By Bill Juneau Deputy Sheriff Scot Peterson, the veteran Parkland school officer, has become a poster boy for cowardice. But for him shirking his duty to protect and to confront a 19-year-old assassin, his accusers say, some of the 17 victims of the shooting might not have been killed.
It appears that the 56-year-old sheriff's deputy, a veteran officer with more than 30 years on the job, ran and hid when gunfire was heard. There is no way to excuse that. He was a policeman with a special job to protect children, and according to all accounts,he failed miserably. He might even wind up in jail like a common criminal.
Reflect on what you might have done. in those seconds and minutes after gunfire rang out. The arm chair analysts say that Peterson should have charged into the fray with his gun blazing and taken out the assassin. It is hard to know what to do in those situations, having never walked in those same shoes.
But aside from the alleged sins of Officer Peterson, how does his performance stack up against the FBI's egregious mishandling of information concerning Nicholas Cruz as a potential school shooter. Former Florida Gov. Rick Scott, now a US. senator, was so enraged over the fumbling performance of the FBI that he called for the resignation of the FBI Director Christopher Wray for ignoring tips that Nicholas Cruz contemplated a school shooting.
Cruz, 19, was well known for years in the Parkland community as a serious disciplinary problem. He was a resident of that upscale city and had been expelled from the Stoneman Douglas High school for disciplinary reasons. Broward county sheriff's policemen were well aware of his penchant for causing and getting into trouble. In fact the sheriff's office had answered more than 30 calls and complaints involving Cruz over the previous four years. Last January, some 11 months after the shootings, Florida governor Ron DeSantis ordered the removal from office of Broward county Sheriff Scott Israel for incompetence.
On September 25, 2017, several months before the February 14 school shooting, the FBI was notified of a comment on You Tube in which the commenter, identifying himself as a "nikolas cruz" posted, "I'm going to be a professional school shooter." That information wound up in a waste basket and agents subsequently have explained that they simply were unable to identify and locate the "nikolas cruz" who made the comment.
On January 5, just five weeks before Cruz opened fire in the school and killed 17 and wounded others with his assault rifle, the FBI received a telephone message from a person who said he was a person "close" to Nicholas Cruz and that Cruz had a "desire to kill people" and the caller said that he was worried about the "potential of him conducting a school shooting."
After the shooting and the capture of Cruz, the FBI back tracked and acknowledged receiving the message about Nicholas Cruz. "Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life.......and the tip should have been forwarded to the Miami field office......we clearly should have done more, explained FBI Deputy Director David Bodich.
As blame is being meted out, and the media is whipping Officer Peterson's for his "cowardice," the FBI needs to be reminded of its failure to take serious tips of this nature. The FBI is still the most skilled and professional police agency in the world, but in this episode, it could have and should have done a better job.
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