The Soft-on-criminals policy that enabled Parkland shooting

I'm placing this in Other Current Events because the shooting itself is almost a month old, and while it's still a current story, this particular article is over a week old already. I haven't seen it posted, although some folks have certainly talked about the failures of the school.

Disclaimer: I am not absolving the shooter of blame. The only person criminally responsible for the shooting is the shooter.

Real Clear Investigations

This is somewhat of a long read. RCI is described as a center-right outlet according to Media Bias/Fact Check. Of course, who knows what their leanings are. Anyway, this article is not kind to the Obama administration, so consider this your trigger warning if you're an Obama fan. Regardless of the political lean of the author and the outlet, much of the information presented is quite damning. I was trying to find another source, and the only other places I found were other right-leaning sites, although let's be honest this kind of thing isn't likely to be reported on most mainstream news sites.

Let's get to the meat and potatoes.

Documents reviewed by RealClearInvestigations and interviews show that his school district in Florida’s Broward County was in the vanguard of a strategy, adopted by more than 50 other major school districts nationwide, allowing thousands of troubled, often violent, students to commit crimes without legal consequence. The aim was to slow the "school-to-prison pipeline."

“He had a clean record, so alarm bells didn’t go off when they looked him up in the system,” veteran FBI agent Michael Biasello told RCI. “He probably wouldn’t have been able to buy the murder weapon if the school had referred him to law enforcement."

In 2013, the year before Cruz entered high school, the Broward County school system rewrote its discipline policy to make it much more difficult for administrators to suspend or expel problem students, or for campus police to arrest them for misdemeanors– including some of the crimes Cruz allegedly committed in the years and months leading up to the deadly Feb. 14 shooting at his Fort Lauderdale-area school.

Broward school Superintendent Robert W. Runcie – a Chicagoan and Harvard graduate with close ties to President Obama and his Education Department – signed an agreement with the county sheriff and other local jurisdictions to trade cops for counseling. Students charged with various misdemeanors, including assault, would now be disciplined through participation in “healing circles,” obstacle courses and other “self-esteem building” exercises.

Asserting that minority students, in particular, were treated unfairly by traditional approaches to school discipline, Runcie’s goal was to slash arrests and ensure that students, no matter how delinquent, graduated without criminal records.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel backed Runcie’s plan to diminish the authority of police in responding to campus crime. A November 2013 video shows him signing the district’s 16-page "collaborative agreement on school discipline,” which lists more than a dozen misdemeanors that can no longer be reported to police, along with five steps police must “exhaust” before even considering placing a student under arrest.

I mean, yikes. I mean if we're talking about not suspending kids for chewing a poptart into the shape of a gun, I'm all for it, but as you'll see later they were looking the other way with much more serious offenses. Here's where it starts to get really hairy though:

Applications for federal grants reveal that Runcie’s plan factored into approval of tens of millions of dollars in federal funding from Duncan's department.

Oh. Manipulating statistics in order to qualify for more taxpayer money. There's a big surprise. The Obama administration even touted this district as a shining example of why this type of program works.

In 2015, the White House spotlighted Runcie's leading role in the effort during a summit called “Rethink School Discipline." Broward, the nation’s sixth largest school district, is one of 53 major districts across the country to adopt the federal guidelines, which remain in effect today due to administrative rules delaying a plan by the Trump administration to withdraw them.

So what kind of offenses are they letting slide?

Reference: Broward’s program is called PROMISE

Additional literature reveals that students referred to PROMISE for in-school misdemeanors – including assault, theft, vandalism, underage drinking and drug use – receive a controversial alternative punishment known as restorative justice.

However, a 210-page district report on “Eliminating the School to Prison Pipeline,” lists “assault/threat” and “fighting,” as well as “vandalism,” among “infractions aligned with participation in the PROMISE program," and it states that the recommended consequences for such misdemeanors are a “student essay," “counseling” and “restorative justice."

And the district’s legally written discipline policy also lists “assault without the use of a weapon” and “battery without serious bodily injury,” as well as “disorderly conduct,” as misdemeanors that "should not be reported to Law Enforcement Agencies or Broward District Schools Police.” This document also recommends “counseling” and “restorative justice."

should not be reported to law enforcement. For assault and battery. Seriously.

A repeat offender, Cruz benefited from the lax discipline policy, if not the counseling. Although he was disciplined for a string of offenses -- including assault, threatening teachers and carrying bullets in his backpack -- he was never taken into custody or even expelled. Instead, school authorities referred him to mandatory counseling or transferred him to alternative schools.

By avoiding a criminal record, Cruz passed a federal background check in February 2017 before purchasing the AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle investigators say was used in the mass shooting. Just one month earlier, he was disciplined with a one-day internal suspension for an “assault” at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and evaluated as a potential “threat." It was his second offense for fighting in less than four months, but campus police did not make an arrest in either case -- as they typically did for repeat offenders under the district’s prior zero-tolerance policies, a review of the official “discipline matrix” used last decade reveals.

The upshot was that the lack of an arrest record made it difficult for police to confirm that Cruz was a proven threat and to intervene when they received call-in tips and complaints from neighbors, classmates and relatives about his stockpiling of weapons and desire to kill people, law enforcement officials say.

And the Broward County Sheriff signed on to this program and cooperated with it. It’s just staggering how anyone can defend this and instead blame the NRA.

While obviously not related to the Florida shooting itself, there are other examples of how these types of programs are having such stellar results:

"Broward County adopted a lenient disciplinary policy similar to those adopted by many other districts under pressure from the Obama administration to reduce racial ‘disparities’ in suspensions and expulsions,” said Peter Kirsanow, a black conservative on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in Washington. "In many of these districts, the drive to 'get our numbers right' has produced disastrous results, with startling increases in both the number and severity of disciplinary offenses, including assaults and beatings of teachers and students.”

For example, in St. Paul, Minn., a high school science teacher was “beaten and choked out” by a 16-year-old student, who allegedly came up behind him, called him a “f--king white cracker,” and put him in a stranglehold, before bashing his head into a concrete wall and pavement. The student, Fon’Tae O’Bannon, got 90 days of electronic home monitoring and anger management counseling for the December 2015 attack.

The instructor, John Ekblad, who has experienced short-term memory loss and hearing problems, blames the Obama-era discipline policies for emboldening criminal behavior, adding that school violence “is still rising out of control.”

In Oklahoma City, which softened student punishments in response to a federal race-bias complaint, “students are yelling, cursing, hitting and screaming at teachers, and nothing is being done,” an Oklahoma City public school teacher said. “These students know there is nothing a teacher can do.

In Buffalo, New York, a teacher who got kicked in the head by a student said: “We have fights here almost every day. The kids walk around and say, ‘We can’t get suspended – we don’t care what you say.’ ”
Kirsanow said that in just the first year after the Obama administration issued its anti-discipline edict, public schools failed to expel more than 30,000 students who physically attacked teachers or staff across the country. Previously, “if you hit a teach, you’re gone,” he said, but that is no longer the case.

A solution, pretty soon word would get out, and it's likely bad behavior would diminish.

www.youtube.com...

a reply to: face23785

Sounds about parr for the course for leftists.

Create a problem then blame someone else. These people have no ability to comprehend the idea of personal responsibility.

in just the first year after the Obama administration issued its anti-discipline edict, public schools failed to expel more than 30,000 students who physically attacked teachers or staff across the country. Previously, “if you hit a teach, you’re gone,” he said, but that is no longer the case.

May as well paint a target on the teachers heads and for that matter the students heads.

The people who come up with these things likely pat themselves on the back for how smart they are and then hide when it backfires and people are hurt as a direct result of their insane social engineering. Goes to show that you can be book smart and still be an absolute idiot when it comes to the real world.

I'd love to see all the teachers who have been assaulted launch a massive class action, but teachers unions were likely heavily involved and part of what led to their being human targets.

Of all the things I've read about the recent school shooting, this is likely the real cause of what led to it and those involved are directly responsible for the shootings. Any rational person could have seen the problem with this insanity and only a fool could support it. Schools are supposed to be safe, not refuges for dangerous delinquents.

originally posted by: Plotus
A solution, pretty soon word would get out, and it's likely bad behavior would diminish.

www.youtube.com...

Don't piss plots off.......noted

The Broward County policies were actually exposed during the Trayvon Martin fiasco. The conservative treehouse first broke the story during that case when investigating Trayvon's background. The Parkland shooting is a continuation.

The school covered up Trayvon's criminal history. He was expelled from his Broward County high school which was why he was with his father the night of the shooting. He had been kicked out of school and his mother kicked him out the house. Trayvon was caught with stolen goods from a burglary (along with burglary tools) and instead of turning him over to law enforcement, they basically whitewashed the crime to cover it up.

I don't have time to find the links, but if you go to The Conservative Treehouse they have all the documents from their FOIA requests, etc

The same polices/programs were put into effect with Cruz.

originally posted by: Edumakated
The Broward County policies were actually exposed during the Trayvon Martin fiasco. The conservative treehouse first broke the story during that case when investigating Trayvon's background. The Parkland shooting is a continuation.

The school covered up Trayvon's criminal history. He was expelled from his Broward County high school which was why he was with his father the night of the shooting. He had been kicked out of school and his mother kicked him out the house. Trayvon was caught with stolen goods from a burglary (along with burglary tools) and instead of turning him over to law enforcement, they basically whitewashed the crime to cover it up.

I don't have time to find the links, but if you go to The Conservative Treehouse they have all the documents from their FOIA requests, etc

The same polices/programs were put into effect with Cruz.

That's interesting. I knew he had disciplinary problems at school but I didn't know it was linked to this same program. I get not wanting to give a kid a permanent record over some minor shoving or something like that, but burglary, theft, assaulting teachers, etc. How anyone could support schools looking the other way at this type of behavior is just baffling.

originally posted by: face23785

originally posted by: Edumakated
The Broward County policies were actually exposed during the Trayvon Martin fiasco. The conservative treehouse first broke the story during that case when investigating Trayvon's background. The Parkland shooting is a continuation.

The school covered up Trayvon's criminal history. He was expelled from his Broward County high school which was why he was with his father the night of the shooting. He had been kicked out of school and his mother kicked him out the house. Trayvon was caught with stolen goods from a burglary (along with burglary tools) and instead of turning him over to law enforcement, they basically whitewashed the crime to cover it up.

I don't have time to find the links, but if you go to The Conservative Treehouse they have all the documents from their FOIA requests, etc

The same polices/programs were put into effect with Cruz.

That's interesting. I knew he had disciplinary problems at school but I didn't know it was linked to this same program. I get not wanting to give a kid a permanent record over some minor shoving or something like that, but burglary, theft, assaulting teachers, etc. How anyone could support schools looking the other way at this type of behavior is just baffling.

Here is one of their postings on Parkland. They also link to relevant Trayvon stuff tying it all together...

Broward School Board Beginning to Admit Mistakes

In 2012 and 2013 while doing research into the Trayvon Martin shooting we discovered an alarming set of school policies being enacted in Miami-Dade and Broward County Florida. The policies were called “diversionary programs” and were essentially about stopping High School students from being arrested. Law enforcement was instructed to avoid arrests and defer criminal conduct to school administrators. Students who engaged in violence, drug sales, robberies, burglaries, theft and other various crimes were intentionally kept out of the criminal justice system. County administrators and School Superintendents told local and county law enforcement officers to stop arresting students.

originally posted by: Edumakated

originally posted by: face23785

originally posted by: Edumakated
The Broward County policies were actually exposed during the Trayvon Martin fiasco. The conservative treehouse first broke the story during that case when investigating Trayvon's background. The Parkland shooting is a continuation.

The school covered up Trayvon's criminal history. He was expelled from his Broward County high school which was why he was with his father the night of the shooting. He had been kicked out of school and his mother kicked him out the house. Trayvon was caught with stolen goods from a burglary (along with burglary tools) and instead of turning him over to law enforcement, they basically whitewashed the crime to cover it up.

I don't have time to find the links, but if you go to The Conservative Treehouse they have all the documents from their FOIA requests, etc

The same polices/programs were put into effect with Cruz.

That's interesting. I knew he had disciplinary problems at school but I didn't know it was linked to this same program. I get not wanting to give a kid a permanent record over some minor shoving or something like that, but burglary, theft, assaulting teachers, etc. How anyone could support schools looking the other way at this type of behavior is just baffling.

Here is one of their postings on Parkland. They also link to relevant Trayvon stuff tying it all together...

Broward School Board Beginning to Admit Mistakes

In 2012 and 2013 while doing research into the Trayvon Martin shooting we discovered an alarming set of school policies being enacted in Miami-Dade and Broward County Florida. The policies were called “diversionary programs” and were essentially about stopping High School students from being arrested. Law enforcement was instructed to avoid arrests and defer criminal conduct to school administrators. Students who engaged in violence, drug sales, robberies, burglaries, theft and other various crimes were intentionally kept out of the criminal justice system. County administrators and School Superintendents told local and county law enforcement officers to stop arresting students.

I wonder how many other people have been victims of all kinds of crimes perpetrated by people who would've been in prison if not for these types of programs. But ya know, criminals tend to vote Democrat and they can't vote from prison so

They went from zero tolerance to 100 tolerance.

Did all the experts who said zero tolerance say, my bad, this doesn’t work lots try the opposite? Did the zero tolerance people leave and this is the new crowd?


How about case bey case

a reply to: face23785

But ya know, criminals tend to vote Democrat

Right, because no republican has ever committed a crime

originally posted by: tinner07
a reply to: face23785

But ya know, criminals tend to vote Democrat

Right, because no republican has ever committed a crime

Of course, that's not what I said. But you couldn't refute what I actually said, so you had to make something up.

In case you're wondering, there is some research to back me up.

Read
Here's the study itself

It only looked at 3 states, and there was a reason for that. In all 3, including NC which is a lean-Republican state, there was an overwhelming preference toward Democrats. It's likely lower in some states. More research is clearly needed.

originally posted by: tinner07
a reply to: face23785

But ya know, criminals tend to vote Democrat

Right, because no republican has ever committed a crime

I thought about your reply and it made no sense whatsoever. The majority of convicted felons do, in fact, vote Democrat.

7 0f 10 felons register Democrat.

Pretty common knowledge. What does republicans committing crimes have to do with it? Besides them apparently going Democrat after their sentence?

a reply to: face23785

The lies for cash setup in Broward county actually came from Miami-Dade county. A few years before Broward adopted the setup Miami-Dade were doing it and raking in the cash. Seeing how it works compelled the school district / Sheriff's office and several Chiefs of police in surrounding cities in Broward county to do the same thing.

First - you have schools and police downplaying incidents at schools for money via false reports. This resulted in people, like the shooter, being bounced from school to school. From what I have seen in researching this students who get in trouble by law enforcement off campus has the incident info forwarded on to the School resource officers to deal with. As we saw in this case several referrals were made with no action being taken by the SRO's.

Secondly - the other consequence was in order to met goals for funding the schools / agencies essentially adopted a quota system. Only so many students could get in trouble by law enforcement before the quote is met. Once met calls are not reported / evidence is not checked in or police reports are falsified to make it look like stolen property was found in a field instead of in the possession of a student who stole the items.

The criminal elements in the county caught on to this setup and started using students to commit the crimes knowing full well nothing would happen to students. They also realized if they committed crimes near the end of the month they were essentially guaranteed nothing would happen. This resulted in a massive spike in felony crimes / assaults / gang affiliation etc.

One last thing to note. In order for people to be placed into the mental health issue no gun category requires a person to be involuntarily admitted to a behavioral health unit. Those forced actions are what gets reported to the courts and attaches to their records. If a person has mental health issues but fully cooperates with mental health there is no report made to the courts since the info at that point is protected medical info (voluntary admits).

So while the school / police policy played a part the fact the guy was never adjudicated as mental still would not have prevented him from obtaining a gun and going to the school.

Dear liberals - The hug a thug program you push does not work.

Florida AG has open investigations into the sheriffs department.

This program is about as dumb as it gets. It did not, in my opinion, start in the school system. As I see it that's just the latest version. It started with "Time outs" in place of a butt whippen. So let's not place ALL the blame here. There's a big difference between punishment and abuse. If you want to go after someone find the person who came up with "Don't punish your child for bad behavior. Sit them in a chair with their game boy and tell them to think about what they did". The parents were the first to implement the look the other way policy.

A few years ago I watched a 10 or 12 year old boy tell his mother he would get her and dad in trouble with naked pictures of his friends if she didn't buy him a $50 game. Then she got mad at me for saying I would whip his a$$. How dare you cuss in front of my child. It's people like you that are the problem with kids today.

Straight up insanity, I hope the families of those killed, wounded and traumatized by the shooting sue all that signed off on this plan.

This idea of schooling needs to be crushed to death, set on fire and the ashes thrown off a windy mountain top so that idea can never be reassembled again.

a reply to: face23785

It sounds like this program was developed to actually create a situation where a school shooting would occur.


You can't promote gun banning unless you have an incident to point to.

I don't think it has anything to do with being tough on crime.

Our "tough on crime" mentality has proven to be a total failure nationwide for all age ranges.

The problem here is a system of total failure. The kid had mental health issues, was bullied, treat as a resource by foster parents who then died, then treat as another resource by another set of whatever guardian he was given, the mental health program he was part of failed, the school failed.

"tough on crime" has not been working in this country

originally posted by: Irishhaf
Straight up insanity, I hope the families of those killed, wounded and traumatized by the shooting sue all that signed off on this plan.

This idea of schooling needs to be crushed to death, set on fire and the ashes thrown off a windy mountain top so that idea can never be reassembled again.

I'm not a big fan of trying to sue everyone for everything. That has gotten way out of hand. That being said in this case I would be in favor of. As long as it's for the purpose of bringing this program out in the open and not just to get paid.