Chapter 12: Columbine

In chapter twelve, The Perimeter talks about the police action when the first 911 calls were heard. The first to the scene was a deputy sheriff named Gardner, he and Eric had exchanged gunfire through the first hour until further police, firetrucks and SWAT teams arrived on the scene. When the firetruck got to the scene the police then took all of the living victims and put them behind the barrier of the firetruck. The reasoning for the chapters name is that with all of the police cars and firetrucks they built a surrounding around the school and hid all of the kids behind the cars and trucks for safety. Many of the survivors were traumatized from the shootings and their descriptions and number of the shooters were all very inaccurate. Police now account that the reason for the different number of shooters is that when the boys arrived in the trench coats they took them off in the school and had only wore them in the first place as a means of getting the weapons and bombs inside of the building. Overall, police did all they could to help the recent living victims however many of the dead victims were left outside bleeding and were left there for a while.

In my opinion the way the police went about dealing with the surviving victims was a good makeshift plan for the problems at hand. However, the police's way of going about the dead victims was terrible and should never be repeated, again the book is very interesting and I am actually reading avidly.