The serial failures of government institutions that led to tragedy in Florida

Glenn Reynolds:

Florida shooting yet another government failure to keep us safe

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It’s not as if there weren’t warning signs.The Miami Herald has published a chilling list of the times authorities were warned about shooter Nikolas Cruz. Not only was the FBI told about a YouTube post in which Cruz said he wanted to be a professional school shooter (but failed to make the connection to Cruz despite him using his real name in the post), the FBI also received a phone call in which a woman warned that he would “get into a school and just shoot the place up.” She also said that he dressed as a ninja or ISIS member.

And over two years ago, on Feb. 15, 2016, local authorities were warned: “A Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy is told by an anonymous caller that Nikolas Cruz, then 17, had threatened on Instagram to shoot up his school and posted a photo of himself with guns. The information is forwarded to BSO Deputy Scot Peterson, a school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.”

But nothing was done.

Then, when Cruz finally began shooting up the school, the failures became even more outrageous. A Broward County sheriff’s deputy — weirdly, the same Deputy Scot Peterson who apparently ignored the Instagram threat and also refused to cooperate with investigators — was on the scene, but cowered in the parking lot instead of taking action....
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Then CNN reported that not only did Peterson stay out of the building, three other deputies hid behind cars instead of intervening. Four armed, trained deputies stayed outside instead of moving forward to protect young people who were being killed essentially in their presence.

It was police from the nearby town of Coral Springs who eventually entered the school, and reportedly are angry at the nonperformance of the Broward deputies. And they should be.
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Reynolds makes the point that it is no wonder that so many Americans support the NRA and want guns to protect themselves because clearly, they cannot always depend on the cops to protect them or the FBI which also ignored specific warnings about the shooter.