PARIS - THE head of Interpol said on Tuesday that police cannot be blamed for school shootings like the one in Finland because they cannot know in advance what the suspect is going to do.
The issue of whether Finnish police could have stopped Tuesday's massacre arose because the gunman posted violent clips on YouTube beforehand. So did the gunman in another school shooting in Finland last year.
But Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said police cannot be reasonably expected to anticipate whether people who make such videos actually intend to cause harm.
'It's unfair to expect police to be able to be clairvoyant like the movie Minority Report and know whether or not someone making a video intends to commit harm consistent with that video,' he said in a telephone interview.
In the Tom Cruise science fiction movie, criminals are caught before they commit their crimes.
Mr Noble, head of the world's largest international police organisation, spoke to the wires after the shooting.
The gunman, whose violent YouTube postings had prompted police to question him a day earlier, opened fire at his trade school in western Finland, killing 10 people before shooting himself.
'People will be second guessing,' Mr Noble said.
'Knowing now that he killed these people, you look at the video ? it looks even more frightening. So now you say, "How is it that they let him go? How is it that they didn't arrest him? How is it that they didn't put him in observation in a psychiatric ward for three days?" It's an unfair burden to put on police,' Mr Noble added.
He suggested that some countries need regulatory codes that would allow firearm licenses to be revoked for people who have shown signs they might pose a threat with their guns.
'Then police can say, "OK, we don't have enough to arrest you but we are certainly going to take your firearms away,"' he said.
The gunman had been questioned on Monday by police about YouTube postings in which he is seen firing a handgun, but he was released because there was no legal reason to hold him, said Finland's interior minister, Ms Anne Holmlund. -- AP