[ED: The investigation into the Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High School showed that the shooter was a well-known problem to his parents, teachers, administrators and law enforcement (dozens of police calls including two to the FBI). Yet no one did anything about the problem until seventeen people were dead.]
By Bobby Caina Calvan, Associated Press
Anxieties multiplied quickly across Baker County, a mostly rural community of 28,000 in northern Florida, when news spread that a 15-year-old had planned a massacre at the county’s only high school.
“MAKE SURE THE TEACHERS ARE DEAD,” he ranted in a notebook. “Then rinse repeat.”
When the sophomore shared his six-page “School Shooting Plan” with a classmate in early September, it set in motion what authorities called a textbook response to averting another Parkland school shooting, which took the lives of 14 students and three school staffers last year.
Within minutes, the student was in custody. By most accounts, parents felt reassured by the swift action of school officials and law enforcement.
But unease resurfaced last month when a judge dismissed second-degree felony charges against the boy and released him back into the community west of Jacksonville. Thursday’s shooting at a California high school — which left three students dead, including the 16-year-old gunman — only deepened their worries.
In a place where churches outnumber gas stations and traffic lights, some residents expressed compassion for the teenager but reserved less mercy for the judge, who they say failed their community and the boy she spared.
“We have a sense of safety built into this community. We trust each other, and when I drop my kids off at school, I have a feeling they’re going to be safe,” said Macclenny resident Tracy Lamb, whose 15-year-old daughter attends the high school along with about 1,400 other students.
“Our judicial system is dropping the ball. It’s failed us, and the system has failed him. I want this child to receive help,” she said. “Everybody’s left wondering now about what’s going to happen to this particular kid.”
After the Parkland shooting that killed 17, Florida lawmakers acted quickly to beef up security and improve safety across the state’s 4,300 public schools. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act widened the authority of schools and law enforcement to act against any threat to campus safety.
To authorities and school officials, one provision in the law seemed clear: Anyone who “makes, posts, or transmits” a threat of mass shooting “in any manner that would allow another person to view the threat” has committed a crime.
Judge Gloria R. Walker saw things differently and dismissed the case because she said prosecutors could not prove the threat had been transmitted as described in the law.
Walker didn’t return calls requesting comment.
Members of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission expressed exasperation last month when Baker County Sheriff’s Maj. Randy Crews described the incident.
That was the first time many in the county heard of the judge’s decision, and it spawned immediate outrage. Community leaders urged neighbors to bombard the judge with emails and phone calls to voice their displeasure.
“We count on the laws to keep us safe. Are there laws to do that? We thought so, and then recently we had a judge who said that the law wasn’t good enough to keep us safe, or to get this child some help,” said Angela Callahan, a middle school teacher, union officer and mother with a son attending Baker County High School.
The boy’s plan described killing teachers and fellow students in chilling detail. To maximize the carnage, he’d deploy an arsenal of knives and guns at a pep rally or some other high-traffic venue. He calculated he’d have nine minutes before squad cars and medics could reach the scene. He wouldn’t be acting alone, he hoped, having recruited at least three schoolmates who, like him, were “100% down that they might die that day.”
Investigators said the teen acknowledged writing the plan but he denied any intention of carrying it out.
The Associated Press is not naming the student because he is a juvenile.
Florida law allows authorities to hold anyone deemed a threat to themselves and others for up to 72 hours. From July 1, 2017, to June 30, 2018, authorities took temporary custody of 36,078 children under the Baker Act — up by 83% from a decade earlier. Many of those cases were initiated while a child was at school.
The Stoneman Douglas commission has called for greater state funding for mental health programs for children and wants judges to offer mental health services to children who get into trouble with the law.
That’s what folks across Baker County say should have happened when the 15-year-old appeared before Judge Walker.
The Rev. Tommy Richardson, who serves as the chaplain for the sheriff’s department, said his community is a place of forgiveness.
“I don’t think none of the community ever expected him to get life in prison,” Richardson said. “We’re a community that will help him, pray for him.”
Baker County Schools Superintendent Sherrie Raulerson declined to discuss the case but reassured residents that protocols are in place to keep students safe.
Still, concerns linger.
Courtney Fiser, whose daughter attends the high school, said she is relieved the boy hasn’t returned to school but remains troubled by the judge’s decision.
“We work so hard to protect our children, and we have someone who is not there helping us,” she said.
Daughter Lauren, a cheerleader, described the unease on campus.
When the school intercom blared a code yellow a few weeks ago, nerves remained frayed until school officials declared it a false alarm.
“Every time the doorknob makes a noise, we’re scared,” she said. “Now, It’s just an ongoing fear.”
Yet they WILL confiscate any firearms on just about anybody’s word ALONE.
Democrat Socialists promoting violence again.
Not promoting, but condoning…
Condoning, promoting, *and* perpetrating.
How are they going to seize anyone’s property or get everyone in line with their repressive social engineering schemes if not by threat of violence?
Most of them won’t admit it (especially not to themselves), but the left LOVES violence. Nothing makes them happier than agents of the state pointing guns at all the people they don’t like.
Yep. It’s almost as if they want it this way. Adult, stable, financially independent? Guns taken away at the drop of a hat based on word of mouth. Young, disturbed, make threats, plan massacre? Oh you poor young man you get off Scott free. Have to make sure those most likely to commit violence are given every opportunity to do so, then they can blame us innocents and further advance the cause of gun control.
“Judge Gloria R. Walker saw things differently and dismissed the case because she said prosecutors could not prove the threat had been transmitted as described in the law.”
WOW, doesn’t get much clearer than this…
“MAKE SURE THE TEACHERS ARE DEAD”
If he wrote “Make Sure the Judge is Dead” he’d be doing life.
If these kinds of threats were made against the House of Representatives, they’d be dealt with immediately and harshly.
Questionable as to whether he made/transmitted a threat. He showed it to someone, but it sounds like a private journal that was confiscated. Private thoughts are just that.
Have him involuntarily committed. At least then he gets into NICS as no go.
… maybe.
Walker is a real piece of work and a total POS who should not be a judge. Here’s her record:
“Walker was born in Puerto Rico and has the given name of Glorimil Rosario. She grew up with a single mother in New York before the family moved to Florida, and readily acknowledges that her family situation was sometimes rough, while adding that her mother did the best she could.
In 1991 while attending Broward Community College, Walker was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting an officer and public drinking for an incident outside a Miami nightclub.
In 1998, before she attended law school at the University of Florida, Walker was charged with battery of a law enforcement officer for an incident that happened at her mother’s house in Broward County. She came home one night and found police at the house because of a domestic violence incident involving her brother and his girlfriend.
The arrest report states Walker ran out of the house toward the girlfriend. An officer tried to stop her and she shoved the officer and struggled as she was taken into custody. Walker said she was fearful something had happened to her mother and barged in.
But another document is a mystery. It is a judgment and sentence for a petty theft charge in 1988. It can be accessed on the Broward County Clerk of Court website but no other documents regarding the case show up — no arrest report, sworn complaint or citation describing the incident.”
https://www.gainesville.com/news/20180928/cloaked-emails-and-allegations-stir-race-for-circuit-judge-in-alachua-county
This woman should not be a judge, she clearly won the election due to her race.
Ocasio Cortez’s sister? Elizabeth Warren’s lying stablemate? Decisions decisions.
I’ve said this too many times before and still stand by this statement. Gun control has absolutely nothing to do with public safety, it’s about people control.
I can understand wanting to shoot the MF, but please recall he has not committed a crime. He may have dreamed about it, planned it, discussed it, written a novel about it, but until he walks in the door and pulls a gun, he has not committed it. This is why teachers should all (*ALL*) be armed, or looking for a new line of work.
Hear, hear!
And thats the catch 22 we have no idea whether he had a vivid imagination and put it on paper or wrote out a plan, are we on a path to complete 1st amendment censorship or opening the door for big brother to your every thought or feeling
You’re right, no need to any Orwellian pre crime crap. But, we should be allowed to publish his name. Nothing in the constitution grants minors a special right to anonymity. Back in the day, communities knew who was a problem and who wasn’t and policed themselves. If everyone in this area knows who this kid is, they’ll be much more ready to defend themselves when he does attack. Same way we make known child abusers.
Sorry, Larry, but people who get Red Flagged have done nothing wrong, either. They lose their guns, ammunition, and then have to prove their innocence on nothing more than the anonymous word of someone else. Even then, there is no guarantee they get their property or other freedoms back. If teens like this are going to start threatening to shoot up schools, then like Red Flag victims, they should prove their innocence as well, and get thrown in the slammer like the rest of us would. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. No, pre-crime is wrong, and so are thought crimes, but this is the world we live in today, so lock his a** up like the rest of us would if a gun owner made the same threat.
Shadow, I don’t understand why you assume that the fact that red flag laws have not been declared unconstitutional yet means that we can just hang people for what they are thinking. It has been a solid basis for my thinking for 50+ years that you can yell threats at me for hours, but when you begin a swing, I’ll shoot you. If threats are punishable by law, sporting events and barrooms would fill our prisons without help from any other source. When I was a kid, it was universally understood that your right to throw a punch ends at the tip of my nose. There is no other reasonable way to make decisions about right and wrong, anybody who claims there is aspires to tyranny.
Does it matter that Red Flag laws have NOT been declared unconstitutional? Hell, with the way the U.S. Supreme Court bends, I would not trust a one of them to uphold any rights, let alone strike down Red Flag laws. States are using them regardless of that fact. Also, this is not 50 years ago, and too much has changed, and people (if you have not noticed), are becoming more and more unhinged. When it comes to guns and getting rid of them, when did any crooked state or politician bother with laws, rules, or the Constitution? I agree that pre-crime arrests, and doing just that to this teen who planned a school shooting is also unconstitutional. But every damned time one of these school shootings is televised, the shooter is the hero, there have been found to have been numerous warning signs ahead of time that no one did anything about, and it is always the Second Amendment and law abiding gun owners that get hung out to dry. For it is always the law abiding gun owners who are always to blame, never the criminal. On a weird side thought: Was this potential teen shooter on Prozac, or some other psychotropic drug?
Not trying to promote poor race relations here, I’m the father of four white/Alaska Native kids… but does anyone know the race of the troubled child?
https://www.news4jax.com/news/2019/09/10/deputies-student-15-had-notebook-detailing-school-shooting-plans/
Well, that probably explains it.
Ouch…
I hope that’s his mug shot. And not his yearbook photo.
I would never have guessed./s
All a judge is, is a lawyer that sucked (up) to a politician.
Kinda like the kamala train.
It’s a shame that Gov. DiSantis can’t suspend her.
Wait! Did I miss something? Did Kamala pull a train? With sucking involved?
When the chips are down, ethnic solidarity rules the day.
Because it hurts less when a white person robs or kills you? bill clinton? White. hillary clinton? White. jeffry dahmer? White.
See how much better it is living in an all white environment.
Umm I lived in the US when the Clintons ran the place in the 90s. It really wasn’t that bad. In spite of all those evil white people. 😉
It’s clear you had no dirt on the clintons. Or you wouldn’t have lived through the 90’s.
… and yet, 7% of the population commits 50% of the homicides. Like it or not, there is something wrong with that community.
As much as one might not like…this is really just a “thought crime”. It may make you uncomfortable but writing down something is not doing it. He didn’t call the school threatening to do anything….and he didn’t go on youtube.
Does the kid have issues? Sure. Should he be in some type of court mandated counseling…..probably. But does this rise to a crime to put him away….sorry…it does not.
If we start going down the path of allowing such a thing as “thought crimes” to exist it won’t end well for anybody….especially gun owners. Leftists can easily say merely discussing shooting guns is a threat to them and throw you in jail.
The First Amendment isn’t there to protect popular speech. You have every right under it to write down any sick fantasy you have in your head. You have that same right to publish it for others to read. And this kid showing another kid his writings is just that.
This is just another side of these red flag laws…it’s nothing but pre-crime and very very dangerous to freedom. If a crime no longer requires an action…..or a direct harm or threat of immediate direct harm then those in power can make quite literally any thought, philosophy, or you speaking out against them a crime.
I get it….these are the warning signs of a potential shooter and should be just ignored. But this is also the cost of living in a free society. If one is willing to trash the 1st to prevent a shooting then they will be willing to trash the 2nd(red flag confiscations) and the 4th and 5th. The same argument for this type of stuff could be made for getting rid of all due process(no more warrants, no juries, no need for a reason to arrest and hold people)……getting rid of all of those would help stop these shooters too.
He tried to recruit other kids to help him get a high score. He was the mastermind that needed a partner to motivate him to accomplish his plan.
Previous school shooters have done the same thing. They can get one other person to go along with it but that kid usually chickens out. However, there are multiple kids in a school who are contemplating committing mass murder. Most of those kids don’t have the attitude to start pulling the trigger on other humans when it comes time to. That is changing though.
The Virginia Tech murderer wrote about his plan to commit crimes. The psychologist thought it would be helpful for him to just fantasize about it to get him to grow out of the want to murder everyone. He spent years planning different murders and other violent acts. Eventually he came up with his final plan and developed the mental state to carry it out. At that point he was committed and put together a media package while he acquired his tools. He was able to evade forced mental treatment ordered by the government. His parents knew about his predilection for murder, so did his teachers and other government workers. It took years for him to finally do what he had been thinking about since he was a kid.
I don’t think it’s a good thing to allow a mentally ill kid have access to weapons like everyone else. When they are clearly showing signs of murderous intent they should have a period of suspension of their right to keep and bear arms. That suspension should last until 25 years old then his actions up to that point should be evaluated. If he still wants to murder people he shouldn’t be easily able to acquire guns, just like other mentally ill people are not given access.
You can ban all guns today, even from the cops and military and the person with murder on their mind will get a gun. They don’t care about laws.
Also, just who are you suggesting to make these decisions, as though someone with X-ray vision can look at a person and instantly know what he is planning? Your ideas give some person or persons the power of life and death over others, based on *what*? Someone having that kind of power would create mountainous corruption within a single generation, the idea is simply insane. To decrease violent crime, we need to see to it that people are ARMED! Because, like it or not, there is no magic.
Like I said above, instead of trashing the 1A, we simply increase the 1A, and allow publishing of the kids name. He’d be considered an adult in 1791 he can be considered an adult now, and can learn to be treated like an adult by his community. He has no more imagined constitutional right to remain anonymous then you or I do.
Most likely his families firearms have been confiscated and he has been suspended from school. He should no longer be deemed a threat to keep a eye on. As said previously you can’t prosecute him for his thoughts or the novel he wrote. I wonder what his home life is like and whether we will be hearing from him again. Seems counseling would be in order. I pray he does no violence in the future. Should he though I pray for a quick end to him with no lose of life other than his own. Don’t really know what the answers are anymore.
“Most likely his families firearms have been confiscated and he has been suspended from school.”
All the more reason to never store all your guns in one location…
Exactly why I don’t.
Word.
Women think with their harts not the brain,
That’s why you be careful with the jobs you assign them., where was Judge Judy when we needed her?
Lol, the irony of you being incapable of spelling ‘heart’ correctly while insulting the judge is awesome. I imagine you’re too dumb to formulate a response here…
That didn’t address his argument in the slightest. The fact that women are more likely to make decisions based on emotions is a documented fact
Where was Judge Judy? She was endorsing fucking BLOOMBERG! What a maroon.
Sorry, Larry, I could not resist pointing this out. In light of the heated discussions on this thread, your comment reminded me of Bug’s Bunny…..who echoed the very same sentiments, LOL.
& ya I’m a male chauvinist pig…
County or circuit judge? Circuit judges are more difficult to get out of office.
Circuit court, according to the article.
Yeah, but it’s soooo much easier to blame us and our guns!
People should protest at the judges home. There is nothing wrong with protesting at a judges home or her place of work. It has been done before. Judges need to know they are accountable to the community. They are not Gods.
And protesting at their home is just one way to hold them accountable. It is our 1st amendment right to do so. Another way is to recall them. If possible.
I have never forgotten judge Simonson. Or the immoral act that he did.
“Former Dane County judge Archie Simonson, removed from bench over comments in sexual assault case, dies”
https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/former-dane-county-judge-archie-simonson-removed-from-bench-over/article_c5867b1b-7388-5977-bc3e-b7b3f966d150.html
“A judge who caused a furor recently by suggesting that a teen‐age boy was reacting “normally” to sexual permissiveness when he participated in a rape received more criticism today with the release of a court transcript detailing his remarks.”
https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/26/archives/judge-who-suggested-boy-in-rape-reacted-normally-draws-more-ire.html
Lock his dammed ass back up and throw away the key.
Im sorry I don’t want to be around for the what if………this time.
Id rather be wrong.
And when they determine that your gun ownership makes you a threat and proceed to lock you up shall the rest of us care?
Or should we just say “I’d rather be wrong?” while you rot?
But we do have a right to know who he is. This idea of minor anonymity is a new and imagined right. If someone makes plans to carry out an attack but doesn’t, we can at least make known to the public who it is.
While I tend to agree kids are a sticky thing very specifically because they don’t make what adults to consider rational decisions. That’s a tendency that they usually grow out of so having a stigma like this follow the person around for life might not be the best idea.
Being a victim of childhood abuse, severe childhood abuse, I know a thing or two about this. Dad’s shotgun looked like a great way out there when I was 13. This is also how I know that trigger locks are a joke.
I also know that if what happened to me had been a few years later in my life I wouldn’t have been considering killing myself but rather my abuser. They would have richly deserved it but it still would have been 1st degree murder.
So yeah, I dunno. Kids are a tough topic on this kind of thing since most of them will get over whatever it is that bothers them provided they get the chance. Either way, pre-crime isn’t a road we want to go down and neither is life-time shaming for something that might be brought on by something over which the kid has little or no control and which, if removed from their life, will stop the symptoms we’re seeing.
*what adults tend to consider.
Strych 9, I get that. But I think there’s a very big difference in taking revenge on an abuser, and a planned slaughter of innocents, organized to include drawing other children in on the attack. An attack that would target all teachers indiscriminately. That’s just on another level. Not all killing/murdering is the same in my opinion. A person who’s taking revenge on an evil person should not be punished to the same extent as one who targets real innocents. Obviously you still have to punish them somewhat, to deter vigilantism.
“That’s just on another level.”
Perhaps to you. But it’s natural human behavior from a tribal point of view. Supposedly adult people do it literally all the time. They just find ways to justify it that are more articulate than a teenager can generally manage to produce.
Yup. Let me rot.
Id rather be wrong then the turn out to be a bad one.
By all means lets blame the gun. Then we should blame lack of laws. I been saving this for last. Lets blame the judge. God forbid we should even give a seconds worth of thought to blaming the poor misguided yout (read asshole brat). Idiots.
Ethnic solidarity and female feels. The downfall of the west in one news story.
This kid definitely learned something – and that’s not to share his plans in the future.
Crazy lib judges!
This story has lulz so thick and rich you could drizzle that shit on your pancakes.
Apparently the moniker of Flori-Duh is correct.
And, to be clear, I’m not talking about the judge. I’m talking about how everyone else has apparently lost their mind. Fear of door handles turning? You gotta be joking.
Parents that want thought crimes to be felonies, in a religious community of all places? Yikes.
South Park was right. At least a third of this country is actually retarded.
You jailhouse lawyers make me laugh.
If he took a single concrete step in furtherance of his plan, it’s not a thought crime. If he tried recruiting others, it’s not a though crime. If he did anything to put his plan in motion, it’s not a thought crime.
I don’t know what the little sh!t did or didn’t do, but I’m thinking he’s not going to be welcomed back into the bosom of his community if his community has a lick of sense at all..
That’s what I’m saying. Communities used to handle POS’s like this on their own.
The disconnect in this comment is unusual for you Ralph.
I’m not a lawyer and never pretend to be one but I know people have been convicted of conspiracy for less.
Except that there’s been no conspiracy in the descriptions I’ve read of this incident. Nobody cooperated with him; in fact, the person he shared the writings with turned him in.
So any conviction of conspiracy has nothing to do with this incident.
Klaus, I’m sorry but I have to raise the BS flag. Like who, for example? In America? I don’t think so, and I don’t believe it. You claim it happened, I say again, “like who, for example”?
Where is David Hogg now?!?!?!?
Harvard.
This… isn’t a simple legal issue. Say, for the sake of argument, that he never made any threat. At what point does wanting to carry out a mass shooting become criminal? That is certainly instituting ‘thought crime.’ What about planning? Much the same issue. At
SOME point planning shifts over into criminality- the police need not wait until you’ve stepped on school grounds to grab you- but it’s always tough to know when is enough. While he’s driving to the school with the guns in his car and a manifesto? Yes, that’ll probably work. But what if he’s planned everything out, including taking his parents’ guns, but has not actually left the house? What if there’s no exact documentation as to when, if at all, he was really going to carry it out? Might he just be screwed in the brain and fantasize about it?
And aside from all that the problem is that when someone is found to not be doing something strictly criminal, there’s very little that is done about them. On one hand, this makes sense constitutionally. On the other hand, it makes it very very difficult to preempt lone shooters. It’s all well and good to try and make schools more secure, arm staff, etc, but usually there will still be a body count.
(as it’s unclear: what if he planned everything out, including planning on taking his parents’ guns)
Planning on taking his parents’ guns is still not an action. If he has TAKEN his parents’ guns, without permission, we’re finally beginning to approach something prosecutable.
A very politically incorrect, “Ignorant Whore”! Take guns but won’t lock up a nut and wonder why we have school shootings!
“We count on the laws to keep us safe”
And that is why you fail.
I remember in HS a group of us had made “Red Dawn” plans. We figured out a plot plan for the PD, we had plans of where we would get off road vehicles(in the 60s-70s) and had some valley in the foothills staked off as our run to point. It was a great exercise, but we were only going to be defensive(that was the plan). Boy, I am glad no one ever turned us in.
A couple of these guys were LEOs in town until retirement, another a fireman. The others, I don’t know, but none of us did any real damage. The exercise was a prep, and our parents would have been aghast at the detail.
And this is just one more nail in the coffin of public schools. Or communist indoctrination centers as I like to call them. Remove your children and grandchildren from these cesspools of wrong thinking and home school them. They’ll be much safer and won’t be brainwashed by the system. Anyone who decides to home school can do it. There are many resources to help you make the transition.
Thank the lord there are still judges in this country that don’t go along with the Thought Police that have taken over our country. This is still the United States of America where you can say whatever you want and think anything you wish. Writing down your thoughts about planning the perfect murder, even if your only 16, used to be simply a writing exercise. Many books are out there where people try to imagine just that thing. Now it’s supposed to be viewed as a criminal offense because it makes folks uncomfortable?
I could pass it off as sexual fantasy writings but intending to recruit other people kinda throws a wrench in that. Shouldn’t be release if the writings are in fact his.
And released when? Never? Thinking like this is really scary, and I mean you, not the kid. I am not afraid of *him* in the least, I have been prepared to defend myself and my family against the likes of him for several decades. But someone who wishes to surrender precious rights and freedoms because he’s scared of a warped, fat teenager absolutely terrifies me, in fact I think a judge should prohibit you from discussing anything in adult forums forever in the future.
The thread title says it all. That sounds about right in this day and time. Well he didnt kill anybody…yet. They used to send kids like that to “training school” or “military school”. Holy crap can you imagine having your son or daughter attending that school. Home schooling is sounding better all the time.
Judges, police, and the government ignore laws, (as to firearms), then blame the outcome on us.