A humbler sheriff might’ve kept job

Imagine how the Scott Israel imbroglio might have unfolded had he demonstrated a modicum of grace.

The same failures of the Broward Sheriff ’s Office still occur in our hypothetical. His deputies are no better trained to handle a school gunman. Ineffective radio communications still hamper the police response. In the months before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, his department still fails to recognize Nikolas Cruz’s dangerous potential despite 23 encounters with the eventual mass murderer. The day of the shooting, his deputies still dawdle outside the school building while children inside are dying.

Substantive facts don’t change. Mistakes that led to his removal on Friday – they still happen. But in this parallel universe, Scott Israel doesn’t dodge responsibility for BSO’s woeful response to the Parkland horror. He doesn’t shunt blame onto underlings. He doesn’t tell CNN, “Deputies make mistakes. Police officers make mistakes. We all make mistakes,” he said. “But it's not the responsibility of the general or the president if you have a deserter.”

In the aftermath of Parkland, our re-do Israel doesn’t proclaim his wonderfulness. “I have given amazing leadership to this agency.”

Nor does he respond with a mangled aphorism when asked if a more diligent BSO might have preempted the most appalling crime in Broward history: “Listen, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, O.J. Simpson would still be in the record books.”

Testifying before the state commission investigating the Parkland shooting, the revamped Israel doesn’t reject suggestions that inadequate training explained his deputies’ inaction, declaring, “You can’t train courage and you can’t train performance.”

We might need to reach back further in our revisionist history to repair a personality so rife with self-delusion. Our re-imagined Scott Israel would not have rewritten a critical internal report of BSO’s chaotic handling of the 2017 mass shooting at Fort LauderdaleHollywood International Airport. The final version proclaimed, “Through the leadership of Sheriff Israel … this tragic event was mitigated and investigated in an extraordinary manner.”

If, instead, Israel had responded to criticism with humility; if he had accepted his agency’s failures as his own; if he had used opportunities before the television cameras to admit mistakes, to beg for forgiveness; I suspect the pursuing mob would have lost its fervor. A humble Israel might have saved his job.

Not that I’m a fan of the banished sheriff, though my disappointment predates Parkland. I was offended to learn he had added a platoon of political cronies to the BSO payroll and tasked them with greasing his re-election. The South Florida Sun Sentinel’s Brittany Wallman reported in 2016 that Israel had hired 10 so-called “community outreach workers.”

That story elicited yet another cringeworthy quote: “What have I done differently than Don Shula or Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Gandhi?” Israel asked. “Men and women who assume leadership roles surround themselves with people who are loyal, who they can depend on and who they appreciate their skill set.” (You’d think one of those political experts would have dissuaded him from politically inept utterances.)

But Wallman’s report, which also detailed Israel’s association with the nefarious political saboteur Roger Stone, was published before the August 2016 primary. Broward voters should have known the sheriff they were re-electing was more a political prop than a cop. Yet, he was the people’s choice.

That choice was summarily deposed Friday, to no great protest. But ask someone why Israel deserved an ignominious ouster, they’ll likely cite his self-aggrandizing “amazing leadership” quote. Not BSO command issues. Israel has also been much criticized for changing BSO’s policy on deputies charging into a live-shooter scenario from “shall” to “may,” but who believes deputies that day decided to stay put only after parsing the difference between “shall” and “may”?

Take away Israel’s foolish remarks, examine the substantive issues and one is hard pressed to find the “malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence ... or commission of a felony” the Florida Constitution requires before a governor can zap a sheriff. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who chaired the investigating commission, told the Sun Sentinel he saw no grounds for removal.

It’s a grave thing for a governor to undo an election, nullifying the voters’ choice. Even more so for Ron DeSantis who received just 31 percent of the Broward votes to remove a sheriff who won 72 percent of that same electorate two years earlier. Then replace him with a resident of Palm Beach County. Not for crimes or malfeasance, but, ostensibly, for mistakes made down the chain of command. (Or maybe DeSantis noticed that pro-gun control Israel was loathed by the NRA.)

Was the DeSantis’ coup at BSO based on awful things the sheriff did? Or the ill-considered things he said?

Fred Grimm (@grimm_fred or leogrimm@gmail.com), a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a reporter or columnist in South Florida since 1976.