TEHRAN, March 6-Following the Parkland, Florida school shooting, the media focused on new gun control laws, while ignoring the failures of law enforcement and the government program encouraging schools and police to look the other way.
TEHRAN,Young Journalists Club (YJC) -Following the Parkland, Florida school shooting, the media focused on new gun control laws, while ignoring the failures of law enforcement and the government program encouraging schools and police to look the other way.
The Valentine’s Day shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Broward County, Florida left 17 students and faculty dead and 14 more wounded. The gunman was identified as Nikolas Cruz, 19, a former student with a history of behavioral problems.
As it unfortunately happens after each shooting in the US, calls for gun control dominated the aftermath of the tragedy at Stoneman Douglas. Several students have since become celebrity gun control advocates, denouncing the National Rifle Association (NRA) and calling for tougher gun control laws, and their emotional outbursts have been amplified by the media such as CNN.
There is absolutely a question of how Cruz was able to legally get his hands on AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. There are also questions surrounding why the local police and the FBI ignored several warning signs and reports they received about Cruz.
A new investigative report by conservative journalist Paul Sperry points to one possible reason why the school district and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office might have looked the other way: a 2013 program implemented by the Obama administration to end the so-called “school to prison pipeline.”
Blind eye, deaf ear
Broward County Sheriff’s department showed slow reaction to the developments in Parkland on February 14. Sheriff Scott Israel, who joined the students at the CNN town hall in pillorying NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch, admitted that one of his deputies assigned to the school did not enter the building to engage Cruz, instead choosing to stand outside. The deputy was allowed to retire.
CNN also reported claims from the police in nearby Coral Springs that three more Broward County deputies who arrived at the scene took up positions outside the school, but did not enter or engage. Israel responded by claiming he had given “exemplary leadership” to the sheriff’s department.
The day after the CNN town hall, Israel released the history of service calls to the home of Nikolas Cruz, which were mostly related to domestic violence. Eighteen of the calls involved Cruz himself, but “none appeared arrestable under Florida law,” Israel said.
The last call listed, dated November 30, 2017, came from someone in Massachusetts who said that Cruz was “collecting guns and knives” and “could be a school shooter in the making.”
The FBI was also alerted to Cruz on January 5, over a comment left on a YouTube video under his name. The bureau said that they were unable to verify the identity of the commenter, and that the tip was somehow never forwarded to the Miami office. Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has called for FBI Director Christopher Wray’s resignation over the failure.
Source:RT