Our view: In Florida, red flags and blood-stained classrooms
As in the months before the 9/11 attacks — when “the system was blinking red” but various arms of the federal government failed to connect the dots — the Broward County Sheriff ’s Office, the FBI and a Florida social service agency had troubling tips or encounters involving Nikolas Cruz, the 19year-old accused school shooter.
That information didn’t simply fall through cracks. It was crying out for follow-up. Different people made decisions not to do anything about it.
No one can say for certain that following those leads would have prevented the tragedy in which 17 people died. But that doesn’t absolve officials for failing to look into those tips with greater diligence.
Today, the Florida Senate plans to vote on a series of measures, including creating a commission to investigate any “system failures” by local, state and federal authorities before the shooting. The state Senate already rejected a ban and a moratorium on the sale of AR-15s. Still alive are other gun safety measures, including raising the age to buy assault weapons. Those sensible changes are long overdue, as is calling authorities to account for missing so many critical warnings.
The sheriff ’s office had received calls going back nearly 10 years about Cruz. Sheriff Scott Israel says there were 23 calls; CNN obtained records showing 45. Regardless of the number, the reports grew more unnerving over the years, from a report of Cruz fighting with his younger brother to one about throwing his mother against a wall.
‘School shooter in the making’
The most alarming calls piled up during the past two years.
In 2016, a neighbor warned the sheriff ’s office of an Instagram post in which Cruz said he “planned to shoot up the school.” Months later came a report that Cruz might have tried to commit suicide. A law enforcement officer, assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High as a “resource deputy,” initiated a report. The school said it would do a “threat assessment,” and a private therapist on the scene said Cruz was not a danger to himself or others.
The Florida Department of Children and Families came to a similar conclusion. Had Cruz been pegged as a danger, that might have triggered a courtordered commitment to a mental health facility. It never got that far.
Last November, after Cruz’s mother died, a cousin urged the sheriff ’s office to collect Cruz’s guns. A deputy responded, and a family friend agreed to take them, according to a record of the encounter. Later that month, a caller said he believed Cruz “could be a school shooter in the making.” Despite Cruz’s history and the recurring school shooting threats, a deputy advised that person to call the sheriff in Palm Beach County, where Cruz then lived. Laziness or ineptitude are the only conceivable explanations for the deputy failing to make that call personally.
Tips to the FBI
The FBI dropped the ball, too. Last fall, it got a tip that someone identified as “nikolas cruz” posted on YouTube that he was "going to be a professional school shooter.” On Jan. 5, a person close to Cruz called the FBI’s Public Ac- cess Line citing concerns 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.”
Coupled with the earlier tip, that should have gone to the FBI’s Miami field office. But “protocols were not followed,” the FBI acknowledged.
That’s more than Sheriff Israel has acknowledged. Despite the missed warnings and the sheriff ’s deputy who stayed outside the school during Cruz’s rampage, Israel still patted himself on the back for his “amazing leadership” in a CNN interview. “I can only take responsibility for what I knew about.”
Clearly, Israel never heard of Harry Truman and “the buck stops here.” It’s hard to believe he can take the actions necessary to ensure that the same grievous errors are not repeated.
More tools needed
As for the future, authorities across the country need more tools to help them when they receive warnings about behavior that’s disturbing but falls short of what’s necessary for an arrest or a seizure of weapons.
Several states — California, Connecticut, Indiana, Oregon and Washington — allow either law enforcement or immediate family members to seek a court restraining order to seize a disturbed person’s guns. The National Rifle Association and other gun rights groups have battled this sensible idea.
Florida is considering a more limited measure, but at least it would be a start.
Red flags, of course, always flap more vigorously in the breeze of hindsight. Some spree killers, such as the Las Vegas hotel gunman, give off few if any warning signs and can be fiendishly difficult to identify.
Other mass killers, however, are loudly ticking time bombs. In Cruz’s case, the sounds were explicit and numerous. If law enforcement officials want people who see something to say something, they can’t afford to fumble repeated warnings.