After nine months in the making, the draft report on the Stoneman Douglas school shooting massacre is out.
The report, released Wednesday, details what happened last Valentine’s Day and outlines steps districts need to take to mitigate future incidents.
Images of that day in February are embedded in the minds of many.
Nikolas Cruz is accused of going on a murderous rampage, killing 14 students and three staff members at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
“This is going to happen again,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the chairman of the commission that authored the report.
“The question is where? The question is when? And the ultimate question we should be asking: What changes have we made to mitigate the harm as quickly as possible?” asked Gualtieri.
Among the recommendations are armed assailant training, bullet-proof glass, locked gates and entries and having armed and trained teachers who have undergone background checks.
“What all this has told us, all this teaches us and what the evidence shows, it’s gonna happen by somebody that is familiar, somebody that can quickly produce a gun, and they are gonna wreak havoc fast and somebody needs to stop it fast,” Sheriff Gualtieri said. “And that ain’t gonna be a cop.”
He knows committing to better security means having a different mindset and it means changing the way things are done right now.
“There are a whole bunch of things that are basic – very, very basic – harm mitigation strategies that can be put in place, and should already have been put in place,” he said.
The report blasts the actions of the school resource officer at Stoneman Douglas and points out numerous security lapses, like the lack of speakers in hallways and few radios to alert people about an active shooter.
You can read the full 458-page report here.
