Keeping juvenile crimes secret allows more crime

THE MARCH 6 Albuquerque Journal article “Should crime records of juveniles be kept secret?” did not include all important related information.

Despite committing a string of arrestable offenses on high school premises before the recent Florida school shooting, Nikolas Cruz was able to escape the attention of law enforcement, pass a background check and purchase the weapon in part because his school district in Florida’s Broward County had — as have more than 50 other major school districts nationwide — enacted policies over the past four years that allow thousands of troubled, often violent, students to commit crimes without legal consequence.

“He had a clean record, so alarm bells didn’t go off when they looked him up in the system,” said veteran FBI agent, Michael Biasello, according to Real Clear Investigations. “He probably wouldn’t have been able to buy the murder weapon if the school had referred him to law enforcement.”

So there are serious unintended consequences of keeping violent-type activities unreported to law enforcement. Keeping the records of violent crimes and death threats by juveniles (secret) is undermining existing gun control regulations and will also undermine many of the new regulations that are being considered in various states and federally.

We are already inundated with crime in Albuquerque, so we need to make sure that violent crimes and death threats by persons of any age are brought to the attention of law enforcement.

BARRY SCHWARTZ Albuquerque