Complacency and ideology, not just Cruz, killed those students

The ABC affiliate serving Broward County, Fla., reports, "School board knew of Parkland shooter's obsession with guns and violence, documents show."

PARKLAND, Fla. - Exclusive documents obtained by Local 10 News show the education plan for school shooter Nikolas Cruz; a plan that left clear signals that should have alerted officials of the danger he posed to the community, according to a former Broward County ESE specialist who reviewed the information at the station's request.

"What you're discussing from the plan seems to be the profile of a mass killer," said Dottie Provenzano, who retired from Broward County Public Schools in 2017.

The education plan shows that, even as Cruz was making progress at the Cross Creek School for emotionally and behaviorally disabled students in late 2015, but that he was known by administrators to have an obsession with guns and violence. Here are some passages from the plan:

"Nikolas at times, will be distracted by inappropriate conversations of his peers if the topic is about guns, people being killed or the armed forces," wrote Cross Creek educators.

"He is fascinated by the use of guns and often speaks of weapons and the importance of  'having weapons to remain safe in this world.'"

"He becomes preoccupied with things such as current events regarding wars and terrorist [sic]."
Provenzano said that in 42 years of dealing with exceptional students she never saw a document with such obvious signs that a student might resort to violence. 

Meanwhile, the Miami Herald asks, "Parkland shooter always in trouble, never expelled. Could school system have done more?"

At times, Nikolas Cruz’s behavior could be a school administrator’s nightmare: Teachers and other students said he kicked doors, cursed at teachers, fought with and threatened classmates and brought a backpack with bullets to school. He collected a string of discipline for profanity, disobedience, insubordination, and disruption.

In 2014, administrators transferred Cruz to an alternative school for children with emotional and behavioral disabilities — only to change course two years later and return him to a traditional neighborhood school, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Cruz was banished from Douglas a year later for other disciplinary violations — then toggled between three other alternative placements, school records obtained by the Miami Herald show.

If the frequent transfers — records show there were six in three years — did little to stanch Cruz’s disruptive behavior, they eventually became the only option left in the school district’s toolbox. Contrary to early reports, Cruz was never expelled from Broward schools. Legally, he couldn’t be.

Under federal law, Nikolas Cruz had a right to a “free and appropriate” education at a public school near him. His classmates had a right to an education free of fear.

Why, when deputies made 39 visits to Cruz's home, did none of those visits end in arrest or at least a mandatory referral to psych services?

Of course the school system "could have done more." They could have had Cruz arrested. The question is, why didn't they do that? After all, Broward authorities just arrested a sixth-grade girl for making a single threat of school violence.

There is an answer, but progressives won't like it. Last August, Broward County,

Authorities agreed to treat twelve different misdemeanor offenses as school-related issues, not criminal ones.  The results impressed the people who initiated the program.  Arrests dropped from more than a thousand in 2011-2012 to less than four hundred just four years later.

One particular motivation behind programs like Broward County's was the pressure from multiple sources to reduce the statistical disparity between black and Hispanic student arrests on one hand and white and Asian student arrests on the other.  ...

By virtue of his name alone, Nikolas de Jesús Cruz, the adopted son of Lynda and Roger Cruz, became a statistical Hispanic.  As such, authorities at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland had every reason not to report his troubling and likely criminal behavior to the police.

Much more detail here. And also the background here (guess what? It was all about getting money from the state and the feds. Surprise! Not.)

But progressives will never look into the mirror and admit that their policies and ideology at least partly contributed to this horror. Nope, it's all the NRA's fault.

End note: Meanwhile, the momentum to arm teachers is gathering steam. (I do not support this, btw, for reasons I explained here.)