The more we learn about the law enforcement response, or lack thereof, to the Parkland school shooting, the worse the situation gets.
Scot Peterson, the armed school deputy who stayed outside while 17 people were murdered claimed he heard shots outside of the school, which would explain his failure to engage the shooter. Peterson resigned after being placed on unpaid suspension for his failure to act.
Peterson’s version of the story from CNN:
Peterson, who was armed on campus, did not enter the school because he believed the shooting was coming from outside the school buildings, according to attorney Joseph DiRuzzo III.
“Let there be no mistake, Mr. Peterson wishes that he could have prevented the untimely passing of the seventeen victims on that day, and his heart goes out to the families of the victims in their time of need,” the statement from DiRuzzo says.
“However, the allegations that Mr. Peterson was a coward and that his performance, under the circumstances, failed to meet the standards of police officers are patently untrue.”
“Patently untrue,” you say?
Internal radio dispatches made public by the Broward County Sheriff’s Department Thursday appear to contradict Peterson’s story. According to those dispatches, Peterson said he heard gunfire “inside” the school. Worse still, “just as school shooter Nikolas Cruz was fleeing the building after killing 17 people, Peterson warned his fellow officers to stay away,” reports the Miami Herald:
But internal radio dispatches released by the Broward Sheriff’s Office Thursday show Peterson immediately fixated on Building 12 and even radioed that gunfire was happening “inside.”
And, just as school shooter Nikolas Cruz was fleeing the building after killing 17 people, Peterson warned his fellow officers to stay away — even as wounded students and staff lay inside.
BSO policy calls for deputies to engage an active shooter and eliminate the threat.
“Do not approach the 12 or 1300 building, stay at least 500 feet away,” a panicked Peterson shouted as people screamed in the background.
…But Peterson, according to the timeline and radio dispatches reviewed by the Miami Herald, remained focused on Building 12.
“All right… We also heard it’s by, inside the 1200,” Peterson said at 2:25 p.m.
But that’s not all. The second by second timeline also shows that it was eleven minutes before anyone entered the school.
It was at 2:32 — 11 minutes after the shooting began — that four Coral Springs officers and two BSO deputies made the first police entrance into the building, helping to “extract a victim.”
Eleven minutes.
We’ve covered this story extensively. For previous posts, see here.
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Comments
That’s real dynamic leadership you show your troops, Sheriff
Israel; what an inspiration!
When seconds count even the good police are 11 minutes away. The shameful ones are waiting outside until the gunman runs out of rounds or bodies.
I just saw the Death Wish remake on Wednesday. Broward County seems to be going out of the way to make it more timely than the makers could ever have planned.
At what point does malfeasance become ‘accessory’ or criminally negligent?
I still believe the enabling and ignoring of Cruz was intentional.
Who knew that when the government created our new healthcare, we would get VA Hospital outcomes. The government’s extra safety with extra gun control looks to be even worse. When your family’s life and health is on the line, do you trust government to get it right?
Sadly, there is no news update that can lower my opinion of Peterson either as a Deputy or as a human being.
How about a Scott Peterson trial 2.0?
Failure to act: suspension.
Acting on one’s own volition: suspension.
Either way, it is not about “The Children”. It does engender cognitive dissonance, and is progressing to a dysfunctional convergence.
Amazing Leadership…
They should all be horse whipped.
Is it just me that reads Scot Peterson’s name as Scut?
A government union representative responded, “I keep telling you people the time of day, but you’re not listening. As public employees our job is to collect the paycheck, put in the years, get a really good pension. All at your expense. This life-on-the-line stuff ain’t part of the job. Sheeeesh.”
I love it when people generalize. They are usually WRONG.
This is one deputy, initially and possibly four others who heeded him, who did not do his job. But, you seem to ignore the number of LEOs who end up being killed every year because they willingly enter a deadly situation to protect the public. And, as there are far more LEOs who only suffer injury or are not injured than there are LEOs killed, your generalization is so much BS. Virtually every single street cop, who spends more than five years on the job, is injured in the line of duty, or worse.
Also, if a LE career was simply sitting around in the doughnut shop drinking coffee for 25 years and then retiring with a big pension, there would not be a shortage of LEOs in this country.
But, I suggest that you, and others, run right down to your local police department and pick up an application for a job where you are expected to be shot at for $30000-$70,000 a year. We could use the help.
MAC45 knows which way the rail is bent. His general salary range of $30k – $70K is a bit short for some infamous urban areas, but that’s what it costs a city to hire and keep the right people.
Most people will not go into the areas where the cops earn every nickel of that pay every night… they only see then scribbling out the reports over a cup of Joe or maybe a Big Mac.. I used to tell my people that they might not always get a meal break, but if they couldn’t get something to eat, they were in the wrong job.
Thanks MAC for trying to set some of these people straight.
Two members of the SWAT team have been suspended for responding to the shooting “without authorization”.
Some things you just can’t make up.
The two SWAT officers were first responders by proximity and choice (not Pro-Choice). Their suspension reflects a cultural progression that is not limited to denying Americans our civil rights including an unalienable Right to Life.
“Think of the children”, indeed. It seem the kids were mere props a la Atlanta school district fiasco, where “diversity” (e.g. racism) was a factor.
0ne thousand 0ne, one thousand two…. one thousand six hundred fifty nine, one thousand six hundred sixty.
And they want my gun?
As infuriating as it is, knowing whether or not one is able to overcome their natural instinct fed by fear to react properly cannot be told until after the fact. Combat is the same way. You just don’t know what you will do when the world around you is exploding. I do not feel any sympathy for this man but I can understand reaction. The training that these cops get is not designed to simulate combat but to apprehend a criminal with the least force required. Chalk him up as another HR failure by this ethically challenged sheriff’s office.
Peterson was a 25+ year veteran of the Sheriff’s Office. In that time, in an urban county, he should have received enough experience, responding to violent calls, to have been able to overcome a natural trepidation to follow tactical procedures and enter the building. Also, as a large LEA serving an urban area, I’m sure that the agency has simulated combat scenario training, at least electronically if not in a shoot house.
Peterson violated P&P. He may feel that he was justified. But, he was not. That is the bottom line. As to the other three deputies who did not enter, as Peterson was the first unit on the scene, which made him the scene commander until relieved by a superior officer, he was also the ranking officer on the scene. Even though the other three deputies should have entered even though he told them not to, they might have a defense of following P&P reference command on an active scene.
Not having the well to act is one thing.
But you followed up with lies, blame shifting, dishonor and a lack of integrity is something else entirely.
It has already been established that Scot Peterson knew Nikolas Cruz. Perhaps he also suspected that Cruz was the one doing the shooting and for personal reasons didn’t want him harmed.
So. Last week it was revealed that there was a Sheriff’s Captain, if not on the scene, at least taking ‘charge” over the radio, who told people to set a perimeter and not enter, which is contrary to what we are told is the department policy for these events. Her name was given as Jan Jordan, if I recall correctly. It was said that she had previously been assigned to the Civil Division of the SO.
Where does this fit into the discussion?? I’ve seen nothing about this since that initial revelation. Call me cynical, but I see the evil hand of the Peter Principal here, supplemented by Affirmative Action.
Tucker Carlson actually played part of the Captain’s radio transmission, tonight. Nowhere in it did she tell units on the scene not to enter the building. She asked if the building had been cleared and later told officers that the building had to be cleared, victims treated and removed AND a perimeter set up. In police and military parlance, clearing a building means sweeping it to determine that there are no threats inside. It does not mean to leave the building. Also, the time line on the captain’s transmissions place them after the shooting had stopped.
As I said before, the tactics are to have the initial unit or units enter the building and sweep it for the shooter, engage and neutralize him or her. Subsequent arriving units are to secure the perimeter of the building for two reasons. The first is to keep the shooter from escaping into the surrounding neighborhood, putting other citizens at risk, and to keep unwanted people from entering thereby creating a more hazardous situation for armed LEOs already in the building.
Three choices imcompetence , willingly allowed it to happen or
wa following adeep state script.
The more and more we see these things ,the more I begin to wonder ,Charlottesville Las Vegas ,Parkland
This fills me with such anger. Every day we receive new revelations about how the police failed, how social services failed, how the school system failed, and how so many others failed. For this shooting debacle to have happened, so many people needed to ignore their job, needed to ignore evidence, needed to ignore the law, and it just seems to become worse everyday as we hear of more incompetence and outright corruption.
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While this is bad enough, what makes this all utterly unacceptable and should fill everyone with rage is a) how they are all blaming the NRA; b) how they are blatantly and purposely misrepresenting what the NRA is does or stands for; and c) using the NRA as an emotional excuse for their own errors and incompetence. These people did not have the courage to enforce the law, did not have the courage to protect the community, did not have the courage to enter the building, and now do not have the courage to stand up and take responsibility for what they have done. Not only do they dare blame the NRA for what happened, they are lying through their teeth in an effort to save their own skins. They are worse than cowardly, reprehensible, morally/ethically corrupt, etc., and I do not even think a word exists for what they are.
While thee will always be the Planned Parent and criminal loopholes, given the available information, the FBI should have failed his background check. Perhaps they were distracted by the foreign and DNC effort to influence the election, or were colluding with the local Sheriff in a cover-up of another “fast and furious” setup to deny Americans their civil rights.