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Columbine Commission Releases Report

200-Page Report Gives Recommendations To Prevent Another 'Columbine'

Wayne Harrison and Kim Nguyen, Staff Writers

The long-awaited task-force report on the Columbine shooting was released Thursday. It contained a lengthy number of recommendations for school officials, intended to prevent another Columbine-style tragedy in the future, but it left a lot of questions unanswered, 7NEWS reported. Some families of the victims said that the report stops far short of what they had hoped. All Threats Should Be Taken Seriously
The task force, which was appointed by Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, recommended that every Colorado high school and middle school should create a team to evaluate threats. It said that "all reports of verbal and written threats should be taken seriously." "An inquiry into sensitive topics like these can be difficult, but all of them may well have to be considered and evaluated if the members of a team are to understand the extent to which a student's threatening conduct or statements should be taken seriously and responded to," the report said. Law Enforcement Should Prepare

The report also recommends changes in law enforcement response, including an increased emphasis on training in preparation for large-scale emergencies. It said that the highest priority of the first officers on a scene of crisis should be to stop any ongoing assault.

All school-resource officers, police officers assigned to specific schools, should be trained to rapidly respond to such crises, the report said.

Commission History
Gov. Owens formed the commission shortly after two students, armed with bombs and guns, attacked Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide in the nation's worst school shooting. About two dozen people were wounded. Since their first meeting in December 1999, members of the Columbine Commission have reviewed 15,000 pages of documents and listened to 1,000 hours of public testimony from 140 witnesses. The 200-page report contains a lot of facts and makes numerous recommendations, but there is little if any new information, 7NEWS reported. Governor's Introduction

"The Columbine tragedy forever changed the way Americans think about the potential for violence in our schools," Owens wrote in an introduction. "No one can erase the horror of that day, or restore the losses suffered by the victims and their families. Yet only by learning from Columbine can we hope to prevent similar tragedies in the future."

Report Critical Of Jeffco Sheriff
The report was critical of Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone, who agreed to speak to the commission on three occasions but withdrew, citing pending litigation. "With the notable exception of the conduct of Sheriff John Stone and a very few others, which foreclosed the commission from completing its investigation in depth of the law enforcement response at Columbine High School, law enforcement and response agencies were quite helpful in providing most of the information Sheriff Stone had refused to produce for the commission," the report said. The commission criticizes Stone for cooperating with the media, but not with the commission. "He provided no information and stonewalled our commission," Justice William Erickson, the commission's chair, said Thursday in a press conference. Erickson said that he would have wanted to question Stone about everything. "I would have gone through every part of the incident from the first response to the fact that a command center wasn't established," Erickson said. The report criticized Stone for possibly preventing officers from stopping the gunmen and rescuing the injured, 7NEWS reported. "He imposed this perimeter control so the event couldn't escalate outside the school and so if there was any violence it was in the school, but who suffered as a result of that?" Erickson asked. "What happened was there was institutionalized cowardice. They should have gone in and got the shooters, and the rest of it is bull," Columbine parent Randy Brown said. Other Recommendations In The Report

Other recommendations in the report called for improved communications among law enforcement, including the development of a statewide digital communications system; improved planning for responses to large-scale emergencies; and the placement at every school of emergency kits including items such as blueprints, procedures to shut off alarms and a current school roster.

Every response agency should designate a ranking officer to serve as a media spokesman and develop plans, with media representatives' input, on how to handle the onslaught of attention that such crises bring, the report said.

The report also said school officials should work to change the "code of silence" among students by emphasizing that loyalty to fellow students is limited when threats of violence are made.

"School authorities should make it quite clear to students and their parents that all threats of violence, whether of violence to others or to the person making the threat, and whether direct or indirect, will be taken seriously and evaluated," it said.

Commissioners also recommended that every school should establish a mechanism to allow students to anonymously report threats and should adopt bullying-prevention programs that have proved effective.

No Blame Placed

The report did not attempt to blame any person or agency. From the first meeting, commissioners said they wanted to prepare a report that could help prevent such attacks in the future.

The families of Columbine victims have filed nine lawsuits claiming that the sheriff's office botched the response to the attack and didn't follow through on reports beforehand that Harris made threats over the Internet and was making pipe bombs.

Report Leaves Unanswered Questions Another question Erickson said that he would like to have answered was why a 1998 search warrant for Eric Harris was dropped. "The search application just fell thru the cracks and so that was totally ignored," Erickson said. "I'm tired of hearing it fell through the cracks, that's not an answer," Columbine parent Judy Brown said. Some parents also want to know why the governor isn't doing more to get the answers. "The governor should be asking for a state grand jury to look into this, and if he can't do that, then he should be asking the people who can for that to happen," victim's father Brian Rohrbough told 7NEWS. Gov. Owens said that the commission did what it was supposed to do, which was to make recommendations not to launch investigations. But Owens hasn't hesitated to intervene in other similar issues like the Ramsey investigation, 7NEWS reported. Jeffco Responds To Report The reaction of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office to the report consisted of three sentences. "We appreciate the efforts of the commission and believe the commission wrote their report in good faith," Undersheriff John Dunaway said in a press release. "We may not agree with all conclusions or every point made in the report, but we support the spirit in which the commission fulfilled its task." The sheriff's department believes it's put out a lot of information about Columbine, including some 11,000 pages of materials compiled by the columbine investigative task force. The department also said that several of its members did testify before the commission. Watch for updates on this story on 7NEWS Previous Stories: