UNLV officers raise visibility on campus

Police were more visible than usual on the UNLV campus Monday as officers hoped to ease fears that what happened at Virginia Tech could happen at home.

University of Nevada, Las Vegas Police Chief Jose Elique said officers were patrolling on foot the 350-acre campus to answer students' questions about the incident. A brief walk around the campus found five officers on foot, some of whom were talking to students.

UNLV marketing student Amanda Davis said that news of the shooting on Virginia Tech's campus, which left 33 people dead, was "pretty scary."

"I was definitely glad to see those two officers over there," she said, gesturing toward two UNLV police officers standing in the courtyard next to the student union. "I usually see police around, but not like that."

Elique said, "Since Columbine, we've been convinced that this could happen anywhere on our campus."

The department changed its policies on situations in which a person is firing a weapon on campus after the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, which left 15 people dead.

Now, UNLV police officers, who receive the same training as other police officers in the state, will respond to the incident immediately and try to "take out the shooter," Elique said.

The previous policy was to set up a perimeter around the shooter and wait for the Metropolitan Police Department's SWAT team to arrive.

"We can't wait for that," Elique said. "You can kill an awful lot of people in just a few minutes."

Other than the increased police presence, there were few obvious signs of tension on UNLV's campus in the massacre's aftermath.

Televisions in the student union at lunchtime were tuned to ESPN or being used by students to play the video game "Guitar Hero."

"Honestly, I'm not scared of it happening here," said Robert Saylors, a mechanical engineering sophomore studying in the Lied Library. "It's just something you don't expect to happen anywhere. I feel safe."

Diane Tuazon, a UNLV journalism senior, said she thought the shooting was related to the anniversary of the Columbine event, which is Friday.

Student Body President Jeff Panchavinin said, "I think about things, and I think about, 'Could this happen on UNLV's campus?' It could happen anywhere, and it's a shame."

The event at Virginia Tech distressed local alumni of the university.

"I'm shocked," said Jeff Motley, a 1990 graduate of Virginia Tech who is head of public relations for the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. "I've been following it all day, and it seems to get worse and worse."

"You hear about things like this happening, but I guess it hits a lot closer to home when it's a school you actually went to," he said.

UNLV spokesman Dave Tonelli said that in an emergency, the university has several ways to contact students.

The school probably would post information on its Web site, issue e-mails to students and use an automated system that calls university and personal cell phone numbers in its database.

The automated system would call students and faculty and convey a recorded message or text message, he said.

Elique said UNLV was a "very, very safe campus," though it has seen two on-campus shootings in the past two years.

On Oct. 26, freshman Jason Collins was shot and seriously wounded in the Thomas & Mack parking lot by a carjacker.

In September 2005, a UNLV faculty member and a student suffered non-life-threatening injuries when two people who were not students fired into a crowd at a fraternity party.

State Sen. Bob Beers, R-Las Vegas, who introduced a bill in the Legislature that would have allowed qualified teachers in kindergarten through 12th grades to carry guns, said the Virginia shooting was tragic but underscored the need to be realistic about the prevalence of gun violence on school campuses.

"I am saddened by today's events, but I'm not surprised," Beers said.

Beers' bill, which failed to make it out of committee by last week's deadline, would not have applied to college campuses, but Beers said he supported the concept of allowing people with permits to carry weapons on university grounds too.

"The world would be so much better a place if we could be sure there would be no guns on school grounds, but we cannot, apparently," he said. "And so the alternative is to, I think, allow people with CCW (concealed weapons) permits to carry (guns) on campuses."

Beers said that the Virginia Legislature last year defeated a bill that would have allowed those with permits to carry concealed weapons on college campuses. Currently, concealed weapons are forbidden on campuses in Nevada, he said.

Review-Journal writer Molly Ball and The Associated Press contributed to this report.