Sandy Hook, Lessons Never Learned, The Mass Killings Go On
Republished with permission from AbleChild.
[Remembering Sandy Hook, thirteen years ago today on December 14, 2012.]
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook mass shooting, a full-frontal attack on the Second Amendment occurred and new law enforcement data collection systems were instituted with the intention of combating mass murders in the future. To say these measures failed is an understatement and the public deserves more. The public deserves transparency.
Many new firearm data systems were created that would have the ability to track locations, victims, and weapons used, while excluding whether cases are actually solved and whether key documents like ballistics reports and autopsies were ever completed or made public. At the same time, the FBI’s “Operation Juice Box” into corruption and internal networks at the Newtown Police Department surfaced only years after the killings, released quietly and handled as a slap on the wrist. Had that investigation and its findings been openly highlighted in national media at the time, it could have exposed and disrupted the kind of inside networks that give mass shooters access and protect failures inside law enforcement.
In the official story, after every major shooting, the public hears about “data-driven” responses and “Lessons Learned,” commissions stacked with insiders are formed but the underlying databases stay blind to the players who matter most. The databases provide information about what type of gun was used, how many people were wounded/killed, and where the attack occurred, but databases rarely track whether the case is solved, what the investigation actually reveals as to the motive of the attack, or who inside the system failed to protect the public.
There is no standard field for: were ballistics tests performed on alleged weapons; were autopsies and toxicology tests performed on the shooter; did an outside agency review the case; did anyone in law enforcement face discipline for missed warnings or evidence mishandling or tampering? Without these basics, patterns of failure and corruption remain buried.
Sandy Hook and Operation Juice Box are a warning about what happens when investigative materials and documents are hidden from the public. In the case of Sandy Hook, the same police department that controlled the crime scene and the early narrative was later found to have an internal “juice box” network of cozy deals and misconduct with international connections to China, but the consequences were mild and the story was quickly pushed out of the spotlight. That sends a clear signal: even when an investigation confirms serious problems inside a department, the systems that claim to track and learn from mass violence do not change its structure to capture these problems as data. The result is a public record that looks clean on the surface and rotten underneath.
Meanwhile, police are being trained by a growing web of outside crisis and behavioral-health partners whose names, funding, and doctrines rarely show up in any database. Officers go through “mental health” and “crisis team” courses designed and funded by a mix of federal justice programs, state money, and behavioral-health systems. Those actors help decide how threats are assessed, which reports are taken seriously, and when a dangerous person is passed back into the community. This is done by the same institution that benefits from the “mental health” dollars poured into its industry in the aftermath.
When accused assassins have behavioral-health ties, when a sheriff or campus officer with ethical concerns stands at the center of a security failure, or when a shooter with a complex psychiatric and medication history slips past every warning sign and the “treatment” and “treater” are left out of the discussion, the pattern is the same. The new databases still never show who trained that department, who paid for the training, or how behavioral-health partners shaped those decisions.
If these systems are going to protect the public instead of protecting institutions, they have to start treating investigative quality, internal corruption, and third-party training as core facts, not side notes.
Every serious database should record whether a case is solved, what forensic work was completed, whether there were internal affairs findings or outside investigations like Operation Juice Box, and which external training and behavioral-health networks sat behind law enforcement’s decisions. Only then can the public know when the same kind of inside networks keep opening doors for mass shooters, and when the same kind of failures repeat across cities and years.
Without transparency, “Lessons Learned” will stay a slogan, and the next inside network that gives a killer access will still be hiding in the gaps of the very data we are told to trust.
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