Paper goes to court over school shooting records

FORT LAUDERDALE – The South Florida Sun Sentinel, in its effort to inform the public about how and why 17 people died at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, is going to court to force Broward County’s school board, state attorney and sheriff to release certain records surrounding the mass shooting.

The newspaper, along with the Miami Herald, filed a motion in Broward Circuit Court on Tuesday to intervene in a lawsuit filed by the parents of two of the dead children seek-

ing various documents involving student discipline, school security, the police response and the mental health of the gunman.

Also named in the suit: the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

The media organizations say they have made numerous public records requests to the five governmental agencies over the past year that have been denied or mostly ignored. Their motion argues that the state’s open records law is designed to enable citizens to uncover actions taken by the government with only narrow exceptions.

“The Sun Sentinel has been pursuing public records about the Stoneman Douglas massacre for months. We are turning over every rock to gain a full understanding of what happened and why,” said Sun Sentinel Editor-inChief Julie Anderson. “While we have received some documents, agencies have not responded to other requests. For this reason, we filed a motion to intervene in this suit.”

The lawsuit was initiated last month by Andrew Pollack and Shara Kaplan — parents of the slain Meadow Pollack — and Philip and April Schentrup, parents of the late Carmen Schentrup.

Pollack has a separate suit against a school watch guard and an armed sheriff’s deputy who failed to confront or halt the shooter, a former student named Nikolas Cruz.

Cruz was a severely troubled young man who openly stated and wrote online of his desire to kill people — yet signals were missed or ignored by the FBI, the sheriff’s office, school officials, friends and family members.

Soon after the shooting, media outlets, including the Sun Sentinel, sued the Broward Sheriff ’s Office to obtain surveillance video from outside the school.

It showed Deputy Scot Peterson standing outside the school building during the shooting.

Then, in the summer, Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal ruled that additional surveillance footage had to be released to the media, over the objections of prosecutors and the School Board, saying that parents: “must have access to camera video footage here at issue and not blindly rely on school board experts to make decisions for them.”

The Sun Sentinel also has gone to court to fight, successfully, for the release of Cruz’s videotaped interview with a detective and for a school district consultant’s report on Cruz’s journey through the educational system.

The school district in recent days has released hundreds of emails from school officials, but they are heavily censored and most do not pertain directly to Cruz. The district has claimed numerous exemptions in staving off efforts to

examine documents leading up to the shooting, including concerns about the gunman’s privacy, exposing school security measures and jeopardizing the state’s prosecution.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office has released 911 calls and other documents, including timelines, internal investigation findings and numerous police reports. It has withheld police radio communications and some body camera footage, however, citing the continuing criminal investigation.

Cruz is charged with 17 counts of first degree murder and faces the death penalty. His legal team has offered for him to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

A spokeswoman for the Broward Sheriff’s Office said the agency is working to produce additional records and has not yet been served with the parents’ lawsuit.