MUST READ: New report explains how Nikolas Cruz benefited from 'Obama's school leniency policy'

Greg P. | 8:44 AM on March 01, 2018

RealClearInvestigations is out with a must read piece on Nikolas Cruz and “Obama’s school-leniency policy” that allowed the future killer to avoid arrest while in high school:

"Broward County adopted a lenient disciplinary policy similar to those adopted by many other districts under pressure from the Obama administration to reduce racial ‘disparities’ in suspensions and expulsions." https://t.co/O7nrm9eYiA Why are we even talking about the NRA?

— Mark Krikorian (@MarkSKrikorian) March 1, 2018

Nikolas Cruz disciplined for assault, threatening teachers & carrying bullets in backpack. But school policy kept such cases from police so kids wouldn’t get records. With no record, he passed gun background check. https://t.co/JLAGQA8BHL

— Drew Cline (@DrewHampshire) March 1, 2018

The opener:

Despite committing a string of arrestable offenses on campus before the Florida school shooting, Nikolas Cruz was able to escape the attention of law enforcement, pass a background check and purchase the weapon he used to slaughter 14 fellow students and three adults because of Obama administration efforts to make school discipline more lenient.

Documents reviewed by RealClearInvestigations and interviews show that his school district in Florida’s Broward County was in the vanguard of a strategy, adopted by more than 50 other major school districts nationwide, allowing thousands of troubled, often violent, students to commit crimes without legal consequence. The aim was slowing the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

“He had a clean record, so alarm bells didn’t go off when they looked him up in the system,” veteran FBI agent Michael Biasello told RCI. “He probably wouldn’t have been able to buy the murder weapon if the school had referred him to law enforcement.”

Disclosures about the strategy add a central new element to the Parkland shooting story: It’s not just one of official failings at many levels and of America’s deep divide over guns, but also one of deliberate federal policy gone awry.