The lawsuit by the family of Daniel Rohrbough and four other slain students also charges law enforcement teams with inaction on the day of the killings. "Although numerous deputies of the Sheriff Department were in a position to exchange gunshots with Harris and Klebold when they exited the school building, once again Defendants failed to either stop them outside the school or pursue the killers into the school," it says.

The suit paints even Harris and Klebold as perplexed by the inaction. "Several minutes after first entering the library, one of the killers went to the windows of the library and shot out several windows," it reads. "The Defendants made no response. Even the killers appeared puzzled and amazed at the Sheriff Department's non-response to their rampage."

But the heart of this lawsuit lies in its laying out a picture of two contradictory responses: the SWAT teams remaining outside to "secure the perimeter" while the 911 operators instructed students to remain inside because there was "help on the way."

"At the time the shooting began in the library, the students and teachers inside the library could have easily escaped to the outside of the building," the suit contends. "However, the 911 operator ... advised [teacher] Patti Nielson that Sheriff's deputies employed by Defendant Stone, paramedics and firemen would soon be arriving in the library and to stay there and on the line with her."

But the command team had full intention of carrying out a very different plan, the suit contends. After the killers entered the building, but before they entered the library, the command team "made a deliberate and intentional decision to limit the response of law enforcement officers at the school to 'securing the perimeter,'" it reads.

The result, it says, was the slaughter of 10 of the 13 victims murdered April 20.

Kamin stressed that a federal civil rights lawsuit requires evidence that law enforcement was not just ineffective but made the students worse off than if it had never shown up on the scene. The lawsuit addresses that issue directly: "By way of comparison, the children in the commons area (who were not encumbered by the 911 operator's commands) scattered to the various exits at the beginning of the incident and as a result none of these children were killed."

As with the Sanders case, this suit contends that the students' civil rights were violated because their own actions were impeded by law enforcement, who thereby assumed a special obligation to rescue them. "By telling the people in the school library to stay there and await law enforcement personnel ... [the Defendants] assumed an affirmative Constitutional obligation to protect those persons," it says. "By such conduct, the persons in the library were effectively in the custody of Defendants."

Kamin described one additional hurdle for this suit. "The department can't be sued unless it has a policy or pattern and practice that violates their civil rights." That explains the suit's otherwise surprising conclusion that both the SWAT teams and 911 operators acted exactly as they were trained to act.

It concludes by citing that contradictory training as the crucial final point in its claim. "As a result, on April 20, 1999, sheriff's deputies who chased Harris and Klebold into Columbine High School and 911 operators who instructed Patti Nielson and sheriff's dispatchers were not properly trained to handle the situation at Columbine High School."

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