FBI owes better answers on Fort Lauderdale airport shooting

[ck4829]

Given that he reportedly suffered mental health problems, that he told FBI agents he was hearing voices about ISIS and that he was held for psychiatric evaluation in Alaska just two months ago, how is it even possible that Esteban Santiago was allowed to fly with a gun?

Following the bloodbath he is believed to have caused at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Friday — killing five and wounding eight in a shooting spree at baggage claim — the FBI said Saturday that Santiago wasn't even on the federal no-fly list.

How many warning signs, red flags and alarm bells does the agency need to recognize that someone poses a danger, deserves ongoing scrutiny and shouldn't be allowed to possess — let alone fly — with weapons and ammunition

But from what little the FBI is saying in Fort Lauderdale, it appears the agency demonstrated insufficient attention after Santiago walked into its Anchorage office in November in a "very agitated state."

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/editorials/fl-editorial-fort-lauderdale-airport-shooting-20170107-story.html

I really doubt the FBI's Anchorage branch was given all the resources it needed, and the office clearly didn't matter much, what with Hillary Clinton's emails being Public Enemy Number One and all and him showing up at the worst time (Early November). The emailists have the blood of the five people killed on their hands as far I am concerned.

[HassleCat]

1. If you own a gun, you can fly with it.

We would have to figure out a way to prevent access to guns by unstable people.

[Akoto]

2. My understanding of the how, from local news (can't personally verify)...

I live less than 30m from where this happened, so it was wall to wall coverage on the local news from the moment it got out.

What I understood from the chatter was that he went to the FBI and told them that the CIA was mind controlling him to attack American citizens. Naturally, the FBI had him sent for an evaluation.

If he had been committed for treatment as a result of those evaluations, then he would not have been permitted to fly with a gun. However, he apparently manage to evade that, and so nothing stopped him from carrying one in his checkin.

No idea if that's accurate, but I remember that's what was said.

[ck4829]

4. What did the FBI do after that?

It just seems to me like *armed veteran* *hearing voices* telling him to do the *bidding of ISIS* would merit some sort of case file or a follow-up at the least. Not to mention he came in there of his own volition, there was a window when he would have been receptive to help and to what the FBI would say to him.

Were they short staffed?
Did they lack training to deal with Santiago's issues?
Did they not have material resources to deal with things like this?
And did a little depot in Anchorage matter all that much to the upper echelons of the FBI when at this same time he came to them the elusive wrongdoing in Hillary's emails were their top priority?

[Akoto]

5. Common sense would suggest any or all of that, yes, but...

Evidently, if you pass the psychiatric evaluations and don't end up committed, you are still legally permitted to travel with a gun. That just seems to be the plain fact of it as the law presently exists, so the FBI had nothing further to do from a legal standpoint.

No, it doesn't make sense to me, either.

[pangaia]

3. Has anybody asked why or explained why he went to Ft. Lauderdale

instead of going on his rampage in Minneapolis?

[JI7]

6. they were too busy investigating Hillary based on breitbart and other fake news

[manicdem]

7. Difficult decisions

You have to be careful of what you want done about mental health cases. There are probably at least a million people in the US with mental issues like the shooter. Hearing voices, deranged, want to kill people, etc. A lot of them don't want help when it's offered. We'd have to restrict their rights and force them to be treated or institutionalized. Possibly for life. Once we do that then it makes a precedent to restrict rights of other groups of people.

[Igel]

8. One more time.

Long, long ago--when I was a child in the '60s--it was possible to easily strip somebody of their rights. You go and file a few affidavits and they're locked up for mental illness. Or the police could do it. Or a judge, for scant reason.

And it was possible for police to do the KGB/NKVD thing with people they didn't like, for husbands to get wives locked up, etc. Not always easy, but there were such cases. And no such cases must ever be allowed to happen. So we did everything possible to prevent it. ("Everything possible" is seldom "everything reasonable" or "everything desirable". But we all speak like Trump at times with exaggeration, braggadocio, and hyperbole ... and then deny we do, like, um, that horrible, horrible person.)

But since we distrust others, the police, and the legal system, we now have this wonderful set of procedures that need to be followed. They're long. They're time consuming. But they protect the precious rights of people.

We want rights to be easily and lightly stripped away. We want rights to be iron-clad because we don't trust "them there folk."

It meant we had a hell of a time getting my mother, suffering from delusions, hallucinations, etc., all dementia related, stripped of her license and ability to sell off the house to the nice guy who trimmed her tree.

It meant when they were convinced a relative of mine had gone starkers--not the technical term--they had to wait while their brother and son acted quietly insane while living in the same house. Wait until one night he beat up his mother until she showed him the book of sorcery used to damn him, set fire to his parents bed to burn the book, and then took off to find his brother. Fortunately the ray-gun god put under his truck seat wasn't there so he just assaulted his brother with his fists. Quite a night. Then the police took him into custody; since he was violent, the psych evaluation got him committed. Thinking that QEII lived next door and spied on him for the CIA and that there were microphones planted in the dogs, being unable to continue school because of the voices or hold down a job ... Not enough. But to even hint that some legal procedures were being taken to get him help would have been worse.

As with me, when my mother found that I was filing for guardianship, so she came at me with a knife.

This kind of protection of rights gets people killed. But we as a society decades ago, mostly under liberal influences (and not conservative), decided that this was a decent trade-off, and netted more good than it netted bad.

All rights entail some trade-off. We don't rewrite the rules case by case to suit particular people.

[ManiacJoe]

10. Excellent write up.

Sorry to hear about your family going though it.

[malaise]

12. Great post n/t

[X_Digger]

9. Due process? How's that even work? Bah. n/t

[IcyPeas]

11. I can't help wondering that if "Esteban Santiago's" name was....

"Abdul Mohammed" or some other middle eastern sounding name - if he would'be been put on a no fly list. This guy did call out for help and now everyone is passing the buck.