Experts say the weekend mass shooting in Monterey Park, Calif., highlights the lack of national standards for notifying the public, and the need for an aggressive alert system
Lost in the aftermath of the Monterey Park, California, ballroom dance hall shooting that left 11 people dead is an alarming fact: It took five hours for authorities to alert the public that the gunman was on the loose Saturday night.
“What took so long?” said Higgins, an adjunct professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “Maybe they were still doing their investigation. Maybe they didn’t have a good handle on what they had. But if they didn’t know, they should have erred on the side of caution and put this out.”
A timeline of events shows police were silent for hours, not only about a shooter being on the loose but about the fact that a shooting had taken place at all, with information trickling from police scanners and sources rather than official channels. The delays came just hours after tens of thousands of revelers had been in the streets of the heavily Asian American city for a celebration of the Lunar New Year.
Tsay, a computer coder who helps run the dance hall for his family, told The New York Times he was unaware of the previous shooting in Monterey Park when he lunged at the man and began struggling to get the weapon out of his hands. Tsay eventually commandeered the weapon, ordered him to “Go, get the hell out of here!” and watched as he drove away in a white van.
At 2:49 a.m., the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Information Bureau issued a news advisory confirming the fatalities and adding the suspect was male. There was still no mention he was on the loose. But, she said, “communicating with the public is equally important. In general, when law enforcement believes there is an added threat to the public or are looking for a suspect, they notify the public.”
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