Why weren’t local officials informed?
The Department of Homeland Security has some explaining to do. It’s outrageous that it failed to notify local law enforcement officials in 2016 that customs agents reportedly found terrorist literature and notes detailing Samuel Cassidy’s hatred for the Valley Transportation Agency.
The DHS must come clean on why Cassidy was detained when he was returning from the Philippines, what the agency found and what actions customs agents took.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said on Friday the 57-year-old VTA mechanic was virtually unknown to local law enforcement until he opened fire on his colleagues on May 26, killing nine people in the deadliest mass shooting in Bay Area history. Their families and Bay Area residents have the right to know why the DHS information wasn’t shared with the San Jose Police Department or Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.
This tragic case is precisely why California adopted its ‘‘red flag’’ law, which took effect on January 1, 2016. The law came about after a tragedy near UC Santa Barbara in which six people were killed and 14 were injured when a 22-year-old man shot, stabbed and hit people with a car before killing himself.
The law gives law enforcement officials the ability to remove firearms from people deemed a danger to themselves or to others. In Santa Clara County, judges removed firearms in 122 cases in 2019, up from seven in 2016.
Rosen is right when he says the information customs agents found should have been enough to warrant a heads-up to local law enforcement agencies.