone know a working live scanner feed?

UPDATE: "MA State PD and Boston Police have requested via social media to not post search locations for the Boston bombing suspects - the Boston PD feed is temporarily offline due to this request.", http://www.broadcastify.com/listen/mid/13/?rl=rr

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#268

Post by random42 »

buro9 wrote: post #215
kefka wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100,000 users clicking reload every second. 500 posts per second. And there's a text capacity on an article text body. buro9 : This is just a complete conjecture. I do not know Reddit's internal hardware infrastructure. I just know that real-time police radio transcription is the best news source, bar none. And it's getting hammered.

Interesting. Are those are by-products of the threaded display? As a flat display of a thread would just result in new pages at the end, all of which would be incredibly cacheable.

Caching wont work for _extremely_ dynamic content like flash news update threads like these where >1 comments being posted _every_ second.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#269

Post by HarryHirsch »

lostlogin wrote: post #198
HarryHirsch wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uni has just that, and the nagging question I keep asking myself is just how much money are they spending on that service that is profoundly useless. When there is an emergency the police show up damn quick, and there is nothing to be gained for people on the other side of campus to receive a text that building X is on fire. I feel the money would be of more use elsewhere.

Many places face hazards that have a delay before hitting - tsunami is one I know of specifically, and gunmen wondering around would seem to be relevant here. How is this not the best sort of alert system?

> Many places face hazards that have a delay before hitting

You ask yourself how people dealt with large-scale civil emergencies before cellphones became widespread. There were such things as warning sirens, and of course the police with loudspeaker vans. They are still doing that today - every time a hurricane is set to hit Miami the emergency services make the rounds of low-lying areas to get the word out to the homeless.

And a gunman or shooter on campus just cannot be hid - people shout warnings, someone will alert the police, who will then cordon off the area. The costs for the messaging system are obvious, high, and altogether the thing appears more like ass-covering for the administration than something that has tangible benefits.

Re: Shots fired at MIT - report of an active shooter near Bldg. 32 (Stata)

#270

Post by driverdan »

michaelochurch wrote: post #46
untog wrote: post #5

Don't wish to make light of this at all, but I do wonder- how often does this happen? After all, "shots fired" is not an uncommon thing in many cities in the US. I just wonder whether we will look back in 12 months time at the "week of hell" and realise that it was actually just a week in which we found all the things that usually go on every week that we don't hear about.

I just wonder whether we will look back in 12 months time at the "week of hell" The mid-April week has always had a higher-than-normal rate of manic-type (e.g. spree killings) violence, and there are a lot of theories about it (spring inciting grandeur in unstable men) but no one knows why. Those are very rare, high-visibility events, though. Overall, that time is no more dangerous than any other. (There's only about…

[citation needed]
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