I asked a question semi-related to this a couple weeks ago... the one about how you would respond if you thought a loved one was a danger to someone. The problem in these situations is that the people involved have often not broken any laws. If they haven't broken any laws, what exactly is law enforcement to do?
News reports are pretty vague about what trouble Cruz had been in. He got into a fist fight with a friend or family friend after the person "misplaced" a photo of his deceased mother. During that event, he punched some walls and broke things. Obviously not a sign of optimal mental health, but the person did not want to press charges and there's a huge difference between punching someone and murdering people. While there's probably some kind of link that says people who become mass murderers usually have track records with fighting, the inverse isn't true. I'm betting just about every male you've ever known has punched someone at some point in their lives and likely few, if any, went on to become mass murderers. As far as "threats" he may have made or what evidence exited to suggest Cruz was gearing up for this... that I don't know. Everyone's saying he was a "known" threat. Ok... well, we don't have the right to arrest people because we think they could be a threat. There are rules and guidelines we have to follow, and rightly so, lest every innocent person wind up in prison because somebody believed them to be a threat.
This is a tragedy, and perhaps someone could have done something, but this isn't Minority Report. We can't imprison people because we think maybe they might become a threat.
Furthermore, why do you think the suspect is even being coddled? Is he not inside a cell now? If that's not good enough, which offense would you have liked him arrested for before?
