By Terry Spencer, AP
The families of most of those killed and wounded in the 2018 Florida high school massacre announced Monday they have reached a multi-million dollar settlement with the federal government over the FBI’s failure to stop the gunman even though the agency had received information he intended to attack.
Attorneys for 16 of the 17 killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and some of those wounded said they have reached a monetary settlement with the government over the FBI’s failure to investigate a tip it received about a month before the massacre. The 17th family chose not to sue.
The attorneys said the settlement’s details are confidential, but a person familiar with the deal said the government will pay the families $127.5 million overall. The person requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the amount.
“It has been an honor to represent the Parkland families who, through their immeasurable grief, have devoted themselves to making the world a safer place,” their lead attorney, Kristina Infante, said in a statement. “Although no resolution could ever restore what the Parkland families lost, this settlement marks an important step toward justice.”
Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow died in the shooting, commended the FBI for accepting responsibility for its inaction, comparing it to the Broward County school district and sheriff’s office, the school security staff and the psychologists who treated the shooter. He believes they all failed to stop the shooter and have ducked responsibility.
“The FBI has made changes to make sure this never happens again,” Pollack said.
Tony Montalto, whose 14-year-old daughter Gina died, said no settlement will “replace my bright, bubbly and beautiful daughter.” He said that while other families celebrate Thanksgiving this week, Gina’s chair will remain empty.
Both Montalto and Pollack said any money they receive will not replace their daughters.
Paul David Stern, the lead attorney defending the government, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
About five weeks before the Feb. 14, 2018, shooting, an FBI tip line received a call saying a former Stoneman Douglas student, Nikolas Cruz, had bought guns and planned to “slip into a school and start shooting the place up.”
“I know he’s going to explode,” the caller told the FBI.
But that information was never forwarded to the FBI’s South Florida office and Cruz was never contacted. He had been expelled from the school a year earlier and had a long history of emotional and behavioral problems.
Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty last month to 17 counts of first-degree murder. He will receive either a death sentence or life in prison after a penalty trial that is scheduled to start in January.
And as another log is tossed on the CIA/NSA/FBI/ATF fail inferno there will be no shortage of journalists and politicians journalisming and politicianing about how valuable the work, data and lives of these agencies is.
Shire-man,
I have heard countless people throughout my lifetime advocate for Big Government because Big Government will surely take care of us.
And throughout my lifetime, those countless people have watched Big Government fail spectacularly countless times to take care of us.
It never ceases to amaze me how all of those countless people continue to put their faith in Big Government.
There is a movement of so-called “conservatives” to turn away from shrinking government. They advocate we should use government to “encourage” conservative values.
What these clowns don’t understand is, when government is small, it is easier for citizens to keep track of it and make corrections, if need be. The bigger government gets, the more unwieldy and opaque it becomes.
I don’t want big government leftists telling me what to do, but I don’t want big government “conservatives” telling me what to do, either.
Hear! Hear! Well said.
“there will be no shortage of journalists and politicians journalisming and politicianing about how valuable the work, data and lives of these agencies is”
is its. extremely valuable. profoundly valuable. righteously valuable.
just not to america or its citizens. rather to someone else.
Title a little misleading.
Taxpayers are paying, FBI could give a s**t, it’s not their money.
Absolutely correct
FBI: Feckless Bumbling Idiots. They’re too busy chasing MAGA grandmas and “white supremacist” parents to care about people mowed down by a criminal in a Christmas parade. They are too preoccupied with entrapment schemes and playing politics.
You are on your own people. Act and prepare accordingly. Don’t just buy a firearm. Get into some semblance of shape. Stockpile food and water
And, for God’s sake, get out of the cities. Tax-paying law-abiding citizens are obviously not appreciated or welcome. Most important, steer clear of ANYONE advocating violence; chances are it’s a Fed agent or stooge.
Unfortunately, we’re going to have to trust our stupid, useless, ineffective grifting politicians to get us out of this mess.
Jimmy Beam,
“And, for God’s sake, get out of the cities.”
That is outstanding advice.
I am saddened to think about the masses of people who want to and truly do not have the resources to get out of our cities.
The citizens of this country got far too comfortable and soft. They thought the “good times” were going to last forever, hence their high debt and poor diets, chasing a new car every three years, and upsizing their homes, with no consideration of the future.
The worm always turns. Nothing is permanent. It’s best to live as conservatively as one can and try and be prepared.
Jimmy Beam,
“The citizens of this country got far too comfortable and soft. They thought the ‘good times’ were going to last forever …”
Even I am somewhat guilty of that mindset. Nevertheless, I have been quietly and discretely implementing various measures (as best I can given my circumstances) to be in a much better position than most people. My spouse grudgingly tolerated (and sometimes even mildly resisted) my measures over the past several years. And then COVID-19 plus all of the recent political/societal shenanigans reared their ugly heads and now my spouse views me as a rock star. Okay, maybe not quite a full-fledged rock start but at least an “up and coming” rock star!
I just wish that I had the money and resources of a rock star to fully prepare for the various contingencies that we may be facing in the near future.
“get out of the cities”
sure. abandon the great cities that american citizens built. abandon the great states that american citizens built. abandon the great institutions that american citizens built. abandon the great agencies that american citizens built. leave it all to the left, for them to use against you.
Let it rot. The left will destroy the cities so they won’t be useful to anyone. The Left destroys everything it touches.
NO, American taxpayers will pay
FTFY
The government doesn’t fund or pay anything. The hard working American taxpayer does.
It’s still better than handling it out to illegals.
Police agencies have no requirement to act, as has been established by the Supreme Court in Castle Rock v. Gonzales. They protect society as a whole, not individuals. This is more of the Biden administration giving away our money to its allies through unnecessary court settlements. If they wanted to hold the FBI responsible, they should have fired the agents involved and revamped their policies.
The government never gave anyone anything they didn’t take from someone else first.
If only the incompetent and politicized agents and directors of the FBI had to pay it out of their own pocket.
Sounds like the FBI got their money’s worth – after all, they’re not paying for it, we are.
It’s just a cherry on top that they get to use our money to purposefully ignore people like this so they can further the aims of Big Brother.
Too bad this isn’t paid for by reducing the salaries of management for the next few years.
That would certainly incentivize them.
^^^ THIS HERE ^^^
That’s the root of the problem. The taxpayers pay but the leadership is insulated. Were this situation in the least bit sane, careers would end, lifetime bans on working in government at any level beyond scrubbing toilets would be the law and these people would pay dearly out of their own pockets.
Starting with seizing their earned retirement dollars!
“Andrew Pollack, whose 18-year-old daughter Meadow died in the shooting, commended the FBI for accepting responsibility for its inaction, comparing it to the Broward County school district and sheriff’s office, the school security staff and the psychologists who treated the shooter. He believes they all failed to stop the shooter and have ducked responsibility.”
And he’s right. The signs are usually there well in advance before a mass shooting, but in the Parkland case, they had years to stop the shooter before he became the shooter.
“The signs are usually there well in advance before a mass shooting”
yep, they usually are. but there are lots of people with lots of signs and usually nothing ever happens. for every cruz there’s dozens of mouthy squibs, not counting false reports that are just trying to “swat” somebody. can’t track and investigate and intercept them all, and if they did then you’d all be complaining about the resulting police state.
Hi, Dacian!
gotem
Considering what happened, what was lost, how it was lost, and why…
That’s not a lot of money. Especially sense its coming from the taxpayer and not the wallets of the ‘leadership’.
Wow. Thanks again Donny Heelspurs!
“Thanks again Donny Heelspurs!”
You bet your simian ass.
He was a great United States President, and you were nothing but a screeching, demented chimpanzee flinging your own shit around TTAG.
What’s it like having fingers that always smell like sh!t, little troll? 😉
Look at Geoff the Carnival Barker and Druggy, dancing at my command. Well, not really ‘dancing’, as we all know he got his leg crushed when he got all drunk and high and then waddled onto a busy highway. What a chump 🤡!
So… all I had to do in life was file a lawsuit because somebody else got shot and I’d be a millionaire….
Remember when the FBI was respected? Unless you were black,Mexican,”happy” or hippies. Or hated an Asian war. Or? Is this part of slow Joe’s build back better scam?!?
When you fail in the real world, you get fired. How many people were fired?
The Far Right’s subconscious reason for always trying to denigrate the services Government provides is because they are too cheap and stingy to want to pay any taxes to support Socialist Programs. The Far Right are always their own worst enemies.
Yes the FBI Failed in this instance but if buying an assault rifle came under the NFA weapons laws their very lengthy background checks would have prevented the sale of the weapon that killed all of those students.
The Far Right always ignore all of the good Socialist programs actual do. Many former College students including yours truly would never have been able to afford to go to college if it had not been for Socialistic loans and grants from the Government.
Under the Democrats government agencies have often cracked down on greed monger corporations that were charging obscene lending rates on credit cards to entrap people in an endless cycle of debt they could never pay off.
The majority of retirees could never retire if it were not for Social Security payments and Medicare Payments. Both Socialistic programs introduced by the American Communist party because of the tragedy of the “Great Depression” caused by Herbert Hoover and the greed monger gangster criminal Republicans. Decades later Pres. Busch would create another ‘Great Recession” because he let the Banks get away with runaway Capitalism. History did indeed repeat itself and it took Obama to get us out of it just as Roosevelt brought the U.S. out of the Great Depression and again history repeated itself.
Unemployed Councils, USA, led by Communist Herbert Benjamin, organized in cities across the country to block the evictions of tens of thousands of tenants who could not pay their rent, demanding work relief (public jobs for the unemployed) and home relief (aid for those who could not work, particularly women with dependent children and the disabled).In rural areas, Communists also joined with other groups in fighting against farm foreclosures.
The Unemployed Councils came forward with a new idea—Unemployment Insurance. The concept was so identified with the Communist Party that the then-conservative American Federation of Labor, in voting the proposal down in 1932, condemned it as a “Communistic program.”
A rarity for the time, even in progressive circles, the Councils were racially integrated, often sending groups of Black and white activists together to resist the evictions of both Black and white families from their homes.
In 1935, the New Deal government of Franklin Roosevelt, elected three years earlier at the height of the Depression, would enact unemployment insurance, along with the most comprehensive public works, labor, and social welfare legislation—including collective bargaining, old age pensions under Social Security, minimum wages, and the 40-hour week. Together, they represented the most important victories for workers in U.S. history.
Roosevelt would define these policies as an attempt to both reform, humanize, and save the capitalist system. W.E.B. Dubois would later say that they represented a surge in the direction of socialism. In a sense, both were correct.
While the benefits were less than the CPUSA and others advocated, both the leading role of the Communist Party in the Unemployed Councils as well as union and community organizing made policies that were considered impossible in 1929 realities less than a decade later.
Today Social Security and Medicare are considered as American as eating Apple Pie yet the Morons on the far right see only the fact that they have to open their stingy wallets and pay a few pennies each month for the tremendous benefits they receive from both programs proving the idiots on the Far Right are always their own worst enemies.
Like I said. Dacian is like a fart. He stinks up the place for a while, and then goes away.
How about that BLM terrorist mowing down innocents, Dacian? You gonna help pay his bail?
“Many former College students including yours truly would never have been able to afford to go to college if it had not been for Socialistic loans and grants from the Government.”
Perfect example of wasting tax money. You didn’t learn anything and we paid for it. Had you had to earn your way maybe you would have taken school seriously and learned beneficial to society.
To Paratrooper wannabe
Insults are only a pathetic attempt to deny the truths of my post. They are historically accurate. You would have known that if you were not a high school drop out.
Wasn’t meant as an insult. It was an observation of your intelligence.
“Socialistic loans” What the heck is that? Did you not have to pay back your own loan?
We wouldn’t need so many student loans if college prices were kept in check. Guess what’s fueling the skyrocketing cost of college? Easily approved student loans. It’s a scam to enrich the universities while getting kids into debt.
I paid cash for my last couple of years of college. I did that while living on my own, and even financing a new truck. I also worked two jobs while I was a full-time student. I only got a student loan in my last year to buy my future wife a nice ring. I never whined about the debt I agreed to enter. I worked and paid it off.
*why the comment moderation?
WOW!!,,, $127.5 million?,,, the FBI is gonna have to host a lot of bake sales and craft fairs! Why should We the tax-payers have to foot the bill for their incompetence?
Nah. They’ll just tack it on to the national debt.
I am no friend of the FBI but their culpability compared to the years of malfeasance of the school district is profound. There was a very lengthy special investigation done by a special commission that excoriated the school and district.
The FBI isnt paying nothing, it’s the American tax payers who foot the bill.
Same as here when I heard , so and so is suing the city. Yup and your property taxes will go up. your water bill, and the pot holes in the roads wont get fixed.
Yes the Feds failed on this one but how many times has the Brady Bill done its job.
Approximately zero. Criminals do not obey laws you need to get this through that thick head of yours. Probably the same idiot who thinks no gun signs magically make guns dissapear.
Sorry guys, thanks to Biden’s hyperinflation that $127 mil will be worth about $200,000 in today’s dollars once you finally get it.
FBI to pay?
Who pays the FBI?
SMH
A pittance.