Posted on 02/15/2018 5:34:38 AM PST by SJackson
Teachers were warned in advance about the teenager who allegedly carried out a mass shooting at his former school in Florida, US media are reporting.
Nikolas Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder following the deadliest shooting at a US school since 2012.
A teacher said Mr Cruz was not allowed on campus with a backpack.
Seventeen people were killed in the attack and many more injured. Several people are in a critical condition. Mr Cruz, 19, apparently left the scene of the shooting by blending in with fleeing students, but was arrested several miles away and is now in police custody. What was the warning?
Maths teacher Jim Gard told the Miami Herald that school authorities had emailed teachers about Mr Cruz's behaviour.
"We were told last year that he wasn't allowed on campus with a backpack on him," Mr Gard told the Miami Herald. "There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Yes, says a lot about school officials who felt his that serious a risk, but didn't contact authorities. They, teachers and administrators, need to be trained, again. They need to be shielded from lawsuits over mistakes, other than negligence. And there needs to be either a time limitation, an appeal process, or both about stripping 2nd amendment rights from someone committed to an institution.
The FBI has said they didn’t locate the poster of the threat online. There are a lot of Cruzs. This was really a local failure, the school knew all they needed to to bring in the authorities.
My first wife (deceased) recounted how at high school she was backed in a corner by a big kid with a knife.
He got suspended for the rest of the day. She should have quit—but she liked the crazy job.
I agree. Though I do think educators are empowered to intervene, I suspect the threat of legal and/or administractive action is a big part of the problem. Cruz, multiple fights, aka assault, ammunition in his backpack (a near federal felony), threats. They had plenty of reasons to contact the sheriff.
You are so correct. What now is the moral standard in this secular post-Christianity society for most?
There is none. Heathens all.
Why yes. And this is a sin of souls. Governments and other collective action doesn’t create Christianity. Christ does.
America will reflect lostness to the degree the people are not found.
Why yes. And this is a sin of souls. Governments and other collective action doesn’t create Christianity. Christ does.
America will reflect lostness to the degree the people are not found.
A lot of not wanting to handle the hot potato.
Intentionally ignore a threat. Hope a crazy does something. Advocate gun control. The Sorosian Communist Democrat Party in action.
The had the means and methods in place to stop this long ago. Instead, they wait until he snaps then want new rules in place so it doesn’t happen again!
Why didn’t you use the means you already had?
The devil fears to tread when God is present
I remember as a child we had a whole neighborhood of kids to play with. You didn’t want to be inside because it was hot and mom would find chores for you to do. We had run of the entire block. Football, baseball, Frisbee, built kites, we were socialized. Nowadays, kids aren’t. They stay inside cause its hot outside, the have 500 TV channels internet, videogames, and are disconnected from each other. They have no longterm friendships, they are essentially strangers to each other.
Geez... maybe I should rethink playing the lotto (and start doing so.)
The daughter of a friend of my wife goes to Marshall County (KY) High School and fled the scene in her car with several other students who piled in.
The son of my then boss was AT Heath High School when that shooting / those murders occurred.
Neither of the above “connections” was hurt, but that misses the point: One cannot analyze something like this by only tallying the casualties vs. the population. The Heath High School shooting shook up the entire area, especially Western KY. I was there. I know. The effect of the Marshall County H.S. shooting is, so far as I can tell from a slightly less closely connected standpoint (and I have been also distracted with family matters), as great or greater.
This shooting in FL will undoubtedly deeply trouble far more people than the above situations.
These shootings are qualitatively a different animal than if, say, an F5 tornado had come through and literally levelled even “safe rooms”, killing a number of students. Tornadoes are a part of Nature and have always been with us. They are no more “evil” than... well... a gun. (I say that despite having been in a home, my home, destroyed by an F4 twister.) OTOH, these school shootings are an expression of evil in Mankind, which expression has become far more common in recent years. I believe we are now up to 235 school shootings since Sandy Hook? I find that a lot more frightening than tornadoes because these shootings are just the tip of a man made “iceberg”, IMO. Tornadoes... WYSIWYG.
Not only have most parents had in the past had a sense that school was a relatively “safe” place for their kids to be, I think most people have a strong sense that the increase in numbers of this sort of event is telling us something is terribly wrong, and moreover, that we are seeing revealed failures on multiple levels. (I won’t rehash all the pertinent discussion above!)
I suspect there are not exactly hundreds of thousands of Nikolas Cruz's, though. Plus checking out the user history and account on Facebook should reveal clues.
That said, the school fell down on the job, too...
In the case of the Marshall County KY HS shooting, the sheriff, IIRC, watched the vids from the security cams and commented later @ a press conference that the kids had followed their training of what to do in case of a shooting very well. The sheriff was certain that had reduced casualties.
In this case though, if indeed Cruz hit the fire alarm and then opened fire on the kids and teachers pouring into the hallway... There would be a casualty count much like what occurred no matter how well the kids were trained. (The fire / bomb drill would have to be altered — check halls for shooter(s) B4 exiting — possibly raising the risks if there was a real fire / bomb.)
The only exception I can think of, in the shooter pulls fire alarm scenario, would be IF the shooter could be quickly rushed by all nearby, from front and back, in close quarters. In that case the shooter would have less time to aim (maybe less fatal injuries, but perhaps more injuries overall.) But, good God, not only is that a huge “IF”, that’s expecting mostly kids to be trained and act as commandos, and damned brave ones at that. It is too much to ask...! :-(
Good Lord, that is almost as scary in some ways as these shootings.
Now, that said, most of the teachers at my daughter's (private) middle school seem to be "better than that". Almost all seem very energetic and engaged, at least in the school setting of parent-teacher conferences, activities, resolving problems, etc. Also, the skills to work with kids are rather different than those to design, say, the landing of a SpaceX booster, or sift through Tax Law.
Then again, my wife formerly taught pre-school and kindergarten at a prestigious school in a 3rd world country, and also was the head of the elementary school (Grades PS-3, IIRC) for a year, and she is unimpressed by the teaching in Kindergarten at even this same private school system our daughter goes to. My wife says if SHE was teaching the kindergarten there, and allowed to use the techniques from her old school, the students would come out at LEAST one grade level higher in reading comprehension, and so on, when they graduated to 1st grade. (I can believe that for a number of reasons to lengthy to discuss, OT, here.)
Perhaps some of the difference is that when I was a kid, the less "social" kids did not have modern distractions, and I suspect many(?) of those kids turned to books. I well remember THAT, as my parents bought us kids many books that were a good influence -- I have even managed to hang on to most of our old set of "Ted Scott Flying Stories", and I guarantee those were a lot better influence on me than most of what kids find on the Internet, in video games, in most pop music, on TV, etc...
They’re also too busy to have friends. Kids in our neighborhood are never around — always absorbed into some sport or dance thing, or scouts ....can so and so come over? No, he’s got a 5-day scout jamboree coming up ....
I agree with you regarding the impact to people being different depending on the reason for the death. My wife’s first husband died of leukemia so she was made single. Meanwhile, my wife of 20 years decided she didn’t want to be married any more and divorced me while we had a 10, 13 and 16 year old daughter.
In both cases, the result for the left spouse is the same. No spouse. But even my wife admits that at least with death there is no sense of betrayal.
This is an horrific event. Of that I have no doubt, though I can’t fully empathize since it didn’t happen to me. But bad things HAVE been done to me, and I know that feeling of something MUST be done.
It is after that point that the question must be asked and answered in a way that does not harm the society in general, and DOES address the actual issue.
For these shootings, I don’t see the gun as the problem in the slightest. It is the tool used. And it is the tool used because it is the easiest to use. The problem is not the gun.
The problem is elsewhere. There are many possible causes, and I’m sure you are aware of most of them, but the interesting thing is how difficult it is to discuss them in a reasonable manner. It’s because it is not PC to do so.
i.e. the real cause of the deaths of so many of these children is PC. Break through that and we may be able to get somewhere.
On a related note, I heard a speaker at a gathering today on the radio applaud the first responders to the event. He said it was the teachers and staff at the school who were the first responders.
If only they had been armed...
It has been reported that the adoptive father died several years ago from an illness.
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