http:// www .foxnews.com/us/2018/02/22/florida-schools-security-cameras-had-nearly-half-hour-delay-causing-lag-in-capturing-gunman-report-shows.html
Police officers responding to last week’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida reportedly thought they were tracking Nikolas Cruz live on surveillance video — but then realized the footage was delayed by nearly 30 minutes, tossing roadblocks into the frantic efforts to capture the 19-year-old shooting suspect.
The security cameras in Broward School District had a 20-minute delay, which left responding officers in the dark when attempting to look for Cruz in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 13, the Sun Sentinel reported. Cruz was captured in Coral Springs, located about a mile away, more than an hour after the start of the shooting.
“[Video images were] delayed 20 minutes and nobody told us that,” Coral Springs Police Chief Tony Pustizzi told the Sun Sentinel.
Cruz walked into the campus’ freshman building around 2:21 p.m. and began firing at students and staff, killing 17 people, police said. He left the school seven minutes later, blending in with terrified students.
Responding officers were heard on radio transmissions at 2:54 p.m. saying they were seeing Cruz on camera going from the third to the second floor. By that time, Cruz had been out of the building for 26 minutes, according to the newspaper.
“He went from the third floor to the second floor…They’re monitoring him on camera,” an officer was heard saying on the radio transmission released by Broadcastify.
Pustizzi recalled officers attempting to pinpoint Cruz when the shooter wasn’t even in the building.
“Somebody would say: ‘He’s on the second floor,’ and we had guys on the second floor saying: ‘We’re on the second floor, we don’t see him.’ That’s when we figured out there’s a tape delay,” Pustizzi said.
On a radio transmission from the day of the shooting, an officer finally said, “It’s about a 20-minute delay, they’re following him on video, on the camera…They have him exiting the building, running south.”
“Once we found that out we were able to adjust," Pustizzi said Wednesday.
Several factors contributed to the chaos and confusion that day. When Cruz left the building around 2:28 p.m., police officers believed the gunman was just entering the school. Police also had issues locating and accessing the security cameras.
We need somebody with the camera systems ASAP,” said an officer at 2:43 p.m., about 15 minutes after gunfire stopped. “Where’s the principal? Who’s with the principal? And we need to start making a plan here.”
At one point, police were looking for officer Scott Peterson because he knew where to access the cameras — but Peterson was not in the freshman building at the time. Some of the radio transmissions also couldn’t be heard due to the outdated system.
“You can hear me, but I cannot hear you, so standby,” a dispatcher said at 2:56 p.m. about the malfunctioning communications devices
While officers were still scouring the school, Cruz went to Walmart and purchased a drink at Subway at 2:50 p.m., according to the sheriff’s office timeline. Eleven minutes later, he walked into a McDonald’s, sat down and left.
At 4:11 p.m., Broward Sheriff’s Office said the shooter was in custody.
Cruz was charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. A series of reports indicating possible warning signs have emerged since the deadly shooting, including Cruz’s history of violent threats and trouble in school. The FBI also admitted last week it had not acted on a tip made Jan. 5 that Cruz wanted to “kill people” and the tipster feared the “potential of him conducting a school shooting.”