The police captain at San Diego State says officers are stepping up their presence on campus today. He says the deadly shooting at Virginia Tech University is all too familiar. KPBS reporter Ana Tintocalis has more.
It was just ten years ago when SDSU graduate engineering student Frederick Davidson shot and killed three professors on campus. Davidson was defending his thesis when he pulled out a handgun and fired at the faculty panel.
Captain John Browning says SDSU campus police learned from that tragedy and has taken steps to prevent another deadly shooting. However, Browning says there's no way to guarantee that SDSU is 100 percent secure.
Browning : We have roughly 34 police officers. Can we be everywhere? No, absolutely not. Do we have enough people? I think we have enough people to adequately secure this university. But would we like to have more? There's no doubt in my mind.
Browning says a college campus is a public campus, so there's no way of securing it like a high school. He says his 34-officer force now provides security around the clock. He says they're trained and equipped to immediately respond to an active shooter. He also says they've been reaching out to the campus community so that students and faculty report suspicious activity or people.
Ana Tintocalis, KPBS News.
