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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)

#51

Post by rubyrescue »

homosaur wrote: post #11
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.

Some crime happens on a college campus probably every day. Most likely hundreds of violent crimes a year. But the reason this is on HN is MIT, nothing more.

We recently built an app that tracks this based on official US government data - per the Cleary act every US college that receives Federal funds must declare their on-campus crime rate. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/campus-sentinel/id513108130?... - you can compare MIT to other campuses.

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

#52

Post by emily37 »

homosaur wrote: post #27

I see from the report that they are urging people to stay away from 32 specifically. Can anyone clarify if they have someone trapped inside the building, or are they just trying to keep people away from the police net?

It sounds like the suspect fled in an unknown direction.

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

#53

Post by mcphilip »

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.

Yes and no, I think. The government building evacuations and suspicious package stories on Tuesday got a lot more attention than normal, but the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion was extremely dramatic and probably not hyped up by simply being days after the bombings.

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

#54

Post by untog »

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…

I've certainly read before that it being tax day brings out the 'crazies', which makes at least some semblance of sense.

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

#55

Post by homosaur »

weisser wrote: post #13
hiddenfeatures wrote: post #4

I find it very interesting, that there are such websites. I wonder whether it works, but I guess that if only one life is saved by a notice on a website, that is enough

This is beamed out to sites that people are actually likely to be looking at meaning it is all inbound to that link. I saw it appear on my FB feed moments after it was posted. My Tweetdeck column for "MIT shooter" is moving nearly as rapidly as the one for #BostonMarathonExplosion and almost everyone is sharing the link to them MIT site.

You know I had never thought about that, but Twitter really is the rapid alert system nowadays. You only really need to push messages to a few select parties then boom, everyone knows. It has to be as effective or more than any other alert system we use.

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

#56

Post by ghc »

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.

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.

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

#58

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#59

Post by emily37 »

Oxxide wrote: post #47
emily37 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also might have been unrelated incidents... Scanner traffic just reported shooting in Stata, and I don't know why a 7-11 robber would go inside Stata.

Botched the robbery, and panicked?

Maybe. Also based on a photo of the crime scene that was sent out, it looks the officer was shot right outside Stata, so the robber could have been running through campus.

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

#60

Post by fpgeek »

MichaelSalib wrote: post #31
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.

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

Me neither (1994-2000).
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