Sheriff removed over failures during Parkland shooting crisis

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis removed Broward Sheriff Scott Israel from office Friday, replacing him after 10 months of turmoil spawned by the slaughter of 17 staff and students in Parkland.

The governor replaced Israel with former Coral Springs Police Sgt. Gregory Tony, 40, who has a background in active-shooter training and becomes the first black sheriff in Broward County’s history.

DeSantis announced the suspension from the Broward Sheriff’s Office headquarters while the displaced former sheriff prepared his response from a church in northwest Fort Lauderdale.

“I have no interest in dancing on Scott Israel’s political grave,” DeSantis said, “but suffice it to say the massacre might never have happened had Broward had better leadership in the sheriff ’s department.”

In his executive order, the governor cited incompetence and neglect of duty.

The suspension caps a nearly yearlong series of revelations that exposed the failure of Broward sheriff’s deputies to run in to save children at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Some deputies said they couldn’t remember when they’d last been trained to handle an active shooter, even though the agency had a confused, chaotic response to a mass shooting at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in 2017.

Israel’s leadership of the agency has come under intense scrutiny, and he’s received extensive criticism over the massacre in which 17 people were killed and 17 wounded on Valentine’s Day.

Though he enjoyed strong popularity in Broward before the shooting, Israel’s star fell in the aftermath, particularly after a disastrous appearance on CNN in which he praised his own leadership and glossed over his agency’s mistakes.