State to investigate police response
Governor acts after legislators call for Broward sheriff’s suspension; Israel says he welcomes investigation
Gov. Rick Scott on Sunday asked the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate the response to the Parkland school shooting, as questions mounted over the Broward Sheriff’s Office’s handling of the tragedy that took 17 lives.
The announcement came just hours after Broward Sheriff Scott Israel appeared on CNN and refused to take any blame for his agency’s missteps and touted his own “amazing leadership.”
The governor’s office said in a statement Sunday that the investigation will begin immediately
“There must be an independent investigation and that is why I asked the FDLE Commissioner to immediately start this process,” the governor said in a written statement, adding that he had discussed the matter with House Speaker Richard Corcoran. “I have spoken to the Speaker regularly since the shooting, and like me, he wants the families to have answers and for there to be full accountability. That’s what the victims and their families deserve.”
The Sheriff ’s Office was the lead agency on the scene and criticism has swirled about how it handled the first few minutes after a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School opened fire in a hallway.
The Sheriff’s Office has also been faulted for fumbling warnings of the shooter’s threatening behavior, including statements from people close to him that they feared he might go on a shooting rampage.
The Sheriff’s Office issued a statement saying that it welcomed the investigation.
“BSO will fully cooperate with FDLE, as we believe in full transparency and accountability,” Israel said in a written statement. “This independent, outside review will ensure public confidence in the findings.”
Broward County Commissioner Michael Udine, whose daughter attends Stoneman Douglas, said he supports the governor’s decision to ask for an investigation but would like to see a broader look at what went wrong at all levels of government.
“There are so many unanswered questions here on every different level, from the School Board to the
FBI to local law enforcement. Everybody who had a chance here failed our kids and our community.”
Israel, a Democrat, has been under growing pressure from Republicans over his agency’s handling of the shooting. State Rep. Bill Hager, R-Boca Raton, sent the governor a letter Saturday urging him to remove Israel from office for “neglect of duty and incompetence.” On Sunday, 73 House Republicans wrote to the governor asking him to suspend the sheriff from office.
Appearing Sunday morning on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, Israel said his agency was still investigating how multiple warnings about shooter Nikolas Cruz were missed and whether additional sheriff’s deputies failed to enter the school immediately when they arrived.
But he said the only known failure was on the part of the school resource officer, forced to resign last week for not entering the building to confront the killer.
“Deputies make mistakes, police officers make mistakes, we all make mistakes,” Israel said. “But it’s not the responsibility of the general or the president if you have a deserter. We’ll look into this. We’re looking into this aggressively, and we’ll take care of it, and justice will be served.”
Tapper asked him, “Are you really not taking any responsibility for multiple red flags that were brought to the attention of the Broward Sheriff’s Office about this shooter before this incident, whether it was people near him, close to him?”
“Jake, I can only take responsibility for what I knew about,” Israel said. “I exercised my due diligence. I provided amazing leadership to this agency.”
Tapper interjected, “Amazing leadership?”
“I have worked — yes, Jake,” Israel said. “There’s a lot of things we have done throughout this — this is — you don’t measure a person’s leadership by a deputy not going into a — these deputies received the training they needed. They received the equipment.”
Cruz, 19, entered the school Feb. 14 with an AR-15 rifle and started shooting, killing 14 students and three adults.
“One person — at this point, one person — didn’t do what he should have done,” Israel said. “It’s horrific. The victims here, the families, I pray for them every night. It makes me sick to my stomach that we had a deputy that didn’t go in, because I know, if I was there, if I was on the wall, I would have been the first in, along with so many of the other people.”
The sheriff did not directly address claims by Coral Springs police officers that other sheriff’s deputies waited outside the building, while other police officers went in. He focused on the time when Cruz was actually in the building, saying that at that time, a single law enforcement officer was present, school resource officer Scot Peterson.
“Our investigation to this point shows that during this horrific attack, while this killer was inside the school, there was only one law enforcement person period, and that was former Deputy Scot Peterson,” he said.
But he said the agency would be taking statements from Coral Springs police officers and look into what happened.
“We’ll get to the truth,” he said. “But at this point, one deputy was remiss, dereliction of duty, and he’s now no longer with this agency.”
If any others are found to have failed to do their duty, they will be dealt with, he said.
Although there has been talk of a stand-down order, with deputies told to remain outside until SWAT arrived, Israel said he didn’t know of one.
“I can’t tell you anything about that,” he said. “I haven’t heard that.”
He also said he knew nothing about a report that paramedics were prevented from entering the building at first. Although he said it would be natural to keep them out until the shooter was gone, he said he knew nothing about any other order.
“If that’s true, that’s certainly something we will look into, but I’m hearing this for the first time,” he said.
The Sheriff’s Office, along with other agencies, received advance and specific warnings that Cruz was dangerous and might shoot up a school. A caller on Nov. 30, for example, told the Sheriff’s Office that Cruz was collecting guns and knives and “could be a school shooter in the making.” Other warnings came to the FBI, which has issued an apology, and the Florida Department of Children & Families.
Of 18 calls received about Cruz, Israel said, 16 were handled correctly. The remaining two — including the warning about a “shooter in the making” — are under investigation and two deputies who handled them have been placed on restricted duty.
Tapper also pressed Israel on why he didn’t say anything about his school resource officer’s inaction during a CNN town hall meeting on guns, where Israel had been a strident voice for gun control.
“I’m not on a timeline for TV or any news show,” he said. “We need to get it right. We need to get it accurate. We’re talking about people’s lives. We’re talking about a community. We need to corroborate, we need to verify.”