The Daily - Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2018

Episode Date: February 27, 2018

“All he cares about is his gun.”“He could be a school shooter in the making.” Those were among the concerns expressed in calls to law enforcement about Nikolas Cruz, who is suspected of shooting 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. Yet so many red flags triggered no legal action. How is that possible? Guest: Richard A. Oppel Jr., a national correspondent for The Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily Watch. Today, in dozens of 911 calls about Nicholas Cruz, callers expressed concerns that, quote, all he cares about is his gun, and he could be a school shooter in the making. How so many red flags could trigger no legal action. It's Tuesday, February 27th. It's November 28th, 2017, and police in Florida receive a call from a woman named Roxanne Deschamps.

Yeah, there was a fight in my house with a kid and my son. There's just been a fight in her house, she tells the 911 dispatcher. Rich Oppel is a national correspondent for The Times. Okay, and who did this? Nicholas Cruz. It's Nicholas Cruz. She tells police that he's pissed off, that he's coming to the house, he's hitting the walls, banging the walls, going nuts in the house. And then Cruz punches her son in the face.

Her son then tells him he needs to leave. Do you know which direction he ran or took off or in a vehicle? No, he probably, no, he doesn't have a vehicle. He's walking and he's probably turning right on going east, no, going south on Congress. Because that's where Dick's is. Dick's, like Dick's Sporting Goods? Yeah, he bought a gun about a week and a half ago, and he gets it today, so we think that he's going there now. In much of the call, the woman is a matter of fact.

She's just describing in fairly calm tones what she's been seeing. But there's one moment where she seems genuinely afraid. I need her to come here because I'm afraid he comes back and he has a lot of weapons. And he has a weapon he's going to get at Dick's right now because he purchased it. What kind of weapon, ma'am? Let me ask my son. What kind of weapon did he get that he's going to get? A Remington.

A Remington? A level 3 armor. They're worried he's going to come back with a gun. Because that's all he wants is his gun, and that's all he cares about is his gun. And he brought bullets and stuff, and I took it away from him. And I have a bunch of other little guns here. with a gun. She's worried about those guns and his brother in after their mother died. She's taken him in, and now four weeks later, there's a major crisis in the home. Okay, ma'am, the deputy should be pulling up shortly. I'm going to go ahead and disconnect.

Okay. But there's two deputies en route to you, okay? Okay, thank you. Uh-huh, bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Well, around the same time that Roxanne is calling 911, another call comes in to 911. 911, emergency.

Hi, I was just assaulted now. Someone tried to, someone attacked me. And they say they were going to gut me if I came back. Okay, where did this occur at and how long ago? A couple minutes ago. So Nicholas Cruz is calling 911 himself and telling his side of the story to the dispatchers and what he says happened at that house. Wow, so at roughly the same time we have Cruz calling, do we know what his reason is for making the call? Well, he's distraught. He's shaken.

Are you okay, sir? Yeah, I'm fine right now. And he talks about how he just started getting mad and punching walls and stuff. Tell me, like, what happened? Well, I kind of got mad, and I started punching walls and stuff. And then a kid came after me and threw me on the ground. And he started attacking me, and he kicked me out of the house. And he said he was going to gut me.

The son of Roxanne threw him on the ground and kicked him out of the house and told him if he comes back, he's going to gut him. You were just staying at this house, and you got mad, and you were punching things, and then they came after you. Yeah. All right. So the thing is, I lost my mother a couple weeks ago. So, like, I'm dealing with a bunch of things right now.

I understand. And he tells police very, very clearly he's been struggling since his mother died. He's really been having problems. Are you sure you're okay? Yes. All right. We're going to send a deputy to you. They should be there shortly. All right? All right, sir. Just have your phone on you in case we need to call you back. Rich, is this call to the same police department? Are officers and 911 operators aware that they've just received two calls from two sides of this situation? Yeah, the calls are to the same 911 dispatchers.

And they do seem to be aware that they're hearing from both sides of the same altercation. So what happens? How do the police respond? Well, the police actually find Cruz at a park. Cruz explains what's happened. He's upset because he's misplaced a picture of his mother, of his late mother. Talks about how he lost his temper. Then they meet up again with Roxanne's son. And the son says, I don't want to prosecute.

Nicholas has been going through a lot since the loss of his mother. And I don't want him to go to jail. And then with the police standing there, they hug it out and reconcile. So in the end, what becomes of these 911 calls? Do they end up triggering any system that might keep Nicholas Cruz from possessing or buying a gun? Well, no. Even though it was pretty frightening just to listen to it, there's nothing illegal in the state of Florida that's happened here.

I think that's surprising to people when we hear a woman telling the police that a troubled young man staying in her home is obsessed with guns, owns lots of guns, has a history of threatening people with guns. And he himself shares with police that he's recently lost his mother and is in a fragile state. I think it's surprising that nothing about all that puts him in the legal arena. Well, that's right. and that's not all.

I mean, the police had been called out to his home almost two dozen times in the prior decade by his mother mostly, you know, in this steady stream of accelerating problems that began with things like using a hose from a vacuum to hit his mother or throwing his mother into the wall when she took his Xbox away. And then later having people saying, he's talking about wanting to shoot up a school. And then somebody specifically saying who knew him saying, you know, I think he's a school shooter in the making. And it wasn't just local authorities in Florida who had these warnings and had this kind of steady stream of frightening interactions with this kid and his family. The FBI got a couple of tips, including a very specific tip

just 40 days before the massacre where somebody who clearly knows the kid and knows the family is talking about how he's going to explode, how he's putting really frightening things on Instagram and talking about shooting people and doing awful things to animals. None of that sounds subtle.

No, that was the whole thing. It could not have been less subtle, and nothing came of it. So even after all of these warnings, these very explicit warnings to local police, to the FBI, is there any reason for police to have taken away Nicholas Cruz's guns? No, there was no clear route for the police to take his guns away. I mean, the police are being looked at for really fouling up opportunities to investigate warnings that he could be a school shooter. Are you really not taking any responsibility for the multiple red flags that were brought to the attention of the Broward Sheriff's Office

about this shooter before the incident, whether it was people near him, close to him, calling the police. Jake, I could only take responsibility for what I knew about. I exercised my due diligence. But at the same time, it appears that there is no clear route for the police in Florida to have taken his guns away. It sounds like a lot of people thought that they did the right thing in the case of Nicholas Cruz. They called the police, they reported something to the FBI, and yet, legally speaking, nothing was triggered by that. Well, that's right. And it's very frustrating because a lot of people did exactly what they should have done, but there was very little that could be done to take his guns away, you know, unless he actually was convicted of a felony or sent to a mental hospital.

But there are ways to intercede in gray areas like this, where you've got somebody who's saying and doing very frightening things, who owns high-powered weapons, who's making specific threats, and those are called red flag laws. One solution several states have implemented as a response to mass shootings are so-called red flag laws. And what is a red flag law, and why wasn't one used in this case? Well, a red flag law is a law that's basically modeled on a domestic violence protection order where family members, household members, or police can go to a judge in civil court and say, this person's saying and doing things that

are very frightening. They have guns. We're worried that they could be a danger to themselves or to others. It's not based on any diagnosis. It's based on what the person says and does and how frightening that is and what a judge thinks of that. And the judge can then temporarily order those guns taken away. And in some cases, the guns can be taken away without any argument being heard from the gun owner. And there are a handful of states that have these laws, including California, Washington, and Oregon. But in Florida, there's no such law. And so there was no route to do this to Nicholas Cruz. In Florida, there's no such law, and so there was no route to do this to Nicholas Cruz. So these laws don't require anybody to get a medical diagnosis of mental illness.

They don't require somebody to have broken any kind of law. It just requires a person to have exhibited dangerous behavior and have guns. That's right. And then if a judge agreed, they could have gotten these guns temporarily confiscated from Nicholas Cruz. Right. Well, what these laws do is they take conduct and behavior and statements that someone might make that don't rise to the level of something that could be prosecuted or don't rise to the level of something that would have you adjudicated mentally ill or committed to a hospital. But those then can be used to convince a judge to take your weapons away because you're a danger to yourself or to others. It seems like a lot of this hinges on the court's ability to predict someone's behavior before they've actually done something overly dangerous.

That's right. It's all about prevention. It's not about punishment. And they're temporary. And presumably in a great number of cases, guns are maybe taken away from people who might not have done anything to themselves or others with them. But it's about preventing shootings, somebody killing themselves or shooting others. So where does this law fall in the gun control debate? It seems like because it doesn't place restrictions on the kinds of guns that people can buy or anything like that, it just steps in when people are considered a real threat, that it might have more support than, say, a ban on assault weapons or semi-automatic

weapons, which seems less likely to pass. Right. In a lot of places, any sort of assault weapons ban is a non-starter, even now. But this is the sort of thing that in some places do seem to have some bipartisan support. You've seen some Republican politicians with high NRA ratings endorse, at least in principle, these sorts of laws. A concept called a gun violence restraining order that allows authorities, and it has to be someone in your immediate family, it has to be somebody you live with, it has to be your parent, has to be an administrator, can go to authorities and allow someone to not just be prevented from purchasing any firearm,

okay, not just the rifle, any firearm, and allow those to be taken from them. And that person will have due process. Because I believe that if that were in place in Florida, and about three states already have it, it could have prevented this from happening. And I support that, and I hope they will pass that. You've had people like Senator Marco Rubio in Florida, Governor Rick Scott in Florida. I'm against people that are going to potentially cause the harm, and we know they are. There's so many. I mean, look at what's common. These people are talking about what they're doing. They're threatening others. One of the things about these red flag laws is that it plays into the desires of both sides of this debate to some extent. I mean, on the one hand,

you have Republicans who have wanted to make this about mental health. We are committed to working with state and local leaders to help secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of mental health. And not about gun control and assault weapons bans. And on the other side, you've got gun control advocates who do want to make it about those things too, but they also say it's really important to have an easier way than the very high bar right now to take guns away from people who are clearly troubled. So there may be room for some kind of bipartisan agreement on that. So given the bipartisan openness to laws like this, is this a way for Congress to actually do something meaningful to prevent shootings without having to strengthen regulations on guns, which has been so difficult to do?

Well, certainly these 911 calls and all the other evidence about Nicholas Cruz's problems and violent tendencies show how compelling a law like this could be. Something that was just tailor-made for preventing a massacre like this. So it could be something that both sides could get on board with. But the fact remains that this is the NRA's worst nightmare. Now, we've got to keep guns out of the hands of mentally deranged lunatics like the one who shot up that school in Florida. But Americans, law-abiding Americans, deserve due process. The right to be considered innocent until proven guilty. It's the most important right we have. We can't just snatch

it away. What they say is that this will strip people of their Second Amendment rights and a judge will be able to take away their guns without any due process, without hearing both sides of the story, that, you, that you would have neighbors or family members just complain and that's it. I don't want deranged lunatics, mentally ill, violent criminals with guns in their hands. It's the last thing I want. But I also don't want the rights of law-abiding Americans snatched away because some overzealous government bureaucrat who hates guns decided to get in the way and just literally take those rights from you. That is what I am here to

protect against. That does seem like a potentially fair point that taking away someone's guns, especially if they can't mount a legal defense, might violate a person's constitutional rights. So how do proponents of red flag laws make the legal case that it's okay to essentially predict whether someone's going to use their gun violently? And is there an argument that because it's temporary and because it involves what police see as a really urgent threat, that it may be a case where it's okay to impinge on their

Second Amendment rights because lives are literally at stake? I think advocates would say that. I mean, they would, I think, say it doesn't impinge on Second Amendment rights, but certainly the NRA has a very different view on that, and they have a lot of sway. Thank you very much, Rich. Thanks so much, Michael. This kid had 39 red flags. They should have known.

They did know. They didn't do anything about it. On Monday, President Trump complained that under current law, there was little law enforcement officials could do about Nicholas Cruz. You can't arrest him, I guess, because he hasn't done anything, but you know he's like a boiler ready to explode, right? So he's, he just, you have to do something. But you can't put him in jail, I guess, because he hasn't done anything. But despite his focus on the red flags,

President Trump made no mention of red flag laws. Instead, he suggested reopening mental institutions to treat potential mass shooters. And hopefully he gets help or whatever. But he's off the streets. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected an unusual request from the Trump administration that it decide whether President Trump

was entitled to shut down the DACA program, as he announced he was doing last year, when he said he would let the program expire in March unless Congress acted to protect them. Lower courts had issued nationwide injunctions against ending the program, and the Trump administration was asking the Supreme Court to immediately review those decisions. In declining to do so,

the Supreme Court is letting the injunction stand, meaning the Trump administration is effectively blocked from ending DACA on March 5th, as planned. The Supreme Court decision could relieve pressure on lawmakers to permanently address the status of the Dreamers by that deadline. And a federal appeals court has ruled that anti-gay discrimination is prohibited in the workplace under a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act bans discrimination based on sex, but doesn't explicitly mention sexuality. LGBTQ activists have long argued that the ban should be interpreted to cover anti-gay discrimination as well. On Monday, the appeals court went against the wishes

of the Justice Department and sided with lawyers for a skydiving instructor who was fired after disclosing his sexuality to a client moments before a job. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.