OT Way OT: Brown, MIT murders link?

[Drame]

I don't undertand your last paragraph. He was a former Brown student who took almost all his classes in that building. He also clearly knew the MIT professor.

Yeah but that wasnt known till just recently. People were guessing the connection before that.

 

[temery]

Why were no or very few cameras on campus up and operational?

There were.

 

[temery]

For everyone saying "I knew there was a connection to Brown," that's a pretty lucky guess. It seemed completely coincidental. I hope we find out more.

Amen. The same goes for "if there were more cameras in the building...".

If there were more cameras in the building we could have watched the people killed/shot as it happened. It would in no way prevented the shooter from doing what he planned.

 

[temery]

He was a former Brown student who took almost all his classes in that building.

Where did you get that from? School officials have said they didn't even know he was.

 

[superjohn]

Yeah but that wasnt known till just recently. People were guessing the connection before that.

If he's saying nobody knew before, sure nobody knew for certain because the shooter wasn't caught yet but people could certainly make links. A mass shooting at a prominent university and the murder of a prominent professor at a prominent university within two days of each other one hour away from each other is unbelievably rare. You don't have to be a seasoned detective to make a connection and think they may be related. The building at Brown where the mass shooting occurred housed the physics department and the MIT professor was a prominent physics professor making the link even stronger. Those are facts that were made available to the public before the shooter was caught.

 

[superjohn]

Where did you get that from? School officials have said they didn't even know he was.

It's all over the news since the killer was caught yesterday.

 

[John]

Not a joke. I read this same thing as well… that certain campus protestors over the last two years - you know exactly who they are - have formally pressured the Brown administration to remove cameras on campus because they don’t want to be caught doing things that the Brown admin has already shown it will turn a blind eye.

who are they?

 

[NJHusky]

Not sure if this is a joke but it is not true. The area where the shooting took place was literally right on the edge of campus and the building where it happened is quite old and was not retrofitted with more cameras like the newer buildings. The campus as a whole has 1,200 cameras. This guy just happened to be in an area where there weren’t many.

You’re right. Technology still require hard lines and tearing apart walls to install. Oh wait, it’s not 1995. You can buy a decent wireless system at Costco. Brown could afford to hire a security company to install a complete system

Oh and I’m sure the dean and provost don’t have any security in their on campus houses..oh wait. They do

It was a conscious decision by Brown. Either to save money or because they didn’t want to know

Also how do y allow a homeless person. To live in the basement, even if he is an alum. Get him the help he needs.

The homeless guy did a better job than the campus police in noticing the guy didn’t belong.

 

[NJHusky]

Amen. The same goes for "if there were more cameras in the building...".

If there were more cameras in the building we could have watched the people killed/shot as it happened. It would in no way prevented the shooter from doing what he planned.

But if they were monitored real time as part of a campus wide security initiative then there would be one MIT professor alive

 

[John]

But if they were monitored real time as part of a campus wide security initiative then there would might be one MIT professor alive

FYPFY

 

[temery]

Not sure if this is a joke but it is not true. The area where the shooting took place was literally right on the edge of campus and the building where it happened is quite old and was not retrofitted with more cameras like the newer buildings. The campus as a whole has 1,200 cameras. This guy just happened to be in an area where there weren’t many.

I see zero chances more cameras would have stopped him. Did cameras stop him from killing the mit guy?

The shooter walked the neighborhood and saw all their cameras, but still parked there knowing he was being recorded.

Way too much is being made of the limited number of cameras in the building.

 

[temery]

But if they were monitored real time as part of a campus wide security initiative then there would be one MIT professor alive

Nonsense. I've heard there were something like 1,500 cameras in the area. It would have been pure chance anyone would have been watching those exact cameras at the exact time of the shooting.

I do wonder why campuses, malls, etc don't have "shot spotters" to alert police if a gun went off in any specific area. The tech is pretty cheap.

 

[Vowelguy]

Not sure if this is a joke but it is not true. The area where the shooting took place was literally right on the edge of campus and the building where it happened is quite old and was not retrofitted with more cameras like the newer buildings. The campus as a whole has 1,200 cameras. This guy just happened to be in an area where there weren’t many.

The Barus & Holley building is on the border of campus. You walk across the street (and a busy, high-traffic one, btw) and you're in a quiet residential neighborhood. Probably not super difficult to get in that building without a campus camera picking you up.

 

[Vowelguy]

Please turn your guns in now!

Who needs guns when you can put Sicilian curses on people.

 

[temery]

The Barus & Holley building is on the border of campus. You walk across the street (and a busy, high-traffic one, btw) and you're in a quiet residential neighborhood. Probably not super difficult to get in that building without a campus camera picking you up.

And what would campus cameras having picked him up have done to prevent the shooting absolutely nothing. Cameras help catch criminals. They do very little to prevent crimes of passion.

 

[husky8273]

Amateur. I’ve got 30, 35, 40 year grudges going.

asked my cousin once how long his mother could hold a grudge: "to her grave, to her grave".

 

[Vowelguy]

And what would campus cameras having picked him up have done to prevent the shooting absolutely nothing. Cameras help catch criminals. They do very little to prevent crimes of passion.

I didn't say it would have. But there was a bunch of criticism that it was failure that they didn't have more cameras "in the middle of campus" with pictures of him. Wanted to clarify for those not familiar with the area that wasn't in the middle of campus, but in fact bordering a very residential area.

 

[Vowelguy]

asked my cousin once how long his mother could hold a grudge: "to her grave, to her grave".

beyond

 

[upstater]

I indirectly knew (at least knew of) the MIT professor and got my PhD in the broader organization he was directing (before he was there). Several colleagues knew him well. It's been shocking and upsetting in my field.

It's unfortunate we may never understand a motive, but at least there's some possibility of closure with the killer now dead.

For everyone saying "I knew there was a connection to Brown," that's a pretty lucky guess. It seemed completely coincidental. I hope we find out more.

The timeline tells us something.

He was a student in the same engineering program with the MIT professor in Portugal. The killer lost his funding and was removed from his position, while the MIT professor was advanced. No details about whether they knew each other, but they were in that program at the exact same time.

A year or 2 later, the killer enters Brown universities PhD program, but there are no details of him ever finishing it.

 

[temery]

I don't undertand your last paragraph. He was a former Brown student who took almost all his classes in that building. He also clearly knew the MIT professor.

That's an awesome conclusion to draw after the fact.

 

[upstater]

Where did you get that from? School officials have said they didn't even know he was.

It was reported he was a Phd student there around 2000 and 2001. The short timeline might show that he did not finish or failed out, unless the reporter just noted when he first entered the PhD program. Prior to Brown, he was in an engineering school with the MIT professor in Portugal, both of them students.

 

[CL82]

And what would campus cameras having picked him up have done to prevent the shooting absolutely nothing. Cameras help catch criminals. They do very little to prevent crimes of passion.

Tom, I think the argument is that if there were cameras that caught the perpetrator at the brown shooting, he might've been captured in the two days between the original shooting and the MIT shooting.

I'm not a huge fan of a big brother state where we are all constantly being monitored, but I do think have there been cameras in the huge blind spot behind the building it might've saved the MIT professor's life.

 

[temery]

The timeline tells us something.

He was a student in the same engineering program with the MIT professor in Portugal. The killer lost his funding and was removed from his position, while the MIT professor was advanced. No details about whether they knew each other, but they were in that program at the exact same time.

A year or 2 later, the killer enters Brown universities PhD program, but there are no details of him ever finishing it.

I beat out three people for jobs and one spot in a college graduate program. I was told recently that every one of them was far more successful than me. Go figure.

Knowing this shooters history helps us understand what was going on in his mind. At least we know he wasn't a terrorist or part of a larger plot to shoot up anywhere else.

 

[temery]

Tom, I think the argument is that if there were cameras that caught the perpetrator at the brown shooting, he might've been captured in the two days between the original shooting and the MIT shooting.

I'm not a huge fan of a big brother state where we are all constantly being monitored, but I do think have there been cameras in the huge blind spot behind the building it might've saved the MIT professor's life.

Unless someone thinks he took off his mask and smiled at the camera, more cameras in the building would've done jack s hit. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it does absolutely nothing to change what happened.

Edit: There was a guy in the neighborhood who posted on Reddit that this guy was up to something. After the fact police saw him walks around the area. Nobody took him seriously until after the fact. There's no blame to go around in that respect because it's nothing more than Monday morning quarterbacking.

Bottom line: there's only one person to blame for these shootings and that is the guy who did the shootings.

 

[superjohn]

That's an awesome conclusion to draw after the fact.

Did you figure out yet the killer was a former Brown student?