Armed deputy who didn’t stop Florida school shooting thinks he ‘did a good job’
THE sheriff’s deputy who failed to engage the shooter at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School “believed he did a good job” because he called in the location of the massacre and gave a description of the shooter, a top union official said Thursday.
School resource officer Scot Peterson, who has resigned in disgrace from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, was “distraught” about the shooting that killed 17 people — but believed he did his duty, according to the president of the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association.
“He believed he did a good job calling in the location, setting up the perimeter and calling in the description (of Cruz),” said the union official, Jim Bell.
US President Donald Trump, however, has a different view, saying the officer was a coward.
“Deputy Sheriff Peterson I guess his name is, I mean, they brought it out, I was surprised, but it deserves to be brought out, what he did, he’s trained his whole life,” Mr Trump told reporters outside the Conservative Political Action Conference. “There’s an example. But when it came time to get in there and do something, he didn’t have the courage or something happened. But he certainly did a poor job.”
“There’s no question about that. He was there for five minutes, for five minutes. That was during the entire shooting. He heard it right at the beginning. So he certainly did a poor job. But that’s the case where somebody was outside, they’re trained, they didn’t react properly under pressure or they were a coward,” he said.
The union head said he didn’t want to second-guess Mr Peterson — but strongly suggested that failing to take on Cruz was a mistake.
Mr Bell, still a working deputy, said; “We have to act, even if that means risking our lives to save many more lives. I would demand that from our union members. You’re listening to an execution every time you hear the rifle shot,” he said.
According to the New York Post, during a press conference, Mr Peterson was lambasted by his sheriff, Scott Israel for not engaging shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz last week as he slaughtered students and staff at Douglas High School in Parkland.
Mr Israel said Peterson’s job was to confront the shooter as soon as possible, saying: “You don’t wait for SWAT, you get in, and you push toward the shooter.”
Security footage showed Mr Peterson “seeking cover behind a concrete column” while Nikolas Cruz, 19, stalked through classrooms with an AR-15 he bought legally.
Broward County sheriff Israel suspended Mr Peterson without pay before the 33-year vet abruptly retired.
Mr Peterson had been the resource officer at Douglas High School since 2009 and made a base annual salary of $75,673.72 as of 2016, according to sheriff’s office records cited by the Sun-Sentinel newspaper.
That base salary, however, doesn’t include longevity and first-responder bonuses that probably brought Peterson’s non-overtime pay closer to $80,000, according to Bell.
Mr Peterson’s pension will be 75 per cent of the average of his top five earning years while on the job, the union head said.
Survivor Sam Zeif, in an interview with Good Morning Britain, claims that Mr Peterson came face-to-face with Cruz and did nothing.
“He could’ve stopped it. He was standing on the first floor and he could see him. I am friends with a victim who saw him [Peterson] and the shooter on the same floor and he didn’t stop him.”
