Thread: At least 20 injured in Florida high school mass shooting

Trump backs effort to improve gun background checks

After deadly Parkland shooting, deputies will now carry AR-15 rifles on school grounds, sheriff says



JULIA JACOBO
Good Morning America February 21, 2018


After deadly Parkland shooting, deputies will now carry AR-15 rifles on school grounds, sheriff says. More

Broward County sheriff's deputies will now carry AR-15 rifles while on school campuses following the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last week, Sheriff Scott Israel announced today.

The new policy was implemented Wednesday morning.

In lieu of gun lockers, the only time deputies will not be "slinging a rifle" is when the firearm is locked in police vehicles, Israel said.

The rifles will not be fully automatic and will only be handled by deputies who are "trained and qualified" to operate them, Israel said.

The suspect in the shooting, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, allegedly used a variant of the AR-15 to carry out the deadly attack, which killed 17 people, authorities said.

When asked by a reporter what the motive in the shooting was, Israel responded, "Pure evil."

Trump holds listening session with students on mass shootings

Florida lawmakers face political pressure after Parkland shooting

Israel suggested a "three-pronged approach" to better secure schools, which includes fortifying the buildings, evaluating how many school resource deputies are needed at each school and sensible gun control.

"There are some people in this country that shouldn't be allowed to have a gun," Israel said.


PHOTO: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is pictured in an aerial view in Parkland, Florida, Feb. 15, 2018. (Thom Baur/Reuters) More

At least one armed school resource deputy was on campus at the time of the shooting, and his response and actions will be "looked at and scrutinized," Israel said.

"You're darn right he was prepared to do something about it," Israel said of the school resource deputy.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump held a listening session with students and parents affected by school shootings. In addition, lawmakers in Florida are facing political pressure following the Parkland shooting.


PHOTO: Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel announced that sheriff's deputies will now be carrying AR-15 rifles while on school grounds. (WPLG) More

Israel thanked the numerous law enforcement agencies that assisted in the shooting response and commended the students who traveled to Tallahassee and Washington, D.C., to speak out about gun control.

The sheriff vowed to remain transparent throughout the investigation and keep the public informed as important information comes to light.

Cruz was arrested in a residential neighborhood near his former high school more than an hour after the shooting began. He was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder and is being held in a Broward County jail.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/deadly-par...opstories.html

Time to Lock and Load!! Fight back America. No more standing down, no more hiding behind desks, no more cowering. You be ready to blast these sociopaths back to the hell that dropped 'em here. Cruz is not sick, he's not mentally ill, he's a low-down defective sociopath.

Now get technology, cameras and a Rapid Message Alert system in place so the teachers and students know what the heck is going on.

That is a very large school...over 3,000 students and the teachers had NO IDEA what was going on...that there was NO fire. They should have gotten Rapid Message Alert letting them know "Code Red" get in the nearest classroom, take cover and lock the door. How many would have been saved had they known and got a simple alert. No excuse to not have this system put in place.

Different schools will need different layers of security.

metal detectors should be mandatory at all school doors. This was a large school and should have had security officers + metal detector check points.

As Gunman Rampaged Through Florida School, Armed Deputy ‘Never Went In’

By ALAN BLINDER and PATRICIA MAZZEIFEB. 22, 2018



Sheriff Scott Israel of Broward County before a town hall-style meeting broadcast on CNN in Sunrise, Fla., on Wednesday. Credit Pool photo by Michael Laughlin FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. —

The only armed sheriff’s deputy at a Florida high school where 17 people were killed took cover outside rather than charging into the building when the massacre began, the Broward County sheriff said on Thursday. The sheriff also acknowledged that his office received 23 calls related to the suspect going back a decade, including one last year that said he was collecting knives and guns, but may not have adequately followed up.

The deputy, Scot Peterson, resigned on Thursday after being suspended without pay after Sheriff Scott Israel reviewed surveillance video.

“He never went in,” Sheriff Israel said in a news conference. He said the video showed Deputy Peterson doing “nothing.”

“There are no words,” said Sheriff Israel, who described himself as “devastated, sick to my stomach.”

Two other deputies were placed on restricted duty on Thursday because they may have mishandled tips called in to the sheriff’s office over the past two years warning that the suspect, Nikolas Cruz, appeared intent on becoming a school shooter, Sheriff Israel said.

The revelations added to a growing list of failures and missed signs by the authorities that might have helped prevent one of the deadliest school shootings in American history.

The F.B.I. received a tip last month from someone close to Mr. Cruz that he owned a gun and had talked of committing a school shooting, the bureau revealed last week, acknowledging that it had failed to investigate. The tip about Mr. Cruz appeared to be the second in four months, after another person told the bureau about an online comment apparently posted by Mr. Cruz that he wanted to become “a professional school shooter.”

The Florida Department of Children and Families, the state social services agency, looked into Mr. Cruz’s well-being in 2016 after he posted on social media that he was cutting himself, but investigators determined he was not at risk of harming himself or others. The Broward County Public Schools had disciplinary complaints on Mr. Cruz dating back to when he was in middle school, including a long history of fighting.

Sheriff Israel said he informed Deputy Peterson on Thursday that he was being suspended without pay and placed under internal investigation. At 12:37 p.m. on Thursday, sheriff’s office records show, Deputy Peterson, signed his retirement papers, which amounted to a resignation. He had been with the office for more than 32 years.

“The investigation will continue,” Sheriff Israel said.
The surveillance video, which was not released, showed Deputy Peterson remained outside the west side of the building for at least four minutes while the gunman was inside, according to Sheriff Israel. The shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School lasted less than six minutes. The video was corroborated by witness statements, Sheriff Israel said.

The New York Times reported on Wednesday that an officer from the Coral Springs Police Department who responded to the shooting had seen Deputy Peterson in a Stoneman Douglas High parking lot. The deputy “was seeking cover behind a concrete column leading to a stairwell,” Officer Tim Burton said.

In the chaos immediately after the shooting, there were other missteps. A 20-minute delay in school surveillance video confused Coral Springs police officers trying to find the gunman, said Chief Tony Pustizzi. By then, the suspect had already left the building.

Chief Pustizzi called it a communications failure. The video system allows for real-time playback
“At first the guys are hearing, ‘Oh, he’s on the second floor.’ Well, it’s not true, ‘cause we have people on the second floor and the people are saying, ‘Well, he’s not on the second floor,’” Chief Pustizzi said, adding that, if anything, the officers were “more expeditious” as they moved through the school under the belief the gunman was still there.
Coral Springs police have said they were the first to respond to the shooting. Sheriff Israel, who defended his office’s response on Wednesday and said his own deputies had not hung back outside the building, said on Thursday that the Coral Springs officers acted “heroically.”

Samantha Fuentes, an 18-year-old senior at Stoneman Douglas High who was shot in both legs, said she never saw Deputy Peterson during the “30 minutes” that passed before SWAT officers arrived at the first-floor classroom in which she and other students had been taking a class.

“He is not someone who has much of a presence” in the school, she said.
Sheriff Israel, flanked by two of his top aides, appeared emotional Thursday during the news conference in which he described Deputy Peterson’s conduct. His eyes appeared to glisten, and his speech was sometimes halting.

The two other deputies placed on restricted duty pending an internal investigation were identified by the sheriff’s office as Edward Eason and Guntis Treijs.

In November 2017, a caller told the authorities that Mr. Cruz had been stockpiling guns and knives. In a summary of the call, the sheriff’s office said the caller, located in Massachusetts, worried that Mr. Cruz “will kill himself one day and believes he could be a school shooter in the making.” A deputy contacted the person who called, but no report was filed. The caller was referred to the sheriff’s office in Palm Beach County, where the caller said Mr. Cruz lived.

In February 2016, the sheriff’s office received what it described as “thirdhand information” that Mr. Cruz “planned to shoot up the school” and had posted a picture on Instagram of a “juvenile with guns.” A deputy determined that Mr. Cruz had knives and a BB gun and forwarded the information to the school resource officer at Stoneman Douglas High. That was Deputy Peterson.

Some of the other calls reveal further details about Mr. Cruz’s troubled childhood. In November 2014, someone reported that a person fitting Mr. Cruz’s description shot a chicken with a possible BB gun. Mr. Cruz was found to own an airsoft rifle, which he admitted to using, but denied he shot chickens.

And in September 2016, a peer counselor at Stoneman Douglas High alerted the school resource officer — likely Deputy Peterson — that Mr. Cruz “possibly ingested gasoline” the week prior “in an attempt to commit suicide and is cutting himself.”

“Mental health counselor advised Cruz did not meet criteria for Baker Act,” the summary said, referring to the Florida law that allows the police to commit the mentally ill against their will.
Stoneman Douglas High initiated a “threat assessment” on Mr. Cruz after the counselor’s report. The Florida Department of Children of Families looked into whether Mr. Cruz was at risk of harming himself or others and concluded he was not because he was living with his mother, attending school and seeing a counselor.

Alan Blinder reported from Fort Lauderdale, and Patricia Mazzei from New York. Reporting was contributed by Jess Bidgood from Boston, Nick Madigan from Miami, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Maggie Astor from New York.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/u...-shooting.html

Sheriff Israel said he informed Deputy Peterson on Thursday that he was being suspended without pay and placed under internal investigation. At 12:37 p.m. on Thursday, sheriff’s office records show, Deputy Peterson, signed his retirement papers, which amounted to a resignation. He had been with the office for more than 32 years.

Well, that certainly explains a lot. Deputy Peterson was already eligible for retirement, so his cowardly self didn't see the sense in risking his life for those children. This is not not something you would expect from someone with 32 years of experience. Deputy Peterson, you disgust me!

Yeah, I knew this wasn't going to have a good ending. It's been over a week and no one had found, interviewed or revealed the name and whereabouts of this police officer until today. He should have been hunted down and interviewed by the media or hounded until he told the truth a week ago.

This is why you must have multiple people armed in the schools to adequately cover the premises, because not everyone with a gun can pull the trigger, not everyone who can pull the trigger can hit the target, and not everyone with a gun will pursue and face off with a killer on their own with no cover or back-up.

Most law enforcement officers are trained to wait for back-up or in a mass shooting, a SWAT team, that's their procedures.

I'm not going to blame this Sheriff's Deputy. It's a choice he made, probably according to the rules of engagement for the department. I don't think we want to message to our law enforcement that we expect them to engage in likely suicide missions on our behalf because we didn't lock our doors, follow-up on months of tips and leads, or have any back-up or support inside the facility.

It's a PR disaster for the Sheriff's Department, but probably a decision that kept the death toll at 17 instead of 18.

It's why the schools must have multiple armed personnel and/or multiple armed security guards inside the facility.

But even then, before you ask or invite people to risk their lives for you or your children, lock the gawd damn doors and keep them locked during class-time.

Most law enforcement officers are trained to wait for back-up or in a mass shooting, a SWAT team, that's their procedures.

You're behind the times, Judy. As a result of the bloody mass killings at Columbine, that procedure has changed. Now the proper procedure is to rush to the gunfire! Getting to the shooter as quickly as possible is the expected procedure, not waiting around for the victim number to climb.

A single officer with no back-up? Sorry, but I don't agree with that. That's a suicide mission.

Originally Posted by Judy

A single officer with no back-up? Sorry, but I don't agree with that. That's a suicide mission.

Sorry they didn't feel it was necessary to check with Judy before the change in procedure.

How' it a suicide mission? A well trained officer with 32 years of experience against a 19 year old. I'd bet on the officer every time, even if he did only have a 9mm. Besides that, every minute wasted means more dead children. Nope, waiting outside for backup is not appropriate in this situation. Taking out the shooter as quickly as possible is though.