At the always useful and erudite Powerline, John Hinderaker opines on the release of one Benjamin Erickson, the widely reported “person of interest” in the Brown University attack.

Erickson reportedly drove from Wisconsin to Providence, and was arrested in a Hampton Inn twenty miles from Providence with a couple of firearms in his hotel room. Reportedly he was tracked using cell phone data. How much of that was true is unknown at this point.

As Hinderaker observes, we know little beyond that little we may or may not actually know from media reports. Hinderaker ends with this:

It seems remarkable that someone can enter a building on a college campus, fire off forty or more rounds (as reported), kill and injure multiple people, and simply walk away without being apprehended or challenged.

Hinderaker, an experienced attorney and writer is like most Americans. What seems remarkable in cases like this is anything but.

The lecture hall where the attack took place is apparently stereotypical, with raised seating descending from the sole entry/exit doors at the back/top, to the lecturer’s area at the bottom. Student’s backs are to the doors and only the lecturer would be able to see anyone entering the hall. Reportedly, the killer entered the doors, began shooting, concealed his—most mass shooters are male—handgun and walked calmly out again.

As Hinderaker notes, some 40 rounds were apparently fired. This would likely require two magazine changes, which would have taken 2-4 seconds each. Firing that many rounds would have taken no more than five minutes and probably less. If the killer had been limited to ten round magazines, that’s three magazine changes, adding no more than four seconds to the total time.

Gunshots don’t sound like they do in the movies. Depending on the location of the lecture hall, it’s entirely possible no one outside the lecture hall heard the gunshots, or if they did couldn’t be sure what they were or from where they were coming. If that’s the case, or even if it isn’t, unless someone was in a position to hear the shots, see the killer leaving the hall, and could make the connection, there would be no reason for anyone else to connect someone calmly walking on campus while wearing cold weather clothing with an attack about which they had no knowledge.

 Brown is reported to have some 800 “security” cameras, which has led many to incredulously ask how it’s possible the killer wasn’t recorded and easily identified. Unless those cameras are continuously monitored by people ready and able to immediately direct armed responders to dangerous situations, they’re security theater, the illusion rather than the reality of safety. But 800 cameras!?

According to Brown, there are 231 separate buildings of around 7, 200,000 gross square feet covering some 143 acres.  If a building is single story and square or rectangular and not too large, four cameras can imperfectly cover its exterior, but there will be blind spots. Irregularly shaped buildings or multi-story buildings require far more. Four times 231 is 924 cameras, and far more than that would be required merely to imperfectly cover the exteriors of those buildings.

Imagine how many cameras would be required to minimally, with innumerable blind spots, cover the interiors of buildings, of every floor, each classroom, and all the outside, open spaces of the campus. Imagine how many people, and all the hardware and software, would be necessary to continuously monitor those thousands of cameras, to say nothing of the numbers of armed responders necessary to respond to emergencies, most of which would inevitably be false alarms.

Imagine too all the servers and recorders necessary to provide an unbroken record in the aftermath of an armed attack, and the manpower and time necessary to view it all and identify potential suspects, if there were any cameras in the right places, aimed in the right directions, to record a suspect’s face and actions.

Graphic: Providence Police.  Public Domain.

Is this the shooter or someone unrelated to the attack? We have no way of knowing.

Does the lack of suspect information seem somewhat less remarkable now?

But what about all the cameras everywhere these days? What about business surveillance videos or doorbell cameras? Again, 143 acres with a surrounding metropolitan area. Unless the police and FBI have some idea where a likely suspect must have been walking and the time frame, it’s a very small needle in a continent-sized haystack situation. And if the suspect walked a short distance, got in a vehicle and drove away without anyone seeing him or any camera recording the vehicle…

Perhaps the FBI will eventually identify a suspect, but now you have some idea of the reality, and difficulties, involved.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.