Long before Nikolas Cruz decided to shoot up the high school in Parkland from which he’d been suspended, he was known to be troubled and to have the potential for violence either to himself or others. But it’s a myth to think nothing was done. Quite a few things were done, starting when Cruz was quite young. Nevertheless, they were ineffective at preventing this crime.
The information in this post is not meant to include every intervention Cruz received; it’s just based on what I’ve read so far. Some of it may even be incorrect, as such reports often are. But although the FBI certainly failed to respond to any warnings it had received about Nikolas Cruz, the system in general had not ignored him.
By “system in general” I mean the formal systems: educational, mental health, and law enforcement. My goal here is not to defend the systems tasked with identifying and helping at-risk children and adolescents. My goal is to just introduce the facts (as best we know at this point) and let you decide.
I also believe that it is more dangerous for schools to be “gun-free zones” than to be able to have a few armed and trained people on the premises. For example, an armed guard (or two) should have been posted at all times at this particular school, given what authorities knew about the threat.
To have locked Cruz up in advance was impossible without a grave violation of civil liberties; he had committed no crime of that sort of seriousness. His acts of violence appear to have been limited to a few fights, and some threats (although there may be more that we don’t know about). If Cruz had specifically threatened a particular school, for example, that might have been actionable. But in that case he may have gotten off very lightly and the events would have played out anyway, perhaps a bit later in time.
There is also the troubling possibility that this sort of directive reclassified some offenses of Cruz as non-criminal when they might have originally gotten him charged with a crime:
Broward County used to lead the state of Florida in sending students to the state’s juvenile justice system. County leaders responded with a perfectly progressive solution: “lower arrests by not making arrests.”
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.
It’s possible this affected Cruz, but we just don’t know.
What about involuntary commitment? In answer to that question I refer you to a previous post of mine from 2007, written about the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, whose profile was in many ways not unlike Cruz’s. Please read that post, because most of it is relevant to the current situation.
As for Cruz’s mental health history, see this for some of what’s been reported so far.
As far as whether he was on SSRIs or other drugs, according to this report, Cruz refused to take drugs:
Five days before the shooting, Kimberly Snead [the mother of the friend with whom Cruz was living] took Cruz to the office of a therapist she has been seeing to deal with her grief over her dad’s death. Cruz said he was open to therapy [for his depression] but didn’t like medication. He took a business card and was figuring out what his health insurance would cover.
There’s also this:
Paul Gold, 45, who lived next door to the family from 2009-2010 told the New York Times that Cruz ‘had emotional problems’ and may have been ‘diagnosed with autism’.
He said he knows that Cruz was sent to a school for students with special needs at one point.
‘He had trouble controlling his temper. He broke things. He would do that sometimes at our house when he lost his temper. But he was always very apologetic afterwards,’ Gold said…
Those who knew the family say the loss of Cruz’s mother would have been difficult, since she was the only one close to him.
‘His mother was his entire life and when he lost her, I believe that was it for the boy’s peace of mind,’ Gold said.
As for the educational system, there were many many interventions; please see this extensive history. Note that when Cruz was suspended from the regular high school (the one he later attacked), he ” bounced between three alternative schools, most recently Rock Island OCLC in Oakland Park…” Alternative schools are small, and the teachers are trained in dealing with “at risk” kids. The day he became a mass murderer, Cruz was AWOL from his most recent alternative school, Rock Island OCLC.
More:
As early as 3 years old, Cruz was diagnosed as developmentally disabled, the school district documents state.
After attending Westglades Middle, he moved in February 2014 to Cross Creek, a Pompano Beach public school that offers a program for emotionally and behaviorally disabled children.
State records from the Department of Children & Families show Cruz was afflicted with a brain disorder marked by bouts of hyperactivity and a difficultly paying attention. The 2016 records also show him struggling with autism and depression.
He took medicine and had counselors who worked with him in school and at his home, the records state…
At one point, according to the 2016 state report, crisis workers from Henderson Behavioral Health, a major mental health center, were called to the high school and determined that Cruz was “not at risk to harm himself or others.”
Weekes said Henderson workers should have hospitalized Cruz at that point. He’d gotten into a fight, records show, around Sept. 20, 2016 and was suspended. A week later, the state received a report he was cutting his arms on Snapchat, a mobile application.
The Department of Children & Families, however, concluded that “no referrals or services were needed” for him.
“If someone would have caught it and acted on the red flags we not would be here today,” Weekes said. “There were tragic red flags, and they just didn’t catch them.”
DCF Secretary Mike Carroll on Saturday night issued a statement saying that mental health services and supports were in place for Cruz when the agency’s investigation closed. The state only investigates whether an adult is safe and has access to help.
There is no question that Cruz’s mother’s sudden death was likely to have been a huge emotional trigger and a large red flag, though, and something more might (or even should) have been done at that point. However, he seemed to have been taken in by some very good Samaritans who recognized his vulnerability.
It just wasn’t enough.
Also, do not discount the fact that Cruz was adopted at 2, and no one seems to know his history until that time. It may have been very traumatic, which could easily have affected him for life.
However, one thing that does seem reasonable is that Cruz shouldn’t have been allowed to purchase weapons with that history. The mechanism for that would have been what’s called a “red-flag law.” Here’s a description of how it would work:
The law also allows police to petition for the protective orders, which can require firearms to be removed for up to one year. Connecticut, Indiana, Oregon and Washington are the other states with some version of a red flag law.
More than a dozen others, including Hawaii, New Jersey and Missouri, are considering bills that would allow family members or police to petition the courts if they want weapons taken from an individual showing signs of mental distress or violence.
The Florida shooting also has revived debate about whether teachers and school administrators should have that authority as well, given that people at Cruz’s high school witnessed much of his erratic behavior.
Obviously, there are valid fears that such laws would be abused and overused. I certainly have such fears. But it may be that one of the more moderate versions of the law would be reasonable, because without such a law it would take an involuntary commitment to temporarily stop gun ownership by people who are a threat, such as Cruz certainly appeared to have been even before his crime.
Of course, that does nothing to stop the illegal possession of guns by those who are determined to do harm. Cruz most definitely might have gone the illegal route if the legal one had been closed to him (or used some other method to kill). But it would have made it more difficult, anyway.
The people who took Cruz in after his mother’s death tried their best to deal with the weapons issue and a host of other things. Please read this article about them, and afterwards ask yourself if you could have done any better.
This isn’t really about Cruz himself; this is about possible prevention of future incidents like this. In order to figure out what might have prevented something, it’s necessary to study what was actually done and didn’t prevent it. Thus, this post.
