Columbine police report

By Janet Reitman The New York Times Tues., Nov. 6, 2018 The first indication to Lt. Dan Stout that law enforcement’s handling of white supremacy was broken came in September 2017, as he was sitting in an emergency-operations centre in Gainesville, Fla., preparing for the onslaught of Hurricane Irma and watching what felt like his thousandth YouTube video of the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va. Jesus Christ, he thought, studying the footage in which crowds of angry men, who had gathered to attend or protest the Unite the Right rally, set upon one another with sticks and flagpole spears and flame throwers and God knows what else. A black man held an aerosol can, igniting the spray, and in retaliation, a white man picked up his gun, pointed it toward the black man and fired it at the ground. The Virginia state troopers, inexplicably, stood by and watched. Stout fixated on this image, wondering what kind of organizational failure had led to the debacle. He had … [Read more...] about How U.S. law enforcement failed to see the threat of white nationalism

REUTERS: The teenage boy charged with murdering eight students and two teachers during a gun rampage at a Houston-area high school on Friday (May 18) studied previous mass shootings before carrying out his attack, sources told ABC News.The accused killer, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, 17, "used aspects of those (attacks) in his own shooting," a source told the broadcaster, without going into further details.Classmates at the school in Santa Fe, Texas described Pagourtzis as a quiet loner who played on the football team. The attacker wore a black trench coat to school even in the Texas heat on Friday and opened fire with a .38 caliber pistol and Remington shotgun.Multiple media accounts say the gunman taunted some of his victims, asking some hiding in a closet if they wanted to answer their ringing cell phones. "You want to get that?" the attacker said, according to The Wall Street Journal.He spared others saying he wanted his story told. Police also found homemade pipe bombs that did not … [Read more...] about Teen Texas gunman suspect studied previous mass shootings: Report

By JULIE TURKEWITZ The New York Times Tues., Feb. 20, 2018 TAMARAC, FLA.—The shooting was all over, but the emotional reckoning had just begun, and so on Saturday the teachers of Broward County in Florida packed their union hall to discuss what it meant to have become the nation’s human shields. “Last night I told my wife I would take a bullet for the kids,” said Robert Parish, a teacher at an elementary school just miles from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, where a former student killed 17 people, including at least three faculty members who found themselves in the line of fire. Since the attack on Wednesday, Parish said, “I think about it all the time.” Across the country, teachers are grappling with how their roles have expanded, from educator and counsellor to bodyguard and protector. They wonder if their classrooms are properly equipped, if they would recognize the signs of a dangerous student and, most of all, if they are … [Read more...] about ‘Last night I told my wife I would take a bullet for the kids’