Marquette: what the heck is going on?

From a blog post by GOP3.com, published by a group of Marquette students:

I don’t know if I ever did a “what the heck is going on with the chronology of the kidnappings” GOP3 post, but it really, really bothers me that the two individuals who were kidnapped earlier this semester were taken around midnight, the first discovered a couple hours after that and then the second a little after dawn, and no email was sent to students until 9am or 10am that morning, despite the fact that another student had been violently robbed and I would assume in contact with DPS/MPD beforehand and despite the fact that the freaking suspects were still at large!

We just got another email from DPS about another mid-afternoon robbery on campus:

An off-campus robbery within the 900 block of North 17th Street was reported to the Department of Public Safety at approximately 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 21. During the incident, two male suspects approached the victim, a Marquette student. One suspect displayed a weapon and demanded personal property. The descriptions of the two male suspects were not specific. The victim was not physically injured.

The Department of Public Safety and Milwaukee Police Department officers were contacted and immediately responded to the scene. Victim services were offered to the student involved in this incident.

So, at 9:41pm tonight the Department of Public Safety thought it important to get out an email to students about a brazen daytime robbery basically in the middle of campus that includes armed suspects still at large. Wouldn’t it be prudent to inform students about at-large armed suspects sooner than six hours after a robbery, particularly one as bold as during the middle of the afternoon?

I ask this in all seriousness. We’re all aware that DPS has the capability of sending out text messages to students in the case of a “real” emergency (”Virginia Tech-style emergency” is the phrase that has been thrown about, I think). Obviously if someone is in Wehr Physics waving around a sidearm, a text message should be sent. But, I don’t understand why text messages are not being sent to students about crimes committed in the non-academic parts of campus.

Besides the near-rape of the Freshman girl by a homeless guy in the first-floor female bathroom of Raynor my Freshman year (Fall of 2003), there hasn’t been a major crime that I can remember happening on the academic portion of campus. Crime happens on Kilbourne, on Michigan, etc. If a crime is quickly resolved with suspects detained then yes, I think an email hours after suffices. But if two armed suspects rob students in the middle of the day, I think it makes sense to alert the student body sooner than six hours after it happens whether through email or texting.

The above email was seven sentences. Would it be that hard to get that out at 5pm or even 6pm? I’m concerned because if someone is able to get away with this during the middle of the day, it isn’t beyond the realm of possibility that they would return, and potentially soon thereafter. Look at what happened at Virginia Tech — two homicides, and then two hours later 30 more homicides. It is possible for one or more criminals to strike, wait and then strike later.