Most of the coverage of the Colorado STEM School Shooting that I have seen has been around the anti-Gun political rally that was billed as a vigil, and the student response to being used by adult politicians and activists.
What has fallen through the reporting cracks, or maybe been totally ignored by the wider media is the disturbing similarity between this shooting and the Parkland shooting.
That disturbing similarity is the red flags thrown up and ignored by law enforcement and the school administration.
One of the first things that I saw, and it took a while to confirm, was a threat made on the school’s Wikipedia page.
Ominous note on STEM Wikipedia page a possible warning of school shooting
Nine days ago, someone added chilling notations to the Wikipedia page of the STEM School Highlands Ranch which was the site of a multiple victim school shooting on Tuesday.
Two comments were placed on the school’s page next to a 2018 article labeled “Anti suicide programs are implemented to help lower chances of suicide and school shootings.”
At 5:48 on April 29, someone added the words: “Do they work? We shall see” in the notation area.
The police are still looking into who edited the Wikipedia page, but this is a very specific and ominous threat and is something that should have warranted further investigation before the shooting.
Then there was this news article:
Suspected Colorado STEM shooter was a bully, made jokes about school shootings, students say
One of the students accused of opening fire at a Denver area STEM school, killing one student and wounding eight other people, bullied younger kids and would make jokes about shooting up the school, students said.
The suspected shooter, Devon Erickson, “would whisper, like get really close and kinda put his arm around you, and whisper in your ear, ‘don’t come to school tomorrow,'” said Kevin Cole, a former student of STEM School Highlands Ranch, during an interview on “Today.”
Erickson, 18, and a juvenile, who police identify as a girl but who prefers male pronouns, are accused of entering the K-12 school with handguns Tuesday. NBC News is not identifying the juvenile suspect.
That is very bad, especially in the wake of everything from Columbine to Parkland. This is the kind of thing that should be taken very seriously. Remember that Nikolas Cruz stated the he wanted to be a “professional school shooter” and later killed 17 people.
Why is there no evidence of an investigation or disciplinary action taken as a result of this?
Two major reed flags thrown way up in the air about this school shooting before the shooting and yet not enough was done to prevent it.
I’ll admit that this is no where near the magnitude of the incompetence and fuck ups that occured under the disgraced Scott Israel or the chicken shit coward Scot Peterson, but considering that this was 15 months after Parkland, the school and the police should have been much more attentive to this sort of thing.
What this goes to show you is that no number of red flags and warnings can prevent a school shooting – or any other mass casualty event – if the people in charge trusted to maintain the safety of the people are not paying attention and do not follow through with a response to these warnings.
Like Miguel says, security happens in layers.
We need people to keep a better eye out for red flags and we need a more thorough response to those red flags, but we can’t just rely on a prophylactic address, something will always slip through the cracks.
Having people trained and ready to respond when the shit does hit the fan is critical, especially if the red flags only get noticed after the fact.
It’s almost as if we have doctor’s prescribing aspirin and statins, advising folks to stop smoking and get up off the sofa, eat healthily, BUT STILL folks have heart attacks.
We couldn’t teach CPR and have AEDs scattered everywhere, as a backstop when the MIs occur, anyhow.
Good thing heart attacks (nor school shootings) don’t happen!
Let’s be honest here. Whispering warnings like that are obvious and directed, but did anyone notice the wiki threat until after the fact? Some red flags are obvious, but others may be so low key that nobody sees them until far too late
“Why is there no evidence of an investigation or disciplinary action taken as a result of this?”
Because the purpose isn’t to stop mass shootings. Mass shootings are welcomed by the antis to advance their disarmament agenda.
If the purpose was to stop the shootings they would embrace armed citizens and get rid of the Government-mandated Predator Hunting Ground and Defenseless Victim Enclosures.
Yep. “Helpless Victim Zones”, VCA (Violent Criminal Assailant) Empowerment Zones.
They’ll say it’s MORE important to ‘protect the chilluns’ from mean nasty guns upsetting the poor darlings than it is to actually PROTECT them… sigh
It gets worse. Not only were there unheeded warnings, one parent who sounded the alarm was sued for defamation for raising a fuss with the school board.
https://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2019/05/nothing-to-see-here-pt-2.html
Weird.
I got expelled 4 months before graduating high school. The excuse (not the reason, mind you, but the excuse) was that I brought a weapon to school. They found it in my the trunk of my car, next to my spare tire and jack, after I “consented” to a search of my car that was parked off-campus.
The weapon was a tire iron, a quarter mile away from the front door of the school.
But nowadays you can straight up threaten to murder people and its “oh, they’re troubled, we can’t take any actions that might permanently scar them for life!”
(I went on to college, got a masters, and now I make more money than the rest of the people I would have graduated with, except for the guy who became a surgeon, so it mostly worked out fine for me)
Nothing would be done to these shooters before the shooting.
They were a gay male student and a ftm transgender student.
Any questions to these two or attempts at discipline would have immediately been denounced as homophobia and transphobia. They are automatically considered innocent victims no matter what their actions and behaviors are. They are protected members of the victim class.
Don’t believe me? Look at the comment above, where a responsible parent at that school was trying to sound an alarm.
Rename the school.
The Kendrick Castillo STEM School