Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel Facing No-Confidence Vote From Deputy Union
Sheriff Israel is also under investigation by state and county officials.
“Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is facing a no-confidence vote from the union representing his own deputies,” reports CBS Miami.
Sheriff Israel has faced pressure to resign after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February.
In a statement released Friday, the union said they’re holding the vote due to “many instances of suspected malfeasance, misfeasance, failure to maintain fiduciary responsibility by the Sheriff, failure to properly investigate possible criminal misconduct by members of his senior command staff.”
More from CBS Miami:
The vote will begin electronically Friday night and closes April 26.
Bell says the historic move is due to the dysfunction of the office, which has been piling up for years. But it was Israel’s behavior after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 people dead that pushed the rank and file over the edge, he says. Especially when Israel swiftly blamed school resource officer Scot Peterson for not entering the building and stopping the shooter.
Peterson said through his attorney that he thought the shots were being fired outside the building. Peterson was suspended without pay and later resigned.
Bell, who also has been critical of Peterson, agrees that the deputy should have entered the building. But he said he and his union members believe the sheriff should have taken some responsibility as well, instead of shifting all the blame to a deputy.
Israel “didn’t say it’s an open investigation (on law enforcement’s response to the shooting). He blamed it all on Peterson,” Bell said. “You don’t do that to one of your deputies.”
“My members are not poster children. They are not squeaky clean. They make mistakes. What we are saying is, they should be punished fairly,” Bell said.
Deputies noted their frustrations with Sheriff Israel’s leadership:
The Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association represents 1,325 deputies, more than half of the county’s 2,560 certified deputies. Morale among deputies and sergeants is non-existent, Bell says. He says his members are tired of mixed messages from leadership and confused over some of the department’s policies.
One example, he says, is the active shooter policy, which states a deputy “may” go into a building and engage the shooter to preserve life. But in training, Bell says, deputies learn to enter the site of the shooting and confront an active shooter. Deputies have to make split-second decisions, he said, so their guidance and training should be identical.
He also talked about policies that he says do not make sense. For example, if a citizen loses his balance and a deputy reaches out to stop the fall, he says, policy requires the deputy to file a “use of force” report.
“The laws are there that allow you to do your job; but the policies make it so paperwork-heavy that no one wants to do their job anymore,” Bell said.
Sheriff Israel is also under investigation by state and county officials.
To see our previous coverage of this story, see here.
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Comments
Was listening to the Florida AG just now making a big deal out of how properly the officers and sheriffs in today’s incidents had responded…. no mention of Broward
So, the problem is not systemic, but a centrally coordinated failure to perform. There is hope for Broward County.
Not as long as Israel is Sheriff
Dig deeper, kids. Muslim Brotherhool and DNC (at the risk of being redundant) own Broward.
If you investigate, you’ll find the DNC and their Axis of evil allies, always do these political propaganda events in corrupt cities such as Berkley, Chicago, Portland, etc… where they control almost all political offices.
I’ve seen much worst incidents (comparatively) in non-DNC controlled parts of the country and the MSM and DNC never, ever even mentioned it on the national stage.
Funny we don’t have any background information on that deputy that blew off his duties and actually ordered EMTs to stay away and let the kids bleed to death. Can’t even find a normally exposed picture of this guy. Hmm.
So they’re frustrated with his ‘amazing leadership’ huh?
What a shock. He’s a slimy political toady who thought he was going to get a national office from Clinton before anybody found out the rot in his department.
The Union is interested in whatever benefits its members. It is not an investigative body, and it is not going to address any problems of concern to the public.
He blamed it all on Peterson,” Bell said. “You don’t do that to one of your deputies.”
And that is probably a good summary of the Union position.
The problem about no confidence votes is that they just cause the subject sheriff/chief/whatever to stay around even longer. They don’t want it to look like they were chased off by the vote. Based on my personal experience, although things may have changed in the last 20-odd years.
I still find it very interesting that the captain who issued the order to stay outside the school is never mentioned in any of these discussions… She must have so serious political creds.
Fox news actually played a tape of the Captain’s radio transmission. In it she did NOT order the deputies on scene to stay outside the school. Just the opposite. She told them to “clear” the building, assist the injured and to set up a perimeter around the school property to contain the shooter, as his exact whereabouts were unknown. In police parlance, “clearing” a building means to enter and sweep the interior to locate a suspect or to determine that one is not there. It is not an order for the LEOs to leave or remain outside the building.
As she was not on the scene, at that time, this was directed at the scene commander, whoever that may have been.
I do agree that the no confidence vote is pretty much worthless, except to tell outsiders that the rank and file does not support the sheriff. But, we already knew that.
Thank you for the clarification, Mac45. I was working on a report that came forth a day or two later. I was suspicious that i had heard nothing from or about the on-scene command, only the Sheriff, and then the actions of the Captain got some play. I never heard any replays of radio traffic on the subject. [And i am completely familiar with the term “clear” in this context, for the record.]
The citizens of Broward County need to clear the Sheriff’s office of this guy…. pronto.
He can run with hillary klinton in 2020.
As Gomer used to say, “Sue-prise sue-prise!”
What I would like to see is a Federal investigation into the collusion between the Sheriff’s office and the Board of Education to defraud the Federal Government by reporting improvements in their school that were only the results of not reporting problems.
That might be tricky. A post on the shootings closer to the event had a copy of that “Promise” agreement embedded. It looked like it was an agreement instigated by the Department of Education with the whole idea being to seek “alternative, non-traditional” approaches to what you and I might call crimes. The end result was to get certain groups of students out of school without criminal records to improve their chances at getting jobs. I came away with the idea that the under-reporting, or non-reporting of criminal activity was the intent of the whole thing. That’s how the shooter got all those police visits to his home with no official action being taken or recorded.
I would think the more appropriate legal action would be for the parents of those killed or injured to sue the whole lot of them, sheriff, school superintendent, Dept of Education.