Case shows need for better collaboration
THE story of how online death threats made by a former Oklahoma high school student were investigated by the FBI and then, essentially, left hanging, with no legal action taken is highly troubling, particularly considering the Parkland, Florida, school shooting and the FBI’s tepid response there.
In Florida, the agency acknowledged it failed to follow up on a tip in January about Nikolas Cruz, who is charged in the Valentine’s Day assault that left 14 students and three adults dead. The FBI investigated the Oklahoma case, but agency actions and bureaucratic procedures made it nearly impossible for prosecutors to pursue charges.
As The Oklahoman’s Nolan Clay reported Monday, a teenager had threatened multiple times online to kill “Zionists” for crimes against Islam. The first threat came in October 2016, and the last was in March 2017 from a computer at Edmond Santa Fe High School.
The FBI said none of the threats it investigated involved the potential for violence at school. The bureau said the suspect, 16 at the time of the first threats, had “social disorders” and that no threat to national security existed. After the threat sent from the school computer, in March 2017, the bureau was asked by the U.S. Attorney’s office to refer the case to the Oklahoma County District Attorney.
That happened in August 2017, and county prosecutors were willing to file a misdemeanor case — but couldn’t get access to the FBI’s records because some had been deemed “classified.”
“In order for the District Attorney’s Office to obtain these documents, the Oklahoma City FBI was required to request declassification and use authority from FBI Headquarters,” the local bureau explains. “This process can be lengthy.”
That’s putting it mildly. Clay only learned of the investigation in January of this year, when the sealed search warrant for school records was made public. The FBI didn’t notify Edmond Public Schools about its probe until June, a month after the student had graduated.
The FBI says that, “At no time, however, was there an indication of an active threat to a school or danger to the public or the citizens of Oklahoma.” We’ll take the bureau at its word. Yet the fact FBI protocol was such a burden to county prosecutors is maddening.
The perpetrator may not have wound up in juvenile detention if convicted in a misdemeanor case, but pursuing the case surely would have led to closer monitoring and extensive counseling. Instead, the teenager is long gone, having moved out of the country to live with family.
District Attorney David Prater, clearly frustrated by how this case played out, says that even today, “we still don’t have the FBI’s investigation.”
Prater’s hope is that the FBI brass will one day stop requiring agents “to follow outdated and unnecessary policies that require D.C. approval for routine law enforcement practices that municipal and state officers do on a daily basis.”
He’s right. Now more than ever, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies need policies that foster communication and collaboration, not the opposite.