News broke today of a Tampa teenager arrested for plotting to detonate explosives at a local high school. The Tampa police chief said only that a tip came from “someone familiar with [defendant Jared] Cano’s plot,” and often that comes from family members or peers.
If it turns out the tip came from a peer, this would join other almost-violent situations to show that if you provide an opportunity for students to report situations they feel will escalate into violence, crimes can be headed off. It’s awful that Cano was planning murder, great that the Tampa police arrested him before anything happened, and incredibly reassuring to me as a parent that someone called the police to stop murder.
(My son is in a different high school from where Cano was planning his attack. Same county, same police department.)