University of Wisconsin Police Chief Susan Riseling said Wednesday if the crisis on the campus of Virginia Tech occurred in Madison last year, UW "wouldn't have done so well."

Riseling spoke Wednesday about the university's current crisis plans and increasing efforts to improve its strategies during emergency situations.

During a luncheon at Memorial Union with UW faculty and staff, Riseling compared UW's crisis plans with the one used during the Virginia Tech shootings in April 2007.

Though the Virginia Tech shootings were the deadliest in American history, Riseling said universities looking for a crisis control system should look at Virginia Tech as an example of effective police work.

Riseling said all 26 campuses in the UW System should mirror Virginia Tech and develop robust crisis and continuity of operation plans. She also analyzed the procedures taken during the recent UW Hospital gun scare and Regent Street armed robbery.

"[UW] can always do better, but overall on both those incidents, the persons who perpetrated are in custody and nobody got hurt," she said.

Riseling said the mass e-mail system used during the incidents is completely controlled by UW police, and it can be used whenever UWPD finds most appropriate.

Since the beginning of the semester, UWPD has sent six mass e-mails to 66,000 students, faculty and staff, Riseling said, including messages sent during a campus scare at the UW Hospital earlier this month.

"We don't have a text message system yet because we don't believe the phone system has infrastructure for 66,000 text messages at a time," Riseling said.

According to UW spokesperson John Lucas, the university is still trying to work out details in sending students mass text messages in order to inform them of an emergency situation.
"The service that we've been working on has been in continuous development," Lucas said. "It's likely that we will offer one in the future, but it's kind of hard to say."

Riseling said UW should work to improve its crisis communications systems and further examination of student counseling and mental health.

When analyzing the Virginia Tech shootings, Riseling said attackers normally reveal patterns of problematic behavior, and the UW should make efforts to intervene before problematic students become violent.

"They don't snap, they send us warning signs, and at the end of the day when you look back — which is so easy to do with Virginia Tech — you'll see the warning signs," Riseling said.
According to Riseling, these signs may include documenting, researching, surveillance and stalking.

"You've got the prevention opportunities, the intervention before they're violent," she said. "If we can't prevent it and can't get an intervention, we're going to need a very effective crisis system."

Riseling said she wants to spend the most time dealing with prevention, rather than dealing with the consequences.

"Once the shootings begin, we've lost," she said.

According to Riseling, UW should promote an awareness campaign on campus safety, and said students should be directly involved in the process.

"We can't just decide, [students] need to be actively involved," she said.