The Florida school shooting story gets worse.
According to the Sun Sentinel, Deputy Scot Peterson resigned Thursday.
After video surfaced, corroborating witness reports confirming the absence of Peterson’s involvement an investigation was initiated Wednesday and Peterson was suspended without pay.
From the Sun Sentinel:
The police officer assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School resigned Thursday, under investigation for failing to enter the building as a gunman opened fire and killed 17 people.Sheriff Scott Israel said Deputy Scot Peterson should have “went in. Addressed the killer. Killed the killer.”Peterson, 54, came under scrutiny after 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz entered the school with an AR-15 rifle and killed 14 students and three educators on Valentine’s Day.Peterson has been a school resource officer at Stoneman Douglas since 2009. He began working for the sheriff’s office in 1985. His annual salary in 2016 was $75,673.72, according to sheriff’s office records.The Sheriff’s Office released documents Thursday showing that Peterson was put under an internal investigation the day before. Israel said that Peterson was suspended without pay.The agency also announced that it was placing two officers on a restricted assignment while a separate internal investigation took place.
Sheriff Scott Israel was a might bit defensive during CNN’s open forum last night. I think we now know why.
At every step of the way, law enforcement dropped the ball. The FBI, police department, school officials — everyone was aware this particular individual was on the fast track to massive mayhem. No one intervened. No one investigated. No one shot back.
And now we find out that the officer working for the sheriff’s office stayed outside, refusing to step up to the call of duty and take Cruz out. I’m sympathetic to the pressures of active shooter situations, but Peterson had one job — to protect students from exactly this type of situation or at the very minimum, do everything in his power to mitigate the damage.
We don’t need more gun laws. We need law enforcement and administrators to do what we pay them to do.
Since we published this post, more information has become available, none of it good.
According to the Miami Herald, the sheriff’s office received a tip in November that Cruz could be a school shooter, a tip that was unfortunately ignored:
In November, a tipster called BSO to say Cruz “could be a school shooter in the making” but deputies did not write up a report on that warning. It came just weeks after a relative called urging BSO to seize his weapons. Two years ago, according to a newly released timeline of interactions with Cruz’s family, a deputy investigated a report that Cruz “planned to shoot up the school” — intelligence that was forwarded to the school’s resource officer, with no apparent result.
The FBI received a similar tip in January and also failed to follow up.
The full timeline of fail as published in the Miami Herald:
▪ Feb. 5, 2016: A Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy is told by an anonymous caller that Nikolas Cruz, then 17, had threatened on Instagram to shoot up his school and posted a photo of himself with guns. The information is forwarded to BSO Deputy Scot Peterson, a school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.▪ Sept. 23, 2016: A “peer counselor” reports to Peterson that Cruz had possibly ingested gasoline in a suicide attempt, was cutting himself and wanted to buy a gun. A mental health counselor advises against involuntarily committing Cruz. The high school says it will conduct a threat assessment.▪ Sept. 28, 2016: An investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families rules Cruz is stable, despite “fresh cuts” on his arms. His mother, Lynda Cruz, says in the past he wrote a racial slur against African Americans on his book bag and had recently talked of buying firearms.▪ Sept. 24, 2017: A YouTube user named “nikolas cruz” posts a comment stating he wants to become a “professional school shooter.” The comment is reported to the FBI in Mississippi, which fails to make the connection to Cruz in South Florida.▪ Nov. 1, 2017: Katherine Blaine, Lynda Cruz’s cousin, calls BSO to report that Nikolas Cruz had weapons and asks that police recover them. A “close family friend” agrees to take the firearms, according to BSO.▪ Nov. 29, 2017: The Palm Beach County family that took in Cruz after the death of his mother calls the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office to report a fight between him and their son, 22. A member of the family says that Cruz had threatened to “get his gun and come back” and that he has “put the gun to others’ heads in the past.” The family does not want him arrested once he calms down.▪ Nov. 30, 2017: A caller from Massachusetts calls BSO to report that Cruz is collecting guns and knives and could be a “school shooter in the making.” A BSO deputy advises the caller to contact the Palm Beach sheriff.▪ Jan. 5, 2018: A caller to the FBI’s tip line reports that Cruz has “a desire to kill people” and could potentially conduct a school shooting. The information is never passed on to the FBI’s office in Miami.▪ Feb. 14, 2018: Nikolas Cruz attacks Stoneman Douglas High. Peterson, the school’s resource officer, draws his gun outside the building where Cruz is shooting students and staff. He does not enter.
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