Thursday dawned unseasonably warm. A forecast rain came slowly, enabling the resource officers to congregate outside the east entrance to Butler Middle School.

You could guess what they were talking about — yet another horrific mass shooting, this time at a school in Miami’s north suburbs. Seventeen people killed.

Nobody seems surprised that a 19-year-old former student was arrested. The Miami Herald reported:

“The portrait of Nikolas Cruz, suspected of fatally shooting 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and wounding 15 others at his former school, is a troubled teen with few friends and an obsessive interest in weapons. Administrators considered him enough of a potential threat that one teacher said a warning was emailed last year against allowing him on the campus with a backpack.”

A former classmate told the Herald, “All he would talk about is guns, knives and hunting. I can’t say I was shocked. From past experiences, he seemed like the kind of kid who would do something like this.”

The sentiment sounds familiar, as if it’s been expressed in the aftermath of previous mass shootings giong back two decades. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, perpetrators of the original massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in April 1999, left plenty of clues as to their intentions. Harris had been under investigation for making online threats, and had posted months before the massacre that were making and detonating pipe bombs.

Nobody seemed surprised when they struck.

And yet, nobody had done enough to prevent the attack.

The FBI had ample warning this time. According to one news service, a YouTube blogger told the FBI last September that Cruz left a comment on one of his videos stating: “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.” Agents from the FBI’s Mississippi field office interviewed the blogger, who told them he didn’t know Cruz or anything about him. The agents returned with more questions Wednesday evening. It’s unknown whether the FBI had ever questioned Cruz.

We anticipate more of the déjà vu sensation — the calls for gun control, mental health spending and enhanced school campus security. And, with unfortunate consistency, absolutely nothing will change. We will only become a little more inured to such tragedies.

Could we boldly suggest another pathway? Let’s be more proactive.

This week, Butler School District entered into a joint municipal agreement with Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger, to work together on investigating cyber crimes.

John Stepansky, a former state trooper working as an officer for the district, will focus on cyber investigations. Stepansky has 12 years’ experience as computer crime investigator and is a digital forensics instructor at Butler County Community College.

This is an inspired move. It seems many of the mass shooting incidents fester in cyberspace before spilling into actual existence. It seems to be where the trail of evidence invariably begins.

And, while they are not in any way connected, Stepansky’s new role dovetails nicely with the new Community Drug Watch initiative. Both rely on the principle of “see something, say something” — as in, don’t rely on somebody else to speak up.

The implication is that it takes a little courage to report a suspicious activity — you might be wrong; you might draw attention to yourself; you might anger someone.

But watch the pupils hop off the school bus each morning and greet the resource officers as they file inside for class. A little courage, a little vigilance, a little personlal discomfort is the small price we should be willing to pay for our common security.