A thank-you to the University community

To the editor,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the hundreds of students, faculty, and staff members for their extraordinary cooperation under the stressful circumstances that took place Tuesday, Feb. 16 in Lockwood Library. There is probably no need to restate the entire incident, for through the efforts of UB Communications, local media reports, and The Spectrum's coverage, everyone should be well aware of the occurrences.
In summary; the best information we had at the time required us to do a thorough search of the library in order to make certain there was no continuing threat to our university community. The end result was an unconfirmed report of a person with a weapon. University Police officers responded within 1-minute of the call and began searching for the suspect. After consultation with the library staff, we decided to evacuate the library and continued to search for a suspect or a weapon.
A short time later, UB Communications sent out a Text Alert, which was followed by email and Web site postings.
At no time was there ever any direct threat to a member of our community.
Considering this, we did a targeted search and evacuation with the assistance of the Amherst Police Department, while the Buffalo Police assisted in patrolling our South Campus.
The main point of this correspondence is to acknowledge the cooperation of our community in evacuating the library in a very calm and orderly fashion. Every student, of the hundreds of students that were given the instruction to evacuate did so in a quick and calm fashion as each floor of the library was asked to leave. Clearly, this is a most unfortunate event and we apologize for the inconvenience this caused to our campus community, but it is for your safety that we took these extraordinary precautions.
The University at Buffalo continues to be a safe community. Unfortunately, in any community with a daytime population that exceeds 40,000, problems occasionally occur. With your assistance we can make this community even safer.
While our investigation continues we have increased our police presence on the north campus. In addition to the extras steps your University Police are taking we are asking for you assistance: the most important thing you can do is call us to report any suspicious activity! Call the University at Buffalo POLICE for assistance at 716-645-2222 or call from a Blue Light Phone. In closing, I would like to offer a special thanks to the many students, faculty, and staff that sent thank-you notes to our department.


Sincerely,
Gerald W. Schoenle Jr.
Chief of Police