Broward Sheriff Israel’s Office Didn’t Miss Warning Signs… They IGNORED Them

A lot of folks blame the FBI for missing not one, but two tips about the Florida school killer.  Frankly, the bigger blame in the Florida tragedy lies with the local sheriff's office, headed by Hillary supporter, Sheriff Scott Israel.  His office chose not to take action, despite dozens of visits about [scumbag’s name redacted], including some serious crimes where he should have been arrested. Or involuntarily committed.  Or both.

CTH reports on these examples:

•  Feb. 5, 2016: A Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy is told by an anonymous caller that [scumbag’s name redacted], 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.  [Editor:  Who did nothing.]
•  Sept. 23, 2016: A “peer counselor” reports to Peterson that [scumbag’s name redacted] had possibly ingested gasoline in a suicide attempt, was cutting himself and wanted to buy a gun. A mental health counselor advises against involuntarily committing Cruz. The high school says it will conduct a threat assessment.
•  Sept. 28, 2016: An investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families rules [scumbag’s name redacted] is stable, despite “fresh cuts” on his arms. His mother, Lynda [scumbag’s last name redacted], says in the past he wrote a racial slur against African Americans on his book bag and had recently talked of buying firearms.
•  Sept. 24, 2017: A YouTube user named “[scumbag’s name redacted]” posts a comment stating he wants to become a “professional school shooter.” The comment is reported to the FBI in Mississippi, which fails to make the connection to [scumbag’s name redacted] in South Florida.
•  Nov. 1, 2017: Katherine Blaine, Lynda [scumbag’s name redacted]’s cousin, calls BSO to report that [scumbag’s name redacted] had weapons and asks that police recover them. A “close family friend” agrees to take the firearms, according to BSO.
•  Nov. 29, 2017: The Palm Beach County family that took in [scumbag’s name redacted] after the death of his mother calls the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office to report a fight between him and their son, 22. A member of the family says that [scumbag’s name redacted] had threatened to “get his gun and come back” and that he has “put the gun to others’ heads in the past.” The family does not want him arrested once he calms down.
•  Nov. 30, 2017: A caller from Massachusetts calls BSO to report that [scumbag’s name redacted] is collecting guns and knives and could be a “school shooter in the making.” A BSO deputy advises the caller to contact the Palm Beach sheriff.
•  Jan. 5, 2018: A caller to the FBI’s tip line reports that [scumbag’s name redacted] has “a desire to kill people” and could potentially conduct a school shooting. The information is never passed on to the FBI’s office in Miami.

But the little-known fact of that matter is that Sheriff Israel had ordered his department not to make arrests for even serious criminal behaviors at Broward County schools.  What's more, the schools' CCTV video feeds run on a 27-minute delay.  Why?  To allow school resource officers to erase evidence of criminal – sometimes violent criminal behavior – before it's transmitted to the department and archived.  Yes, the BSO places more importance on minimizing the numbers of arrests – particularly of minorities – over the safety of students in that county's schools.

Even the mainstream media has begun to report on this…

In November, a tipster called BSO to say [scumbag’s name redacted] “could be a school shooter in the making,” but deputies did not write up a report on that warning. It came just weeks after a relative called urging BSO to seize his weapons. Two years ago, according to a newly released timeline of interactions with [scumbag’s name redacted]’s family, a deputy investigated a report that [scumbag’s name redacted] “planned to shoot up the school” — intelligence that was forwarded to the school’s resource officer, with no apparent result.

Yes, Sheriff Israel and his department stand behind their new policy to not make arrests.  From Public Source:

These districts fought the school-to-prison pipeline. Can Pittsburgh learn their lessons?

…Take Broward County, the Florida county that used to rank No. 1 at sending students to their state’s juvenile justice system.

The stats troubled Broward County leaders, and they responded with a bold solution: Lower arrests by not making arrests.

…The results were quickly positive.

School district officials say the strategy allowed schools to respond more constructively to normal teenage behavior, without hurting police ability to respond to serious crime.

Not hurt police ability to respond to serious crime?  You mean like a teen who repeatedly threatens to shoot up his school while posing with photos?  

The results were positive?  For whom?  The liberal Democrats running the schools? 

Why, following the money, sure enough.  Fewer arrests equals more government money for the schools.  As for the students?  Well, policies of ignoring criminal behavior were certainly not beneficial for the average decent kid who suffers the bullying, violence and criminal mischief of hooligans who can't behave.  And most certainly not for the 17 dead at the hands of this loser punk on Valentine's Day.

Here's more on how Robert Runcie fixed the "school to prison pipeline" via The American Prospect.

When, after a nationwide search, he was hired two years ago to serve as superintendent of Florida’s Broward County Public Schools, Robert Runcie began brainstorming ways to close the racial achievement gap. At the time, black students in the sixth-largest district in the country had a graduation rate of only 61 percent compared to 81 percent for white students. To find out why, Runcie, who once headed a management-consulting firm, went to the data.

“One of the first things I saw was a huge differential in minority students, black male students in particular, in terms of suspensions and arrests,” he says. Black students made up two-thirds of all suspensions during the 2011-2012 school year despite comprising only 40 percent of the student body. And while there were 15,000 serious incidents like assaults and drug possession reported that year, 85 percent of all 82,000 suspensions were for minor incidents—use of profanity, disruptions of class—and 71 percent of all 1,000-plus arrests were for misdemeanors. The last statistic, says Runcie, “was a huge red flag.”

Notice how the conflate criminal behaviors with suspensions for minor issues.  

Like most large school districts in the United States, discipline policies in Broward reflected the idea that the best way to maintain an orderly classroom is to get rid of disruptive students, an approach known as zero tolerance.

It worked for two centuries in America.  But noooo, we can't go with a proven system.

Maybe some of these kids were destined for prison (or death on the streets) anyway, due to piss-poor parenting (or no parenting at all) by dysfunctional families / single mothers?  Perhaps blaming school arrests for a "schools-to-prison pipeline" (great liberal phrasology there) is like blaming heart medication for an increased incidence of heart attacks.

So, instead of arresting kids for criminal behaviors, what do the soft-on-crime liberals running Broward Co. Schools do?  They "counsel them with the PROMISE program" instead of suspending them.  

Broward’s Collaborative Agreement on School Discipline was announced in early November. Instead of suspensions, students can now be referred to the PROMISE program, where they receive counseling for several days and then return to school. A host of non-violent misdemeanors no longer require an arrest, though officers can sometimes override that if they feel it is necessary (“I wanted to make sure deputies always had discretion,” says Scott Israel, Broward County’s sheriff). The school district’s Office of Minority Male Achievement reviews data to ensure that punishments for minor infractions and racial disparities are on the decline.

Yeah, Sheriff Israel wants to take away your guns.  He'll even do it by force if necessary.  

But he won't arrest Broward County school kids who threaten to shoot up their schools while posing for guns.

What a pathetic political hack.

For more about this stench in Broward County, see the whole piece at the Conservative Treehouse.