Washington DOC to Pay $2.25 Million in Shootings Case

The state of Washington has agreed to pay the families of five children who were victims of a shooting spree at a Jewish community center in California, the sum of $2.25 million.

The assailant, Buford Furrow Jr., is currently serving a life sentence in prison after he rampaged through the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Grenada Hills, California in 1999. He shot dead a 16-year-old counselor, a 68-year-old receptionist and injured three other teenagers. Then, Furrow shot dead a Filipino American postman. At the time of the slayings, Furrow was on parole and was under the supervision of Washington law enforcement agencies.

Nine months before he raised mayhem at the center, Furrow had threatened staff members at Fairfax Hospital with a knife. He claimed to Fairfax staff that he had a pistol in his car, and admitted that the previous night he had a strong desire to shoot people at a mall. When he threatened a staff member with a knife, a deputy got him to calm down at gunpoint, and he was booked into Kings County Jail.

He served 5½ months of his sentence, before being let out on parole. Throughout the period between his arrest at the hospital and his rampage in California, he was either in custody or under the supervision of law enforcement agencies. His mental health was repeatedly evaluated while he was in custody, but once he was let out on parole, supervision became increasingly lax.

The Washington Department of Corrections, for instance, made no surprise visits to his home as it is empowered to do. In fact from his release from the prison in May of that year to the deadly shooting, a community service officer met him a total of 5 times. All meetings were held by prior appointment in the agency’s office.

It’s a mystery as to why supervision was allowed to be so lax of a man so rabidly racist and dangerous he openly confessed to having fantasies of mass slayings. He was an open member of the Aryan Brotherhood, and was known to harbor rabid notions on Jews and African Americans. Racism by itself is not a crime, and a person has the right to have any such beliefs, but when a man who carried an Aryan Brotherhood membership card on his person, has self-inflicted hatred marks on his body and who has openly and repeatedly talking about killing his wife, surely you begin to see that the problem is more than just his beliefs.

How difficult was it to see that the man was a walking and ticking time bomb waiting to go off. In fact in the days leading up to the slayings, Furrow reportedly was showing all the signs of a man about to embark on a dangerous journey – he was drinking and buying weapons. Yet, his supervision officer saw it fit to conduct exactly one urinalysis in the months that he was on parole, and absolutely no searches of his belongings or his home were conducted.

According to the terms of his parole, Furrow was not to drink, possess weapons, or use drugs. These are not the sorts of things you can keep an eye on by calling the man to your office by prior appointment. To find out whether he’s keeping to the terms of parole, you need to check up on his home, and question those who know him. Sadly none of these precautions were taken and a man who should have been under lock and key was set loose on an unsuspecting community. If anything, the Washington DOC owed more than the personal injury settlement they have been handed down.