Breaking the silence code

[Queen K]

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/te ... li=AAggv0m

Here is someone brave who broke the code of not telling. Everyone who ever watches a teen/kid orientated Disney movie knows there is a code "not to tell the adults." Even Stranger Things had this code.

But to prevent shootings in school, the code needs to be broken.

Even she was conflicted! But knew it was the right thing to do.

I believe a grandmother came forward the other day too, to break the silence code.

[Queen K]

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/News/video/anonymous-tip-apps-stop-potential-school-shootings-53258415

Well worth watching.

Breaking the code of silence on those threatening to bring gun violence to schools.

80 percent of shooters actually tell one person they are thinking of it.

60 percent of shooters tell multiple people.

Two different apps, both need to be in more schools. That is the message, that kids, parents and teachers, anyone can report threats anonymously.

[Queen K]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2017/oct/02/america-mass-shootings-gun-violence

The graphs alone are worth looking at. Yellow is injury and Red is Death.

What if more people had reported what is going on?

No other developed nation comes close to the rate of US gun violence. Americans own an estimated 265m guns, more than one gun for every adult.

Data from the Gun Violence Archive reveals there is a mass shooting – defined as four or more people shot in one incident, not including the shooter – nine out of every 10 days on average

[whitecandle]

That's a lot of guns but still short of the 326M+ current US population.

https://www.livepopulation.com/country/ ... tates.html

[Queen K]

[quote="Queen K"]This is about "breaking the code of silence", right?


This is becoming a blog.... but here is something interesting, a tipster to the FBI became of more interest to the FBI than the threatener. Odd how that works right? I had the same thing happen when I called 911 for something years ago, instead of being interested in what I was saying, I became the object of interest.

Here goes: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/cou ... a-shooting

The massacre at a Florida high school is again raising concerns about whether the FBI missed signs that might have stopped a mass shooting.

Last fall, a Mississippi bail bondsman and video blogger noticed a comment on one of his YouTube videos that said, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” He immediately reported it to YouTube and the FBI and the next day two agents came to his office to take a printout of the comment and ask him whether he knew anything about the person who posted it.

Although the commenter’s username was “Nikolas Cruz” — the same name as the 19-year-old man who authorities say killed 17 people at his former high school on Wednesday — the FBI couldn’t identify the poster, Robert Lasky, the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Miami, said Thursday.

Federal agents interviewed the man who reported the comment and searched public records databases, actions in line with those done during an FBI assessment — the lowest level, least intrusive and most elementary stage of an FBI inquiry — but came up short. The FBI says it still hasn’t conclusively linked the account to the alleged shooter.
Cruz walked into his former high school in Florida with an AR-15 rifle on Wednesday and opened fire, shooting at students and teachers in hallways and on school grounds.

It was the latest attack to raise questions about whether people who once caught the attention of law enforcement should have remained on the FBI’s radar. In the last two years, a man who massacred 49 people at an Orlando nightclub, another who set off bombs in the streets of New York City and a third who gunned down travelers at a Florida airport, had each been looked at by federal agents but later determined not to warrant continued law enforcement scrutiny.

FBI assessments are routinely opened after agents receive a tip, which could be sparked by something as simple as noticing odd activity in a neighbor’s garage or a classmate’s comments. Agents routinely face a challenge of sifting through which of the tens of thousands of tips received every year — and more than 10,000 assessments that are opened — could yield a viable threat.

Had agents been able to confirm Cruz was the same person as the YouTube poster, they would have found dozens of photos of rifles, ammunition, targets filled with bullet holes, which likely would have led to a face-to-face interview. The FBI did not notify police in Florida about the post before the mass shooting.

“You have a random internet posting that suggests the person wants to do something, not that they are planning on doing something.”
“They owe us some more detail on what they did,” retired FBI assistant director Ron Hosko said.

The questions come as the FBI is already under intense scrutiny and facing unprecedented attack from President Donald Trump and some congressional Republicans, who have seized on what they say are signs of anti-Trump bias, particularly as it relates to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

But it’s not clear the agency dropped the ball in this case, Hosko said.

“With anything that the FBI receives they are constrained to act based on what they have in front of them,” said Hosko. “You have a random internet posting that suggests the person wants to do something, not that they are planning on doing something.”

FBI guidelines meant to balance national security with civil liberties protections impose restrictions on the steps agents may take during the assessment phase.

Agents, for instance, may analyze information from government databases and open-source internet searches, and can conduct interviews during an assessment. But they cannot turn to more intrusive techniques, such as requesting a wiretap or internet communications, without higher levels of approval and a more solid basis to suspect a crime.
“It’s a tricky situation because sometimes you get information regarding individuals and they may be just showing off, blustering,” said Herbert Cousins Jr., a retired FBI special agent in charge.

A vague, uncorroborated threat alone may not be enough to proceed to the next level of investigation, according to Jeffrey Ringel, a former FBI agent and Joint Terrorism Task force supervisor who now works for the Soufan Group, a private security firm.

Many assessments are closed within days or weeks when the FBI concludes there’s no criminal or national security threat, or basis for continued scrutiny. The system is meant to ensure that a person who has not broken the law does not remain under perpetual scrutiny on a mere hunch —- and that the FBI can reserve its scarce resources for true threats.

Had he had pledged his allegiance to the Islamic state, for example, investigators might have had enough evidence to proceed with a more intrusive probe.

Tips like the one that came in about the Florida gunman are among countless complaints that come into the FBI daily with varying degrees of specificity.

“How many of these do you expect the FBI to handle before it becomes the Federal Bureau of Complaints,” said Hosko. “They could spend their entire workforce tracking down internet exchanges that never going to go anywhere.”

___
Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Left: Nikolas Cruz appears via video monitor at a bond court hearing after being charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Photo by Susan Stocker/Reuters

[Queen K]

This is a "know a math symbol from a gun drawing incident." In fact this doesn't bode well for the education level of the students and even takes on a tone of bullying. Did they REALLY believe the math symbol known universally is a gun?

What did the teacher have to say? And that the home of the student was searched over a math symbol is incredible.

Only in the South?

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa ... n-n2453476


Yeah, we’ve reached a new level of insanity. In Louisiana, a student was investigated for drawing a math symbol that fellow classmates thought was a gun. It was the square-root sign. It led to detective searching the student’s home on the grounds that terroristic threats were made. This student had to draw the symbol to complete the math problem (via Miami Herald):



Does this even resemble a gun? ^^^

[Silverstarqueen]

Re: the Florida shooter:
THe teachers knew, the students knew, his family knew.
There were 39 calls to police in the years leading up to the shooting.
Mental health, threats with gun, threats regarding knives, suspended from school.
A tip to the FBI in November and again in Jan.
Nothing was done to remove the TEN firearms he had accumulated.
Even after he entered the building and began shooting FOUR deputies whose only job was to serve and protect, did not enter the building to do their job.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/caller-tip ... -1.4550192

So something needs to change. Suggestions that teachers be armed. Not their job, especially while they are busy protecting students, corralling them into safe spaces.
So this guy was reported, over and over again. While important, reporting is not much use, if nothing is done.