Authorities missed dozens of signs that Nikolas Cruz was going to commit a massacre
- The local sheriff's office in Broward County, Florida is under mounting scrutiny over its handling of the high school shooting that left 17 people dead.
- An armed officer was already on campus when the gunfire broke out last Wednesday - but he never encountered the shooter.
- Local authorities also had multiple run-ins with the alleged gunman Nikolas Cruz in the years before the shooting.
- An NRA spokeswoman chastised the Broward County sheriff for not committing Cruz under the Baker Act, which would have prevented him from buying a gun.
Local authorities are facing mounting questions over their response to last Wednesday's mass shooting in Florida and their previous encounters with the suspected gunman, Nikolas Cruz.
Though the FBI attracted the bulk of the criticism over its admitted failure to follow up on a tip the agency previously received on Cruz, the Broward County Sheriff's Office has also come under heavy scrutiny.
Among the many concerning details to emerge after the shooting are:
- Police reportedly visited Cruz's home 39 times before the massacre
- The FBI knew of a YouTube user named Nikolas Cruz who said he wanted to become a school shooter
- Cruz reportedly once threatened a family member with a gun but wasn't arrested
- A state social services agency could have detained Cruz but decided he wasn't a threat
- Cruz posted multiple photos bragging about his guns on social media
- After the shooting broke out, it took police at least 45 minutes to find Cruz on surveillance footage
- It took another half hour to arrest him
- An armed officer already on campus never saw him
Sheriff Scott Israel announced Wednesday that his deputies will begin carrying rifles on school grounds. But his department already had an armed officer on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school campus during the shooting - that officer never encountered the gunman.
"The response and actions of Deputy Peterson will be looked at and scrutinized, as will everyone's," Israel said Wednesday at a news conference.
"Where was the only guy with a gun when this happened?" Karen Dietrich, a Fort Lauderdale police officer and mother of two sons who survived the shooting, told The New York Times. "I realize it's a large campus, and he may have been on the other side, I don't know. But it would not take six minutes on a full run to get from one end to the other."
Authorities said Cruz fired his AR-15 for roughly seven minutes before ditching the weapon to blend in with a crowd of fleeing students.
But first responders were unsure where the gunman was for at least 30 minutes after the gunfire broke out, and police took an additional 15 minutes to identify him, The Times reported.
"[Mass shootings are] all pretty much the same in that it's over in three to five minutes," former Broward County sheriff Al Lamberti told The Times. "We have to learn from this, just like we did from the others."
'We have to follow up on these red flags'
Florida's Baker Act would have allowed the state to hospitalize Cruz if they deemed him a threat to himself or others, and prohibit him from buying a gun.
Though a Florida social services agency said in a report it was previously contacted to detain Cruz under the Baker Act, they determined he wasn't a threat, The Times reported.
NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch clashed with Israel on the subject during a CNN town hall on Wednesday, seizing on reports that his office visited Cruz's home 39 times over seven years and never arrested or committed him.
"Sending messages, telling other students that he was going to murder them and he was going to kill him, I would think certainly would qualify under a Florida state statute for you to have Baker Acted him," Loesch said.
She was apparently referring to the numerous reports in which Cruz's former classmates and neighbors said Cruz had a long history of disturbing behavior, including boasting about his guns, selling knives at school, getting in fights, and killing animals.
"Look, I'm not saying that you can be everywhere at once, but this is what I'm talking about. We have to follow up on these red flags," Loesch said.
Israel deflected Loesch's claims that the sheriff's office didn't crack down strongly enough on Cruz before the shooting.
"First of all, we've talked about the Broward Sheriff's office and some other local agencies and the FBI getting tips and what have you," Israel said. "America, there's one person responsible for this act. That's the detestable, violent killer. He is responsible for this act. Nobody else but him."
Israel told Loesch she was incorrect that police had visited Cruz 39 times, but conceded that his office is investigating their previous run-ins with Cruz and will take action if any officers breached protocols.
"We are looking at every single case we got. We are following up on it," he said. "We will decide and discern what deputies did, what investigators did and we will - I will handle it accordingly and people will be punished if they didn't do what they were supposed to do."
Gun threats and more 911 calls
Authorities in Palm Beach also responded to an incident late in 2017, when Cruz threatened a family with a gun during a fit of rage, CNN reported on Thursday.
The incident occurred shortly after Cruz's mother died in November, when Cruz and his brother Zachary briefly moved in with Rocxanne Deschamps, a former neighbor.
Dispatcher's notes that CNN obtained show that Deschamps' 22-year-old son, Rock, called 911 on Cruz twice. Once was to report that an "adopted 19-year-old son" may have "hidden a gun in the backyard", despite weapons being banned from the household.
The other report said Rock Deschamps and Cruz fought several days later, and Cruz told the Deschamps he had "bought tons of ammo," "has used a gun against ppl before," and "was going to get his gun and come back."
The deputy who responded to the incident spoke with both men, who "hugged and reconcile[d] their differences," and Cruz apologized for "losing his temper," according to the deputy's report.
Rock Deschamps even signed a form saying he refused to press charges, telling the deputy that he felt badly for Cruz over his mother's death and didn't want him to go to jail - only to leave the home until he calmed down.
That was when Cruz moved in with Kimberly and James Snead, bringing his guns with him, CNN reported.
The Sneads said in multiple media interviews that they saw few warning signs that Cruz would become violent, and that they forced him to lock up his firearms in a safe.
They said they believed they held the only key, but Cruz somehow had another one.