by Megan Kinner, sports editor
The FBI knew. The Police knew. The students knew. The teachers knew. Everybody knew it was him, but it wasn’t enough to stop Nikolas Cruz from opening fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018, killing 17 innocent teachers and children.
Broward County Sheriff, Scott Israel said his office uncovered about 20 calls received by dispatchers in the past few years related to Cruz, and the police visited Cruz 39 times. Senior at Stoneman Douglas, Eddie Bonilla, said that Cruz “threatened to bring the guns to school multiple times,” students would throw “jokes around that he’d be the one to shoot up the school.”
In 2016, Cruz posted an image of him with guns, threatening to shoot up his school. He attempted suicide by ingesting gasoline, cut himself, wanted to buy a gun, and wrote “hate signs.”
It didn’t get any better in 2017. He commented on YouTube that he wanted to be a “professional school shooter.” His cousins asked the police to take away Cruz’s weapons but supposedly a “close family friend” took them instead, He threatened the son of the family of which he had been living with since his mother died with to “get his gun and come back” to finish the fight. That same family mentioned that Cruz had “put the gun to other’s head in the past.”
If that wasn’t enough, on November 30, 2017, someone called the police warning them that Cruz was collecting guns and knives and could be a “school shooter in the making.” Also, on January 5, 2018, someone close to the shooter called in a tip to the Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI), warning them that Cruz had guns, a desire to kill people, behaved erratically, posted disturbing social media posts, and there was a potential of him becoming a school shooter.
After receiving this information, the FBI should have followed protocols. The FBI stated that “the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami Field Office, where appropriate investigation steps would have been taken.” But no one did anything.
This isn’t the first time there has been a school shooting that the FBI had been warned about. The Wall Street Journal states that “On Dec. 7, a former student shot and killed two students at Aztec High school. After the shooting, the FBI said its agents investigated William Atchison in 2016 for comments he made in an online forum. The bureau didn’t charge him because he committed no crime and didn’t own a gun at the time.”
The warning signs are there, and people are reporting them, but our law enforcement are not executing their job.
Governor, Rick Scott, said,
“See something, say something is an incredibly important tool, and people must have confidence in the follow through from law enforcement.”
Father of 16-year-old and student of Stone, Gilberto Gomez, said that the FBI’s response to the threat is “very, very disturbing. One of our highest agencies to protect us isn’t doing a very simple job.”
Even if there were none of these warning signs, this tragedy could have been less fatal if the school resource officer or the 3 first responding police officers engaged the shooter with their own guns. The children and faculty were left defenseless in the school, while there were 4 trained officers hiding.
Commenting on the lack of action, County Superintendent Robert Runcie said, “I’m in shock, and I’m outraged to no end that he could have made a difference in all this. It is really disturbing that we had a law enforcement individual there specifically for this reason, and he did not engage. He did not do his job. It’s one of the most unbelievable things I have ever heard.” Since the incident, the school resource officer has been suspended and later retired.
It’s imperative that people continue to say something when they see something, but it is just as important for our law enforcement to act on the tips they are given, so further tragedies are prevented.