In the wake of the Parkland shooting that left 17 school officials and high school students dead as well as 14 others injured the FBI has come clean saying they fucking up when it came to acting on a tip pertaining to the alleged shooter.
According to Reuters, the FBI confirmed they received a tip on January 5th from a ‘person close’ to accused gunman Nikolas Cruz that he may be capable of carrying out a school shooting. The FBI stated that “the caller provided information 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.”
Furthermore via Reuters:
The tip appeared unrelated to a previously reported YouTube comment in which a person named Nikolas Cruz said, “I‘m going to be a professional school shooter.” The FBI has acknowledged getting that tip as well but failing to connect it to Cruz, who is accused of carrying out the massacre at a high school in Parkland, Florida on Wednesday with an AR-15-style assault rifle.
“Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life,” the FBI said in its statement. “The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami field office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken. We have determined that these protocols were not followed.”
This particular tip would potentially be the second such known relayed to the FBI by concerned citizens about the alleged gunman. Last fall, a bail bondsman and YouTube vlogger reported a comment on a video post by someone who went by the name of the Parkland shooter. In the comment it stated that they (possibly the gunman) wanted to be a ‘professional school shooter’.
Thursday the gunman’s attorney Melissa McNeill told reporters that he was a “broken human being,” and that “He’s sad, he’s mournful, he’s remorseful.”
Meanwhile Donald Trump in a tweet in the aftermath of the shooting seemed to point the finger at neighbors and classmates knowing he was a big problem but seemingly (according to Trump) did nothing to report him to the authorities. Ironic since the FBI didn’t act on the tip they did receive.
In light of the FBI dropping the ball, Florida governor Rick Scott called on the Bureau’s director Christopher Wray to resign.
“We constantly promote ‘see something, say something,’ and a courageous person did just that to the FBI. And the FBI failed to act,” Scott fumed in a statement.
“Seventeen innocent people are dead and acknowledging a mistake isn’t going to cut it. An apology will never bring these 17 Floridians back to life or comfort the families who are in pain.”
However despite the FBI’s inexcusable oversight (to say the very least) you wonder what they could have actually done if they did in fact act on the tip? Would they have arrested him or take his guns away based on any sort of reasonable suspicion? It doesn’t seem like that would be the case which means the FBI interviewing the suspect maybe wouldn’t have prevented anything. The crux of the this ongoing problem remains the gun laws on the books in this Country and Congress’ do-nothing approach to address these issues. For instance, how much sense does it make that in the state of Florida, you have to be 21 in order to purchase a handgun however you only need to be 18 to buy an AR-15 which has been the gun of choice in these mass shootings?