PARKLAND, Fla. (Reuters) – The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday said it mishandled a January tip that the 19-year-old accused of killing 17 people in Florida had guns and the potential to carry out a school shooting.The tip appeared unrelated to a previously reported YouTube comment in which a person named Nikolas Cruz said, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” The FBI has acknowledged getting that tip as well but failing to connect it to Cruz, who is accused of carrying out the massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday with an AR-15-style assault rifle.
The FBI ignored the warning that 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz might attack a school, failing to act on a call just weeks before Cruz allegedly carried out a shooting rampage at a high school in South Florida on Valentine’s Day, the bureau said Friday.
A person close to accused gunman Nikolas Cruz called an FBI tip line on Jan. 5 to report concerns about him, the FBI said in a statement.
“The caller provided information about Cruz’s gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,” it said.
People wait for loved ones as they are brought out of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after a shooting at the school that reportedly killed and injured multiple people on Feb. 14, 2018 in Parkland, Fla.
“Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life,” the FBI said in its statement. “The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami field office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken. We have determined that these protocols were not followed.”
The second-deadliest shooting at a public school in U.S. history also raised concerns about potential failures in school security.
The Mirror should review the security protocol at Northampton Schools.
Note: My kids go there, I’ve experienced it first hand
There is a real huge surreality factor here as far as I am concerned.
I am a New York state licensed professional engineer who is also qualified as an associate level public health engineer in New York state, and on 8/22/2001, the vaunted Federal Bureau of Investigation in Albany, New York, a place where FBI careers apparently go to die, had absolutely no problems whatsoever with a political doctor at the Samaritan Hospital in Troy, New York issuing completely sight unseen a fraudulent New York State Mental Hygiene Law section 9.45 involuntary psychiatric commitment order directing the New York state police to take me into custody and deliver me hog-tied to the secure mental facility of the Samaritan Hospital in order to shut me up as a witness against endemic public corruption in New York state, and yet, when confronted with a real threat to society in the person of this shooter, the same vaunted Federal Bureau of Investigation, albeit in a different city, was unable to act.
As I say, strange.
A public health engineer exposing public corruption must be deemed by the FBI a bigger threat to civilized society requiring forced psychiatric confinement than some WHACK-JOB with guns telling people he is going to be a school shooter who was allowed to go free so he could do it.
What a strange world they reside in is all I can say.
Staying with the huge surreality factor here, let’s take a look at the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 for a moment.
As Wikipedia tells us, The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 (GFSA) was part of the Improving America’s Schools Act of 1994 (IASA), and it also amends the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
In 1994, Congress introduced the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, which encouraged each state receiving federal funds for education to follow suit and introduce their own laws, now known as zero tolerance laws.
President Bill Clinton signed the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 into law on March 31, 1994.
The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 requires each state receiving federal funds to have a state law in effect requiring local educational agencies to expel, for at least one year, any student who is determined to have brought a weapon to school.
The one-year expulsion is mandatory, except when a chief administering officer of such local education agency may modify it on a case-by-case basis.
In addition, schools are directed to develop policies requiring referral to the criminal justice or juvenile delinquency system for any student who brings a firearm or weapon to school.
ends quotes
All well and good, right?
No more guns in school thanks to the federal government and the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994.
HOORAY!
Yeah, right on that.
And here is where we come to the surreality factor, to wit:
The Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994 and the state laws passed in pursuance thereof “zero tolerance” laws, must afford the maximum amount of procedural due process to the student who are expelled for bringing a weapon to school.
end quotes
Ah, yes, their civil rights.
How could I have possibly forgotten about that – when you are a criminal in America, you are afforded the maximum amount of procedural due process, which essentially means law enforcement has to bend down and kiss your ***.
Getting back to Wikipedia:
Procedural due process further requires that orderly and legally defensible procedural steps be employed in depriving students.
The U.S. Supreme Court determined in Goss v. Lopez that students facing suspensions of up to 10 days or less were entitled to oral or written notice of charges, an explanation of evidence to be used against them and an opportunity to present their side of the issue.
end quotes
Contrast that protection offered to them to the protection I was not afforded.
The difference of course, is that I was a victim of political retaliation, so the vaunted Federal Bureau of Investigation had no problems whatsoever with me being deprived of any due process whatsoever.
Tough luck, that is what you get for taking on endemic public corruption.
On the other hand, if I was an unruly student bringing a gun to school to shoot my classmates with, they would have to bend over backwards to make sure my rights were not violated.
And people wonder why this country is now so ****** up, where the criminals have all the rights and honest people have none.
And that takes us back to the Wikipedia and the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, to wit:
In addition, these laws do not prevent school violence.
And in fact, there is no “shield” offered by the Gun-Free Schools Act of 1994, as the Act does nothing to prevent a student or person who is committed to perpetuating a violent attack from bringing a weapon to a school with which to commit said violent attack.
The act is not preventive but merely punitive.
end quotes
So did the FBI fail anybody here?
Besides me, of course, but hey, mine was political, so their hands were tied, because they are political too, and the hand that holds the butter knife was not on my side, so the FBI wasn’t either, and in America, that is just the way it goes.
Apparently the FBI was not the only LEO organization to fail. A sheriff’s deputy was on-site and did not attempt to intervene.
It makes perfect sense to say “Only the police should have guns.”
That deputy was a pure coward. He needs an old fashioned stoning by the parents of the victims.