E-mails show Loughner concerned college

TUCSON, March 1 (UPI) -- Officials at a Tucson area college were alerted about keeping a former student off campus weeks before he allegedly shot an Arizona congresswoman, e-mails show.

The e-mails from late December indicated Pima Community College campus police distributed photographs of Jared Lee Loughner to employees and night security, and added patrols to an area they believed Loughner visited, among other things, CNN reported Tuesday.

The release of the e-mails Monday came a day after an attorney for the college defended it on CNN for not alerting other law enforcement agencies about Loughner before the Jan. 8 shootings that killed six people and injured 13 others, including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., at a meet-and-greet outside a Tucson supermarket.

"We don't report people simply because their behavior is odd and strange," attorney Alice Callison said of Loughner, who had no criminal record before the supermarket shootings. "He had made no specific threats against anyone here at the college or anyone else that we were aware of."

The e-mails CNN obtained through the Arizona Open Records Act indicate that, before the shootings, college officials considered Loughner enough of a threat to increase security in case he tried to visit the campus after he was suspended in October. When he was suspended, Loughner was told he couldn't return unless he underwent a mental health evaluation to ensure he didn't pose a danger to others. Loughner was suspended after he was reported five times to campus authorities for classroom disruptions.

Callison said the campus policy of not reporting students without criminal histories to outside law enforcement hasn't changed since the shootings.

"We had a process in place," Callison told CNN, "and we dealt with this student in a reasonable fashion based on what we knew at the time."