Just When You Thought Broward County's Failures Concerning The Parkland Shooting Can't Get Any Worse, They Do

Just when you thought the multiple failures by government at various levels, mainly at the Broward County Sheriffs Office and Broward County School Board concerning the shooting at Parkland can't get even worse, they do.

It is not the mainstream media providing this latest report of massive incompetence and malfeasance surrounding the shooting. Instead, it is thanks to the work of a 19-year-old Broward student, Kenneth Preston, who found out some incredible further incompetence and yet more opportunities where the powers that be actively ignored and failed to take action against Cruz and thus failed to interdict and prevent the shooting.

Twitchy: ‘My blood is boiling’: Broward student journalist lays out his case against superintendent, school board

Take your time and read it all.

A Quick 4-point summary that doesn't do it justice, again go read it all, it is pretty easy to follow:

1. The School Board after a $100 million dollar appropriation for school security in 2014, they failed to spend it, including a failure to modify the fire alarms to turn off if there is not a real fire, which would likely have saved lives along with other enhancements.
2. The School Board had a policy to keep students out of jail, going so far as to instruct school resource officers that when a felony is committed by a student that they could consider arresting them, not that they should arrest them, but they should just consider it as an option.
3. Cruz "was never arrested despite threatening to kill students, bringing bullets to school, and being involved in multiple fights."
4. No school board member or other administrative officials have been fired or required to resign for their malfeasance and disastrous policies to date.

Again, the mainstream media and professional journalists didn't pick up on this, it took a student journalist to be interested and persistent enough to dig this up, and it again destroys the blame the NRA narrative.

While the blame for these murders lies squarely with the killer, the errors of both omission and commission on the part of the Broward County School Board and The Broward County Sheriffs Office along with a fumble by the FBI and a push from the Obama administration set the stage for this event to happen.

Let's go over the many failures in this case just to highlight how extensive and comprehensive the failure was and how the failures absolutely paved the pay and enabled Cruz to commit his acts:

1. Broward County School Board, as encouraged by the Obama administration, adopts the Broward Promise where they decide to deliberately ignore and not prosecute crimes by students including violent felonies. The policy is likely why there is a 20-minute delay on the video feed to the Sheriff's station, so the school administration can delete evidence in a timely manner. This 20 minute delay causes problems and likely cost lives. The School officials deliberately ignore that Cruz has been threatening to kill students, bringing bullets to school, and being involved in multiple fights and never have the Sheriff's Office arrest him or bring charges for any of these actions, but only suspend him and prohibit him from having a backpack in the building (Anyone want to bet that there was a gun along with the bullets that day and the school disappeared it to avoid prosecuting him under a GFSZ violation?).

2. Broward County Sheriff's Office is called to the Cruz home at least 39 times. Cruz is never arrested or charged during any of these visits. Including:
At least one if not more visits due to allegations he hit his mother - a charge and conviction would be a crime of domestic violence which would have banned him from legally purchasing firearms.
At least one if not more visits due to allegations he hit his brother - a charge and conviction would be a crime of domestic violence which would have banned him from legally purchasing firearms.
At least one visit is based on allegations he pointed a gun at his mother- a charge and conviction would be a felonious assault which would have certainly banned him from legally purchasing firearms.
At least one visit is based on allegations he pointed a gun at his brother - a charge and conviction would be a felonious assault which would have certainly banned him from legally purchasing firearms.
No arrests are ever done nor were charges ever filed and thus all these easy opportunities to stop this before it even happens were lost.

3. In 2016, Florida Department of Child and Family Services investigates an incident with Cruz, the now infamous Deputy Paterson refuses to tell the investigator about the incident that happened at the school, whatever it was, and the matter is dropped.

4. Also in 2016, DCFS and Henderson Mental Health go to the school to possibly detain Cruz for a mental hold under the Baker Act, which would have made him a prohibited person unable to buy a firearm if had they done so. Of course it wasn't done even after he sent out a snapchat showing him cutting himself, stating he wanted to go buy a gun and had hate paraphernalia about. They decided not to do a hold or psych eval because apparently the school counselor did not want them to act prematurely and told them he was getting counseling and had been found stable enough not to be hospitalized. The matter was then closed.

5. Cruz goes on social media with videos that he will shoot up a school. Numerous calls to bother the Sheriff's Office and at least two to the FBI to warn them that Cruz is threatening to shoot up the school. Nothing is done.

6. Cruz is banned from having a backpack at the school and has apparently already been expelled, but security is apparently so lax he can enter carrying a duffel bag to go on his murder spree unchallenged. Some spending of that $100 million dollars towards security might have helped with that.

7. Cruz then pulls the fire alarm and because the security funds have not been spent, the advanced system planned to be installed is not installed and instead of it being cancelled as a false alarm, students do a fire drill and file out of their classrooms, right into Cruz's bullets.

8. Once the shooting starts the School Resource Officer Deputy Peterson refuses to enter the building and engage the killer and even gives false information on the radio.

9. At least three other deputies after arriving similarly wait outside.

10. Deputies are then ordered by a BCSO captain to stage outside.

11.EMS is not allowed by the BCSO to enter the school and against standard procedure the wounded were brought out to them. Likely that cost time and lives both.

12. No Law Enforcement Personnel even enter the building until 11 minutes after the shooting has started. The killer has already left the building by this point.

The sheer amount of fail before, during, and after the shooting is rather staggering. Verily, it takes a village to mess this up this consistently over and over again. So of course, instead of blaming themselves for this causal chain of events a mile long and years in the making, they decided to blame the NRA.

This is as if the powers that be decided to ignore arsonists as it made their crime stats look bad, knew there was one around the area, and knew exactly who the local arsonist was who was setting a series of small fires. Knowing that, they then took a bunch of flammable material, piled it up in a building, soaked it in gasoline, and after being told the arsonist was going to come set it on fire did nothing. After the arsonist gets on social media and says he's coming to light the building on fire they still do nothing. Then, when the arsonist went ahead and in fact lit a match, tosses it onto the gas-soaked pile and burned the building down, they held a press conference to blame the National Match Association for advocating for law-abiding people to be allowed to own matches and preventing common sense match control and match bans.