Keeping My Reports Gruntled

[akirlu]

The helicopters are circling again. Here in Seattle, where you seldom hear helicopters at all, their massed, fluttering rumble feels oppressive. If you look at KOMO or KING 5, you'll see endless live footage of the buildings of UW from the air. It's not that informative.

The good news -- for me anyway -- is that I was not shot this morning.

This seems more relevant to mention than most mornings because two people were in fact shot on the UW campus less than three hours ago, over in Gould Hall. The breaking news now seems to indicate a murder/suicide, and that possibly this was the culmination of a stalker episode, which is all horrible enough, but when we first heard about it here, the rumors were flying that the shooter(s) were still at large.

Possibly the weirdest aspect of a weird and unsettling incident was the amazing speed and reach of rumors in an age of text-messaging. I think that's something the University (and other authorities) are going to have to be more aware of in handling breaking news. The Campus Police did not send out any kind of blanket e-mail to let the campus know that the situation was under control and no lock down was necessary (though that is what they told us verbally when we called them), but since the rumors were flying well ahead of their response, I think a lot of micro-panics could have been forestalled if they simply had a policy of notifying the campus when something like this happens. We're going to find out anyway, the question is what's going to be our source and how reliable.

And so it's been a morning of tiny, incremental improvements in the information we have. Typical, when dealing with breaking news. Annoying, when you're this close to the epicenter of it. If it was a stalker that probably blows my expectation of yet another disgruntled employee on a spree. Still, I will continue to keep my employees gruntled.

Or not.

(Hey, who knew "edit" was a backformation of "editor"? I sure didn't.)

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

It doesn't look like I was ever in any danger. It's shaking out that the shooter was the victim's ex boyfriend, she had sought a restraining order against him and moved more than once to stop being findable, and had even passed around his picture and a description at work in case he should be looking for her there. All to no avail.