Parkland security monitor suspended in ’17
He was investigated for sexual harassment
A discipline committee wanted to fire Marjory Stoneman Douglas coach Andrew Medina last year for sexually harassing two students. But someone overruled them.
Instead, he was suspended just three days from his duties as a security monitor — a job he was working months later when he spotted Nikolas Cruz walking onto campus. Medina failed to stop Cruz, and the gunman soon killed 17 staff and students and wounded 17 more.
Among the dead was Meadow Pollack, one of the students Medina, 39, was accused of harassing in February 2017.
According to a school district investigation, he asked out one female student and whispered to another: “You are fine as f---.”
“Both students became so uncomfortable with Mr. Medina’s comments and actions, they sought out different routes to their classes in an attempt to avoid him,” says the report, prepared by Robert Spence, a detective with the district’s Special Investigative Unit.
Meadow’s brother Hunter Pollack and father, Andrew Pollack, confirmed Thursday that Meadow’s mother complained to the school about Medina’s comments. The two said they found out about it only after Meadow died. The elder Pollack said he would have demanded more severe action against Medina had he known.
“If this had been brought to my attention back then, he would have never been at the school” Feb. 14, the day of the shootings, he said.
Pollack and other families of victims demanded last week that Medina be removed from the school after hearing video testimony from Medina about the massacre.
Medina, who was not armed, told investigators shortly after the shooting that he didn’t confront Nikolas Cruz or lock down the school. Instead, he said he radioed ahead to warn fellow monitor David Taylor that a suspicious kid was headed his way, and Taylor hid in a closet. Both have since been reassigned.
“The School Board still elects to reassign them. It’s mind-boggling and upsetting that no one in the county has been held accountable for what happened,” Andrew Pollack said. “Not one person has lost their job.”
The sexual harassment allegations against Medina were reviewed by the district’s Professional Standards Committee, made up of district employees, which found probable cause to charge Medina with inappropriate conduct. An Oct. 4 report recommended terminating him. But a handwritten note at the bottom says, “Discipline should not be termination but instead a three-day suspension.”
Craig Nichols, chief of human resources for the district, signed off on the decision. He is listed as the designee for Superintendent Robert Runcie.
The district’s practice is for Runcie’s designee to meet with the Special Investigative Unit and district lawyers to review recommendations to ensure “consistent and appropriate application of discipline,” district spokeswoman Tracy Clark said.
“In this specific case, the employee was investigated for alleged inappropriate comments to students. The final determination, after the review process, was to uphold the finding of probable cause for inappropriate conduct,” she said. “However, the discipline was finalized at a three-day suspension. There was no direct evidence to distinguish between the conflicting statements provided by the students and the employee, and there were no previous records of discipline for the employee.”
Principal Ty Thompson was not involved in the decision to reduce Medina’s penalty, said Lisa Maxwell, executive director of the Broward Principals and Assistants Association. Decisions to reverse the committee’s recommendations “are not uncommon,” she said.
At the request of his lawyer, Medina was approved to serve the three-day suspension during three different pay periods so he would “retain enough pay to provide for his family’s needs.”
After being temporarily reassigned during the investigation, he attended a three-hour sexual harassment training course Nov. 1 and returned to campus Nov. 6, the report said.
Medina has worked as Stoneman Douglas’ junior varsity baseball coach since 2011 and received a stipend of about $1,300 a year.
Since 2014, he has worked as a security monitor, making about $18,300 a year. He received the highest possible rating in his May 2016 evaluation, the only one the district released.
“Mr. Medina is always there when needed,” Assistant Principal Jeff Morford wrote on the evaluation.
In the sexual harassment investigation, the names of the students who complained about Medina are removed.
In a report, Medina denied the allegations. He said that he never made inappropriate comments to a student. Medina said he lost his wife in 2013 and was raising two children as a single parent “and would not put himself in a compromising situation with students,” records say.
Child Protective Services was not notified nor was a police report submitted, “as this case is solely administrative,” an investigator wrote.