One thing we know for sure about law enforcement’s response to the Parkland, FL, school shooting is this:
The school resource officer and other members of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to the unfolding danger the way emergency responders reacted to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
After 9/11, many of us probably assumed that emergency responders everywhere stood at the ready to enter dangerous, life-threatening situations and do whatever they could to save ordinary citizens’ lives.
Until I started thinking about it for this post, I had forgotten just how many emergency workers sacrificed their lives that day.
Of the 2,977 dead, 412 were emergency workers in New York City. The toll included 343 FDNY employees; 37 police officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department; 23 NYPD officers eight EMT’s and paramedics; and one patrolman from the New York Fire Patrol.
Compare that with what is unfolding about the response of Broward County Sheriff’s Department deputies…
— Deputy Sheriff Scot Peterson, 54, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School resource officer since 2009, apparently stood outside the school talking on his radio while 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz blasted away with his AR-15, killing 17 students and faculty members. (The best account of this was provided by Washington Post reporter Tom Jackman, who was The Star’s Downtown federal courthouse reporter until leaving for The Post in 1998.)
— Today, The Post is reporting that the Broward County Sheriff’s Office is investigating allegations that multiple deputies failed to enter the school during the shooting.
To its credit, the Sheriff’s Department quickly suspended Peterson, a 30-year veteran of the force, and he quickly resigned. Sheriff Scott Israel was unflinching in his criticism, saying Peterson should have gone in and “addressed the killer, killed the killer.”
So, what’s the problem here? How do you account for the difference between the responses of fire fighters and other emergency responders in New York on 9/11 and law enforcement officers’ response in a Florida suburb on Valentine’s Day?
I’m slightly reluctant to generalize, but, what the hell, that’s what I do. So…
Overall, I am much more confident in the ability, training and effectiveness of big-city police and emergency departments than I am in sheriff’s departments and rural and small-town police departments.
I have felt that way since the early 1970s, when I was assigned to the Jackson County Courthouse “beat” as a young reporter for The Star. There I saw the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office in “action” every day. The sheriff’s office was responsible for the jail on the top four floors of the courthouse, prisoner movement and courtroom security. (There wasn’t much of a need for general courthouse security at the time.)
What I saw — generally — was a bunch of guys who moved with little sense of urgency or purpose. There was a lot of pipe and cigarette smoking, chatting and hanging around in anterooms and in an office that served as home base in the courthouse.
(Deputies who were not assigned to the courthouse were charged with patrolling unincorporated parts of the county and providing law enforcement services in some of the smaller cities that didn’t have police departments, and that remains the Sheriff’s Department’s primary responsibility.)
The relative indolence of the sheriff’s deputies contrasted sharply with the demeanor most Kansas City police detectives and uniformed officers projected when they came to the courthouse for various reasons, including testifying at trials. They seemed much more focused, engaged and professional.
There’s an obvious reason for that. While sheriff’s deputies and police officers undergo basically the same training, police officers in urban areas regularly encounter more challenging and intense situations. They maintain a heightened sense of alert because the job demands it.
I have always had a high level of confidence in the Kansas City Police Department. The department has had its fair share of black eyes over the years — the appalling laxity in the Crimes Against Children unit, for example, and the maddening failure to solve last year’s murders of Thomas Pickert and Zach Pearce. Overall, however, it’s an excellent department, and as a nearly 50-year resident of KCMO, I feel very good about our police services.
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Now, take a look at this map, showing where Parkland, FL, is…
Parkland, with a population of about 30,000, is an affluent suburb of Fort Lauderdale, but it’s 25 miles from Fort Lauderdale. Around Parkland are a bunch of small cities with small police departments…Some probably don’t have police departments and contract with the Broward County Sheriff’s Department for law enforcement services.
Just as some people in our area want to move to areas like Lansing and Leavenworth on the Kansas side or Liberty and Smithville on the Missouri side — often so they can send their children to “good” and “safe” public schools — I can understand why many Broward County residents would want to send their children to school in an affluent suburb like Parkland.
On Valentine’s Day, however, we saw vividly one of the down sides of living in an affluent, seemingly safe, suburb:
Sheriff’s Deputies who apparently didn’t have the skills or experience — or maybe the stomach — for going up against a real, live, active shooter.
I’m not saying every KCSD resource officer or every KCPD officer would have rushed in to challenge Nikolas Cruz had the Feb. 14 massacre occurred in a Kansas City school, but I sure don’t think we’d be seeing as much second-guessing of law enforcement’s response as we’re seeing in south Florida.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
This entire fiasco has to be lain at the feet of one incompetent government employee after another. To begin with, the local school district (following up on what I believe was a dictate from Obama’s DOJ) gave the local Sheriff instructions to downplay minority misconduct in the schools. As a result, the Sheriff ignored 39 separate incidents involving the shooter engaging in various levels of violent outbursts at school. In addition, the FBI also ignored reports abut his aberrant behavior and dropped the ball.
Moving to the day of the very predictable and avoidable shooting, the deputy on duty at the school waited outside as the shooter proceeded to kill 17 people. Indeed, not only did he wait outside, but 3 of his gutless colleagues also waited outside even after the local police arrived and went inside, earning them the appropriate Twitter description of #CowardsOfBroward. CNN’s
Adding insult to injury, Sheriff Scott Israel then proceeded to go on CNN’s disgustingly scripted “Townhall” where he bizarrely blamed the NRA for the 17 murders that he was almost uniquely responsible for.
This boy was not considered to be a ‘minority’ John. He is mixed latino and Caucasian. Secondly, your use of Obama’s name in relation to this incident as a causation factor is evidence of your bias and/or outright prejudice.
Jim, the generalization of all Sheriff’s Departments as lazy or laid back and untrained is nearly as bad as John’s generalizations about minorities. Every agency, just like individuals, must be evaluated on their own merits and failures. I have been a deputy in the Kansas City metro since before anyone could call it a ‘metro’. When I started, the city limits were much smaller everywhere and there wasn’t that much crime comparatively. As the urban cores became more dense and city limits stretched out, the crime rates skyrocketed.
Yes, when I first became an LEO the training was haphazard at best until I went to the state law enforcement academy outside Hutchinson. After the academy, at least in Kansas, state law mandates a week of extra training every year. Being a deputy in an urban area, I have seen more crime and violence than rural departments. I have made more arrests than most in rural areas. Our training now matches that of the other big departments in the metro. As a side-note, nobody received training for active shooters until this century, after the Columbine massacre in 1999. Every department changed their policies and training after that.
My point being, rural areas have less crime, less calls for service and less violence and less funding- that is the reason that a department may be lacking, be it a police agency or a sheriffs agency. The one deputy who wouldn’t go in does not represent the values of all “Sheriffs” Departments. It is on the news today that the report of other deputies staying outside may be erroneous or they may have arrived after the shooter had escaped. I hope this is the case.
I know first hand how much the Jackson County Sheriff’s Dept. has improved and modernized in the last decade. It used to be the bottom of the pool for hiring because of low wages and was the cesspool of political hiring and promotion. They had no equipment for handling big crime because the county was so cheap. They have more funding now and salaries, equipment and training has improved. They are well respected in the county now.
Good to hear from someone who is current on training levels and relatively recent improvements in the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department…I am glad to hear the department is well respected…I admitted my observations — and bias — went back several decades. And, yes, you’re right, each agency needs to be judged on its own merits. All things being equal, though, I stand by my preference for big-city police departments when it comes to major crimes and mass shootings.
First, I made no “generalizations about minorities” and the fact that you would assert that I had is typical of the kind of silly ad hominem attack people like you are reduced to when the facts are not in their favor.
What I referenced was a policy implemented by Obama’s DOJ which took note of the fact that minority students had higher arrest and disciplinary records than white students and then suggested that alternate methods of discipline be used when dealing with minority students. Grant money was provided for successfully implementing the program as evidenced by reduced arrest records.
Miami-Dade first implemented the program and then school officials in Broward noting the money attached began implementation of the program through agreements with local LE. However, in order to continue to receive the funds the misconduct ignored grew from ignoring misdemeanors to felonies, assaults, etc. Anyone with a rudimentary capability of doing an Internet search can replicate both the policy and its implementation in Florida (including the written agreements between the Broward SD and Broward LE). Discussions of the failure of the policy are also abundant.
This was the essence of the reason why Cruz’s misconduct was ignored 39 separate times including complaints of assault and threatening other teachers and students. His actual ethnicity was secondary to his Hispanic surname for the purposes of the agreement.
As for the “the report of other deputies staying outside may be erroneous or they may have arrived after the shooter had escaped.” That comes solely from Scott Israel’s letter to the Governor written in response to demands from legislators for his removal from office.
The claim is nonsensical on its face. If the shooter had already left, why did the other 3 Sheriff’s Deputies remain outside? Why the hell would they not go in and try and care for the victims? But they didn’t, they waited for the local police to go in along with other Deputies from the Broward County Sheriff’s Department and yet they still remained outside. Again, a child can replicate those findings including the letter from Israel responding to Rep. Bill Hager’s call for his removal. Since then 74 state legislators have signed on to a letter demanding Israel’s suspension.
Here’s a link to the agreement between the school district and Broward LE.
https://www.scribd.com/document/371916407/Broward-Co-Collaborative-Agreement-on-School-Discipline-MOU#from_embed
Here’s a link to a discussion of Obama’s disciplinary policy failures.
https://nypost.com/2017/12/23/obamas-lax-discipline-policies-made-schools-dangerous/
And, if you don’t like the Post, here’s USA Today.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/03/27/obama-education-trump-students-color-discipline-schools-column/99501366/
On the three other deputies:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/parkland-school-shooting-broward-deputies/index.html
and
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/three-sheriff-s-deputies-remained-outside-school-during-parkland-shooting-n850946