Free Republic

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office has identified to Fox News the captain who, according to sources, directed responding deputies and units to “stage” or form a “perimeter” outside Stoneman Douglas High School, instead of rushing immediately into the building, as the mass shooting unfolded there. Multiple law enforcement and official sources said the commands in the initial moments after Nikolas Cruz allegedly opened fire would go against all training which instructs first responders to “go, go, go” until the shooter is neutralized. As law enforcement arrived, the shooter’s identity and exact location were still unknown.

Michael Grunwald expressed his anger in Politico magazine at Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel. He is upset because Sheriff Israel's inept leadership and boastful manner has diverted attention away from the anti-NRA narrative being promoted by the left and the mainstream media. Yes, instead of being primarily concerned about how the sheriff overlooked dozens of red flags that allowed the tragic shooting to take place on Valentine's Day in Parkland Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Grunwald focused his ire upon him because the sheriff, not the NRA, became the primary target of anger.

Last week, actress and star of NBC’s The Black List Megan Boone tweeted that her character on the popular crime drama would “never carry an assault rifle again.” The tweet — which was in response to the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that saw Nikolas Cruz kill 17 people with a legally purchased AR-15 rifle — posed a glaring question. Will other pro-gun control Hollywood actors and directors who’ve used firearms in films for years pledge to lay down their guns in future films? It’s a question that could be asked of the likes of...

(Conservative Tribune) – Political motivations often lead to bad policy — in the case of the Broward County School District, political motivations led to deadly policy. A look at the past seven years since Scott Israel became the head of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office reveal his agenda for self-advancement by making the school district in his jurisdiction appear safer. His actions proved to do the exact opposite. During his reelection campaign in 2016, Israel proudly toted his accomplishments of “sharply reduc(ing) violent crime and burglary rates,” as well as his “innovative initiatives” to keep students in school and out...

Marjory Stoneman Douglas student Alfonso Calderon asserted Wednesday that the NRA is “basically killing children,” prompting zero pushback from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. CNN has been notorious for letting victims of the Parkland school shooting smear the NRA, including at their town hall last week where one student insisted that NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch doesn’t care about her own children.

"It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t have looked at this child a little more closely before transitioning him to Stoneman Douglas." Retired Cross Creek teacher Joe Carrier From Westglades, Cruz was transferred to Cross Creek School, a K-12 program with intensive programming for kids with emotional and behavioral disabilities. Retired Broward teacher Joe Carrier taught a woodworking class at Cross Creek while Cruz attended the school, and remembers Cruz as “a quiet kid” who kept to himself and appeared to be “mildly autistic.” “He was odd but never showed any sign of aggression,” Carrier said. Cruz never had fights with other...

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows that Americans blame government rather than guns for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. According to Rasmussen, 54% of Americans believe government failure is to “blame for the mass shooting.” Only 33% of Americans blame guns. Eleven percent of Americans say they are unsure what contributed to the occurrence of the mass shooting. When the sample group was adjusted so as to focus only on Americans “who have children of elementary or secondary school age,” the percentage of Americans who cite government failure as causal jumped to 61 and the percentage who blamed...

The man who killed 17 people at a South Florida high school had more than half his rounds remaining when he dropped his rifle and fled, a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation told CNN. The shooter had fired about 150 times when he dropped his AR-15-style rifle and escaped from school property by blending in with fleeing students. He left 180 rounds of ammo unused, the official said. "Investigators have found indications that the shooter may have tried to break a window, which leads them to believe he wanted to use the area as a sniper's perch to...

SILVER SPRING, Md. (ABC7) — On Monday night, eight survivors of the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting walked into Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring for a closed-door meeting with select Montgomery County students who walked out inspired. “I’ve honestly never seen high school students so united before, united for one cause," student Melody Zhang said.

Mom Lynda Cruz paid $50,000 to adopt alleged school shooter Nikolas Cruz from his “drug addict” biological mother when he was just 3 days old, and then dropped another $15,000 on his younger half-brother, Zachary, when she found out the troubled mom was pregnant again, according to a report. “Nik’s biological mother was just a complete screw-up, drug addict and thief,” former friend and neighbor Trish Duvaney told RadarOnline. “I even said to Lynda: ‘You don’t know the mother’s background.’ Both children were born after one-night stands. The birth mother, she didn’t even really know who the two biological fathers...

Barbra Streisand partly blamed President Trump for the high school mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, saying the president’s actions and rhetoric “brings out the violence in people.” Speaking to Variety magazine in an interview published Tuesday, the 10-time Grammy-winning singer suggested that 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who fatally shot 17 students and teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, was “affected” by Mr. Trump’s election.

Talk about a facepalm moment. Is it the media’s stupidity or stacking sandbags because they know this National Rifle Association initiative could gain traction? You decide. The NRA wants more armed guards in schools. Teachers should be allowed to carry as well. After the tragic Sandy Hook shooting, the school board voted to approve this proposal. This is not an alien concept. A lot of schools have resource officers; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, the site of the most recent school shooting on February 14, had such officers. They failed to engage the shooter, Nikolas Cruz. Scores of teachers in...

The Florida sheriff’s deputy who did nothing as a killer stalked the halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS spoke out for the first time Monday, saying he’s not a coward, according to a report. Deputy Scot Peterson — who resigned in disgrace from his position as a school resource officer last week — said through a lawyer that he believed the shooter was outside the high school and that protocol demanded he “seek cover,” according to the Miami Herald. “[He] heard gunshots but believed those gunshots were originating from outside of the buildings on the school campus,” his Fort Lauderdale-based...

Calls for the Broward sheriff to resign intensify. The vocal sheriff who has criticized everyone from local politicians to the NRA to one of his own officers in the wake of the Florida high school shooting is facing the pressure himself Monday, as calls mount for him to resign amid reports about his department’s alleged incompetence in stopping the gunman. The heat against Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is coming from all angles, including from a survivor of the attack who told Fox News that he “failed to act on so many different levels” and from dozens of state lawmakers...

When some major police incident occurs, it is most often my practice to withhold comment until I can be sure that most of the facts surrounding it have been revealed. A horrific event like a school shooting like that which occurred in Parkland, Fla., arouses the impulse to weigh in with opinions based on incomplete or even false information. It is best to resist this impulse. Others, of course, with endless hours of air time to fill, and with agendas to push along, are unable to resist it. There may be more egregious examples of this, but I don’t see...

School shootings, affirmative action, disparate impact, the school to prison pipeline, mortgage defaults, Barack Obama, and Trayvon Martin Nikolas Cruz is the scumbag who murdered 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School earlier this month. The school is part of the Broward County school district in Florida. In September 2017, Cruz made a comment at YouTube, under his real name, which said:“I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”The operator of the YouTube channel told YouTube and the FBI about this comment. Even though the government can use IP addresses to find anyone, the FBI never arrested or even questioned Cruz....

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox offered his condolences to the victims of the Florida high school shooting before adding that the tragedy is "what you get" with "aggressive and violent language" from the Trump White House. .... "We need harmony. We need love. We need happy communities," Fox said... Full Title: "Former Mexican Pres. Fox: FL Shooting 'What You Get' With 'Racist' Trump's 'Violent Language'"

“I think it is time to have a conversation about what the right to bear arms means in the modern world,” Rice told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Friday...More specifically, Rice said weapons like the AR-15...shouldn't be available to civilians, the Washington Times reported...Rather, she supports looking to law enforcement and guards as ways for protection.

WASHINGTON — Few places have seen the National Rifle Association wield its might more effectively than Florida, where it has advanced a sweeping agenda that has made it easier to carry concealed weapons, given gun owners greater leeway to shoot in self-defense and even briefly barred doctors from asking patients about their firearms. To many of its opponents, that decades-long string of victories is proof that the N.R.A. has bought its political support. But the numbers tell a more complicated story: The organization’s political action committee over the last decade has not made a single direct contribution to any current...

For almost a half-hour after a school shooter dropped his assault-style rifle and escaped Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, police officers thought they were seeing his actions live on the school's security system. They soon realized the images were tape delayed, which Coral Springs Police Chief Tony Pustizzi told the South Florida Sun Sentinel made a chaotic situation more confusing. The 19-year-old suspect Nikolas Cruz was captured an hour later in a neighborhood about 2 miles from the school where 17 people died Feb. 14. The newspaper reports police transmissions show that police initially couldn't get to security cameras. Sheriff...