1/ Short thread. Meadow Pollack was an 18 year old student at Parkland High School with dreams of becoming an attorney. She was fatally shot as she draped her body over a younger student attempting to protect her.
2/ In the aftermath of the shooting, her father tried to figure out what policies lead to her death and teamed up with a researcher to write this book. amazon.com/Why-Meadow-Die…
3/ Here are some excerpts from this book. The book goes through all of the ways in which in which the shooting could have been prevented. If the shooter had a criminal record of one of the serious crimes that he committed he would not have been able to legally purchase a firearm.
4/ In the aftermath of the shooting there was discussion of the PROMISE program which was used to divert non violent offenders in Broward county away from law enforcement. This ended up being something of a red herring because the crime Cruz was referred to the Promise program wouldn't have prevented him from getting a gun.
5/ The authors agreed that Promise itself wasn't a big factor. Rather they argue it was the the Obama era culture of leniency that allowed Nikolas Cruz to slip through the cracks.
6/ Setting the context in the early 2010s there was an effort to reduce arrests in the Broward school system with concerns about the school to prison pipeline.
7/ Broward reduced suspensions and arrests considerably. These policies were used as a template nationwide and were based around concerns of racial disparities.
8/ Teachers felt that principles wouldn't back them up after they punished students.
9/ Under the policies of Broward county, arrests for even the most serious felonies were optional.
10/ In addition police were prohibited for arresting students on campus for off campus arrests.
11/ There were also programs that allowed convicted felons to attend Broward schools in a sort of "prison to school pipeline"
12/ In 2014 325 incarcerated students had returned to schools in Broward. By 2016, that number was up to 967.
13/ Discussion of Obama's dear colleague letter about racial disparities in school districts. Statistical disparities on their own should be treated as evidence of racial discrimination.
14/ Federal investigations of school district were disruptive and damaging to morale. Many superintendents said that they changed their discipline policies either directly because of the dear colleague letter, or because of fear of investigation.
15/ Many teachers around the country said that they felt these policies had made them less safe.
16/ Broward's discipline programs reduced arrested without a corresponding reduction in bad behavior.
17/ Some teachers gave anonymous reports about what they thought of the new discipline policies.
If the school district could have given Cruz a criminal record he would not have been able to legally purchase a gun and murder 17 people at Parkland High School.
Here is Meadow's fathers speech at the RNC 2020:
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