Friday, February 23, 2018

Parkland Shooting

When juxtaposing the following two articles, one can only come to a rather disturbing conclusion regarding the selective investigative methods of the FBI....

From Michelle Mark's 2-16-18 Business Insider article "The FBI Failed to Act on a Tip It Got About the Florida High-school Shooter":

"The FBI said on Friday that it had failed to follow protocols in handling a tip on the suspected Florida shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, who authorities said killed 17 people on Wednesday.
"A person close to Cruz had phoned the FBI's tip line in January to report details about his 'gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting,' the bureau said in a statement.
"'Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life,' the statement went on. 'The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami field office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken' [...].
"More details have emerged in recent days from Cruz's former classmates, teachers, and neighbors about the pattern of disturbing behavior he had displayed in recent years.
"Cruz reportedly flaunted photos of his guns, introduced himself to people as a 'school shooter,' and had frequent run-ins with law enforcement.
"The FBI also received a tip from a YouTube vlogger about a comment from a user who called himself 'nikolas cruz.' The comment said he wanted to be a 'professional school shooter,' but the FBI said it couldn't confirm the identity of the user."
Compare the above with Greg Farrell and Anders Melin's 2-16-18 Bloomberg article "This Short Seller Pressed 'Tweet.'  Then the FBI Showed Up":

"Short-sellers aren’t known for restraint and decorum, and that goes double on Twitter, where Marc Cohodes vowed to take down a CEO he accuses of fraud. 'I will bury the little fella in a shoe box,' Cohodes tweeted in October.
"Weeks later, a black Ford Expedition pulled up to the short-seller’s Sonoma County ranch. Two FBI agents emerged. They showed Cohodes a printout of his tweet and a second one that mentioned loaded guns. 'Stop sending threatening tweets' about the CEO, one of the agents warned, or else.
"The feds’ Dec. 1 visit, which wasn’t previously reported, is documented in a sheriff’s report and described in a letter of complaint Cohodes’s lawyer sent to the U.S. Department of Justice.
"It was a novel turn in what, until then, seemed like a familiar struggle between a public company, MiMedx Group, and investors betting on its fall. That kind of drama has typically played out online, in the media or in court. But it hasn’t, by the recollection of several lawyers, previously drawn this sort of intervention by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The agents’ appearance at Cohodes’s house has touched off a dispute over whether the tweets merited intervention or whether the FBI overstepped — and how the messages came to the FBI’s attention."

As a colleague of mine wrote, "Looks like you need to be a CEO of a B.S. company to be taken seriously." 

What follow are two more recommended analyses regarding the Parkland Shooting....

1)  Loren Coleman's 2-16-18 Twilight Language post entitled "Parkland Syncs," and

2)  a 2-15-18 Secret Sun post entitled "Everyone Predicted It."

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