FBI Admits To Not Following Protocols After Tip On Florida School Shooter

America: The Failure.

As reports have leaked out about alleged Florida school shooter, Nikolas Cruz, a disturbing amount of people have basically said that they knew something was wrong with the individual.

How this clearly disturbed individual was able to get his hands on an AR-15 is an America crisis which we will refuse to address as we just patiently wait for the next mass shooting.

But, given that we live in a homicidal society that nobody has the political will to address, we really need law enforcement to be on the ball whenever one of these threats is made known to them. Here, it would appear that the FBI dropped the ball. From NPR:

The FBI says that someone called its tip line to report concerns about Nikolas Cruz, who has told police he killed 17 people in a Florida high school this week — but that the bureau failed to follow protocols to assess the threat.

The bureau says a person close to Cruz contacted the FBI’s Public Access Line on Jan. 8 to report concerns about him. Those concerns included information about Cruz’s gun ownership, a desire to kill people, erratic behavior and disturbing social media posts.

The caller specifically mentioned the potential for Cruz to carry out a school shooting.

Under FBI protocols, that information should have been assessed as a potential threat to life and forwarded to its Miami field office for further investigation.

But that never happened.

I can’t help feeling that if the shooter had been named “Muhammed Al-Scarypants” somebody would have followed up.

We might not have the political will to address our national addiction to guns. But hopefully we can at least hold the responsible officials accountable for this failure of law enforcement. “If you see something, say something” doesn’t work if law enforcement doesn’t see white kids as potential threats.

FBI Received A Tip Last Month About Florida Shooting Suspect — But Nothing Was Done [NPR]

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Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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