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Sheriff Israel Has Failed His Department and His Community
Over at PJ Media today, I join the growing chorus of people calling for Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel to be ousted from his job. It has been revealed that the department he leads failed on many levels, both before and during the massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14. Compounding those failures has been Israel’s preening for the cameras, most obnoxiously at CNN’s town hall, at which students, parents, and teachers from the school gathered to hector Sen. Marco Rubio and NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch. Remarkably, Sheriff Israel came to be a crowd favorite, echoing the crowd’s anti-gun sentiments and fueling the passions of the youthful mob.
But now we know a few more details about the shooting and the events that led up to it, such as the many times Broward Sheriff’s deputies had contact with the shooter, and the fact that as many as four deputies waited outside the school as children and school staff members were being shot inside.
Scot Peterson, the now-former sheriff’s deputy, has come in for the bulk of the criticism as it was he who was the assigned “school resource officer” on the campus, and who waited outside as shots rang out. Before I can condemn him, however, I need to know what his department’s policy was regarding responding alone to an “active shooter.”
As I say in the PJ Media piece, until my retirement from the Los Angeles Police Department a few years ago, I was a member of a squad specially trained and equipped to respond to these incidents (there were several such squads stationed around the city). At the time I left the LAPD, the policy was for officers to assemble in groups of at least four, and ideally five, before entering a building under attack. The optimal configuration was a diamond formation consisting of a team leader in the center, with officers on point, on the left and right flanks, and as a rear guard.
It has been my understanding that this practice has been widely adopted by police departments, though some agencies train officers to confront active shooters alone, if necessary. I have not yet heard what the policy of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department is. If Deputy Peterson was following department policy by waiting for backup to arrive, it makes a difference on how harshly we should judge him.
That said, there is a question for every police officer to ask himself: How many gunshots am I willing to listen to, with each shot potentially taking another life, while I adhere to department policy? In the LAPD, officers have been disciplined for acting on their own and not waiting for backup, albeit in circumstances less dire than those at Stoneman Douglas High School. But if, as has been reported, there were other Broward deputies present, all of whom failed to assemble as a team and enter the building, that is an inexcusable breach of an officer’s duty.
I have no doubt there are many dedicated and courageous deputies in the Broward County Sheriff’s Department who only wish they had been in a position to confront the gunman. My fear for them is that their boss, now beleaguered with calls for his head on a spike, will be more concerned with saving his own hide than with leading the department through this crisis. Any internal report on the department’s failures, whatever they may be, will have to be approved by Sheriff Israel – assuming he’s still in office – and should be viewed with that in mind.
As always, I encourage my friends here at Ricochet to read the piece and return here to comment. As time allows, I’ll do my best to answer your questions.
Published in Policing
Mass shootings of school-age kids are horrific but are also vanishingly rare at the department level.
Exactly how much training or resources should be spent in preparation for pretty much the worst and rarest event is hard to pin down.
None of this is to excuse either the resource officer, the add-ons who showed up after, or the Clinton-hugging chief of Broward County police. And how galling it must be that the cops who did the work came from next county over.
The first officers to enter the school were from Coral S;rings, which abuts Parkland. The school actually sits on the city limits of Parkland, with Coral Springs directly across the street. Still the point is the same: the Broward deputies didn’t act but the other cops did. We just have to find out why.
Reports suggest that the deputies were ordered to hold on the perimeter.
In the larger picture, there is also this:
Really. How effective are unarmed students and staff against the gunman? BTW, how can you claim to be on duty if you’re not kitted out to perform your duty?
The deputies were apparently ordered to set up a perimeter. In case, you know, you thought they were just futzing around.
So now we can add Capt. Jan Jordan to the list of people who need to explain just what the hell.