Elephant in the Schoolroom; Parkland Mystery

Elephant in the Schoolroom

By Huck Akin

https://youtu.be/tAN4g66RFug

There is a remarkable fact about the tragic Parkland school-shooting that the Media is not talking about, though it is right there in plain sight: many, many eyewitnesses, both teachers and students, reported that they were told that morning there would be a “Code-Red” Active-Shooter Drill at the school later in the day; that the police would be “shooting blanks” and there would be “fake screaming.”  The teacher in the clip above says, “I assumed that it’s a code-red drill, because they told us earlier in the day that there would be a code-red drill.  I assumed it was blanks.”

So, what happened to the drill? When Nikolas Cruz debarked from his Uber, it was 2:19 PM.  The Active Shooter Drill had not yet happened, and the school day was almost over; so we can pretty well assume it was all set-up and ready to go just about the time the real event broke.  There would have been already-in-place real police with blanks in their guns, and a fake shooter, all dressed up in army-surplus regalia.  Maybe there were even victim-dummies and fake blood, depending on how real they planned it to be.  In fact, many of the students themselves, in their eyewitness interviews, describe odd things that are best explained by there being an Active Shooter Drill happening concurrently with the real shooting: gunshots coming from different directions, multiple shooters, “army guys stacking up dead bodies [dummies?] and covering them with a mat,” etc.

Even the strangely-slow response from the “cowardly” deputies—four of them now, it seems, might be best explained this way.  If you were planning an active-shooter drill, who are the first people you would notify?  Why, the security guards who will be on duty, of course!  After all, you can’t have a guard charging in and shooting your Actor-Shooter with real bullets, now, can you?  Why, if I was one of the criticized guards on duty that day, even if I really did have a panic attack, I’d blame my hesitation on the planned drill! Wouldn’t you?  “I assumed those gunshots were blanks and it was all part of the drill!” I’d explain.  In fact, I find it odd the accused deputies have not made that claim; but then I don’t think we have seen either Scot Peterson or the other deputies interviewed in public yet, have we?  I would think they would be chomping at the bit to explain themselves.  Are they under some kind of gag order?

But as I watch these witnesses being interviewed, each time they mention the planned drill, the reporters just brush the information aside, as if it is not particularly relevant or interesting; as if the student or teacher had mentioned there was a planned “bake-sale” instead of “Active Shooter Drill.”

Shouldn’t this amazing coincidence be right up there in the headlines?  “Real Shooter Shoots up Shooter-Drill, Kills 17!”  Or something like that.

 As a comparison, suppose a Hollywood movie about a bank robbery were being filmed in a downtown bank, and a real robber came in and tried to rob the bank during the filming.  Would you expect the news reports covering the robbery to hardly mention the Hollywood movie?  Of course not!  The story would have “Man Bites Dog” all over it.  Think of all the amazing confusion, surprise, and even humorous implications!

So what happened when the real Parkland shooter, Nikolas Cruz, rounded the corner and came face-to-face with the Drill-Actor Shooter?  Did they open up and start blasting each other, until the actor remembered with dismay that he only had blanks?  Or, after a brief pause of mutual confusion, did the actor have the presence-of-mind to shout, “You take that side of the building and I’ll take this side!”

If I was a reporter, there are a lot of questions I’d want to ask the authorities that nobody is asking:

• “What agency was running the drill?  BSO?  DHS?”
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• What kind of confusion was caused by the drill impacting with a live event?  Was there a moment, like we saw on 9/11, where the Air Traffic Controller says, “Is this real-world, or is this a drill?”
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• Did the drill scenario include tripping the fire alarm, or was that all Cruz’s doing?
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• Could the confusion have affected the deputies’ response times?
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• Did some drill participants have to switch-over from blanks to live ammo, as actually happened in San Bernardino?  How long did that take?
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• Did the drill scenario involve multiple shooters?  How many?
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• Did anybody dressed as a fake shooter strip-off their costume and shout, “Don’t shoot, I’m just an actor!  I’m not real!”
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• All Active-Shooter Drills are based on a script that is prepared in advance.  Will you release that script to the public?
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• Did the drill involve reporters interviewing pretend victims? If so, could some of those pretend interviews have gotten mixed-up with real ones, contaminating the record and providing fuel for conspiracy-nuts?

There is absolutely no doubt that a drill was scheduled for that day.  Besides the witness above, you can easily find more than a dozen interviews where the witness says they thought the gunshots were blanks at first, because of the code-red drill they were expecting.

So why are the authorities—not to mention the MSM—going out of their way to ignore this amazing coincidence and its very real implications for the tragic day’s events?  Why should they act as if they were embarrassed that they called for an Active Shooter Drill on the day of a real Active Shooter attack?  Shouldn’t they, rather, be proud of their prescience?  It’s as if a Navy ship sailed out to pick up a space capsule and wound up getting beaned by it.  There may be a bit of damage, but the Captain, could, at least, be proud of his pinpoint navigation.

The only answer I can come up with, is they are afraid that a bunch of conspiracy-nuts will exploit this national tragedy by seizing on a simple coincidence and twisting it to advance their own paranoid agenda. So the authorities are playing-down the drill aspect.  And the MSM is sacrificing a great angle on the story and going along with the Government because…

But now, I am in a bind. If I suggest the Government and MSM are “in collusion,” as they will frame it, that itself would be catnip to the crackpots!  Perhaps, in this unusual circumstance, our only hope for National Sanity is to unleash the algorithms, and clean the Internet of all controversy.  Please, just let me get this piece posted first.