How many calls to the FBI does it take?

[Jeff Hahn]

Recall that Dusco Popov, the allies double agent in WWII, told J. Edgar Hoover in the summer of 1941 that the Japanese were planning to bomb Pearl Harbor. Hoover chose to ignore the warning, as Popov, the real person on whom the James Bond character was based, was a renowned playboy whose morals Hoover abhorred. So, missing what in hindsight is a crucial clue that can avoid a tragedy is nothing new.

I suspect that all types of law enforcement agencies get thousands of leads that prove to be worthless deadends. However, if law enforcement is so underfunded as to be unable to follow crucial leads and enforce existing laws, or waste resources going after low profile offenders, then we’ve got a problem. One would think that a lead regarding a potential school shooting, a clear act of domestic terrorism, would be of the highest priority.

[NitroZ7]

Even if you get a lead and follow up on it what happens when you simply don’t have enough to bring someone in or get a warrant? In this case the shooter was taken in by a friend and was living with a military intelligence officer and a neo natal nurse in a nice house in a nice neighborhood. The people who took him in were accustomed to guns and required that his be stored under lock and key and only removed with permission. He was working at a dollar tree and the people who took him in only had him for about 2 months. The shooter was definitely troubled but he was holding a job and sounds like he was stabilizing with the new family. So if law enforcement were to visit based on reports I’m not sure what they would have had to go on. The guns were purchased legally and they may have concluded that he had gone through a tough time with the death of his mom but was on a more normalized path. In retrospect we know this wasn’t the case and we don’t know yet what set him off. He had met with an army recruiter and was excited about the prospect of joining the armed forces. Maybe he was turned down for some reason and blamed the school. I don’t really know but I think in many of these cases the best you can do under the legal constraints is to put someone on your radar which isn’t helpful when something like this happens. Posing with guns and knives on Facebook certainly raises red flags but unfortunately is not that uncommon. I think one thing that would help is that when students are suspended they are not sent home but maybe placed in counseling for the requisite period. It’s a good opportunity to see if it’s a case of a lapse in judgment or part of a more troubling pattern. Hopefully people can sit down and find practical solutions to help prevent this in the future and not get so focused on the right to bear arms debate that nothing gets done.