More culprits, more blame, needed to cope with school killings

In another context, the crimes of Nikolas Cruz would be his own.

But the atrocity wrought by the young Parkland killer seems too monstrous to apportion to a single, disturbed individual. To just a kid.

Of course, the kid is not a kid at all. At 19, Cruz is a legal adult and bears full responsibility for his murderous acts. The State Attorney’s Office charged him, and no one else, with the most ghastly crime in South Florida memory.

Cruz almost certainly faces a murder conviction and possibly the death penalty. His chances for a lesser sentence might have been undermined by three grandiose videos on his cellphone, shot just before the massacre. The selfies describe his killing plans with such callous insouciance, they’re sure to inflame a jury: “With the power of my AR, you will all know who I am.”

But the community is thrashing about for others to blame and institutions to punish for the mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. As if Nikolas Cruz is too slight, too twisted, too pathetic to bear the full weight of our collective wrath. We need other culprits. Indeed, we’ve learned that both the FBI and the Broward Sheriff ’s Office failed to pursue explicit tips that Nikolas Cruz was intent on becoming a “professional school shooter.” And the school resource officer on duty that afternoon has been labeled a coward for not rushing into the building where Cruz was blasting away with his AR-15.

A 20-member state commission has been appointed to expose institutional failures that might have contributed to the 17 deaths. And the governor has ordered the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate BSO’s performance. Then there’s the retroactive blame. Back in 2013, Cruz was referred to the Broward School District’s PROMISE program, designed to divert miscreant students into alternative education classes rather than jail. That provoked critics, especially in the right-wing media, who disparaged PROMISE as an Obama-mandated coddling of potential criminals.

Except it appears that Cruz never actually enrolled in PROMISE. No matter. His everso-brief encounter five years ago has been enough for critics to suggest that PROMISE contributed to the Valentine’s Day horror. (The controversy was exacerbated by the school district’s initial insistence that Cruz had had no association with PROMISE, a misstatement that critics interpreted as a nefarious conspiracy.)

The district has also been hammered for allowing such a troublesome student with his history of emotional and behavioral disorders to attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas. Except he was kicked out of Douglas on Feb. 8, 2017, more than a year before he terrorized the campus with his AR-15.

Cruz had been assigned to an alternative school with therapeutic services. Trouble was, by then, Cruz had turned 18, a purported adult under Florida law who could simply refuse the therapy he obviously needed.

Henderson Behavior Health has also faced criticism (and at least one lawsuit) for supposedly not doing enough to anticipate and treat a potential killer. But Henderson had not seen Cruz for more than a year.

Meanwhile, his adoptive mother had died on Nov. 1, 2017. He moved in with one family, then another. He purchased his AR-15. He was off therapy. Obviously, his world had profoundly deteriorated since his last class at Stoneman Douglas or his last encounter with a Henderson clinician.

And despite his known volatility and his threatening behavior and his growing fascination with firearms, he could not be forced into therapy. Not in Florida.

Florida law is heavily weighted toward protecting the rights of the mentally disabled, sometimes at the expense of common sense. Florida allows utterly deluded adults to decide whether they need treatment. Or to quit their meds.

And state law provides for involuntary commitment to a mental treatment center only if there’s “a substantial likelihood” that a disturbed person would harm himself or others “in the near future.”

Apparently Cruz never quite reached that threshold. But even if he had, his confinement and treatment would have been limited to a few days, maybe only a few hours.

The inherent difficulty in persuading the likes of Nikolas Cruz to submit to therapy is pretty damn convenient for us citizens of Florida, whose elected representatives regard mental health funding as an inessential nuisance.

So if you’re in need of more culprits to blame for the Parkland tragedy, add our own names to the list.

Fred Grimm (@grimm_fred or leogrimm@gmail.com), a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a reporter or columnist in South Florida since 1976.