Warning signs
How much evidence of potentially violent behavior is needed before authorities can intervene?
“How do you take these bits and pieces of information and turn them into a usable source of data? If anyone here tells you that they have that one figured out, they’re not being honest.” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
WASHINGTON – The Florida high school shooting that left 17 dead at the hands of a troubled teenager has raised a difficult question: How much evidence of potentially violent behavior is needed before authorities can intervene?
It was no secret that Nikolas Cruz met the classic profile: Reports suggest he had a history of mental illness. He was expelled from school. His adoptive parents were deceased. He loved guns.
And he apparently posted on YouTube last year this warning: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” — a comment the FBI was alerted to, Special Agent Robert Lasky said Thursday, but could not definitively link to Cruz.
“How do you take these bits and pieces of information and turn them into a usable source of data?” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said on the Senate floor Thursday. “If anyone here tells you that they have that one figured out, they’re not being honest.”
Federal, state and local law enforcement authorities said Thursday that existing laws do not allow police to restrain or commit someone just because of suspicious behavior.
“You have to have a reason,” such as the person is a threat to themselves or someone else, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Thursday. He lamented that even Cruz’s vivid postings on Instagram were not enough.
“We need to have the power to take that person and bring them before mental health professionals ... involuntarily,” Israel said.
Nancy Savage, executive director of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, said state mental health laws that address involuntary commitment “tend to be pretty weak.”
“What we are facing is a need for thoughtful legislation and assignment of responsibility to law enforcement,” Savage said. “Hopefully, the dialogue can take place both on the state and federal levels.”
In Florida, a 1971 law allows for such emergency commitment by a judge, police, doctor or mental health professional if it can be shown the person has a mental illness or is a risk to himself or others.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions addressed the question Thursday morning in a speech to the Major County Sheriffs of America. He said respect for a person’s civil rights must be balanced against “the right to life, the right to be safe in your community.”
“We can’t arrest everybody who somebody thinks is dangerous,” Sessions said. At the same time, he said, “perhaps we haven’t been effective enough in intervening immediately ... we can and must do better.”
Sessions said officials from the Justice, Health and Human Services and Education departments were meeting “to study the intersection of mental health and criminality and violence, and to identify how we can stop people before these hideous crimes occur.”
President Trump, in an address to the nation from the White House on Thursday, promised to “tackle the difficult issue of mental health.”