Under Pressure, Florida Sheriff Defends ‘Amazing Leadership’

MIAMI — Facing mounting questions Sunday over how his officers handled a mass shooting in a high school, Sheriff Scott Israel of Broward County, Florida, defended his actions as “amazing leadership.”

Israel, a Democrat in an elected post, said he would not resign over the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, which left 17 people dead. His term runs through 2020.

On Sunday, the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and dozens of other Republican lawmakers called on Gov. Rick Scott, also a Republican, to use his authority to suspend the sheriff from office.

The governor’s office announced Sunday that state officials would conduct an investigation of the law enforcement response to the shooting. The Broward County Sheriff’s Office said it welcomed the governor’s move and would cooperate with the investigation.

In a tense interview on CNN on Sunday, Israel said he should not be held responsible for the armed deputy assigned to the school, who failed to enter the building while the shooting was in progress on Feb. 14.

“Deputies make mistakes,” the sheriff said on the program, “State of the Union.” “Police officers make mistakes. But it’s not the responsibility of a general or the president if you have a deserter.” Israel added: “You don’t measure a person’s leadership by a deputy not going in.”

“I’ve given amazing leadership to this agency,” he said.

Israel revealed Thursday, citing video from school surveillance cameras, that the deputy, Scot Peterson, had taken cover outside the school building for four minutes while the suspected gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was shooting students and staff members. Peterson resigned Thursday after being placed under internal investigation.

The sheriff acknowledged Sunday that the deputy’s inaction might have cost lives.

“Do I believe if Scot Peterson went into that building, there was a chance he could have neutralized the killer and saved lives? Yes, I believe that,” he told the host of the program, Jake Tapper.

Peterson’s actions are not the only ones in question.

The sheriff’s office is also investigating whether other deputies who arrived on the scene failed to enter the high school immediately. Officers from the Coral Springs Police Department, who were the first to respond to the shooting, told CNN that at least three Broward County deputies had hung back during the response. Standard police protocol for dealing with an active shooter requires officers to try to confront the shooter as quickly as possible.

Israel said Sunday that his deputies arrived four minutes after Cruz had left the freshman building where the massacre took place. But Tapper noted that the deputies did not know at that point that Cruz had already left, and should have proceeded as if the shooting were still underway.

“We will investigate every action of our deputies, of their supervisors,” the sheriff said, adding that Coral Springs police officers will give witness statements to investigators from his office. “If they did things wrong,” he said of his department’s personnel, “I will take care of business in a disciplinary manner.”

Israel, who effusively praised his deputies in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, had insisted in a news conference Wednesday that his deputies had not delayed their entry into the school. He appeared at a town-hall-style event that evening, broadcast on CNN, during which he criticized the National Rifle Association aggressively and urged state lawmakers to give police more power to commit the mentally ill to hospitals involuntarily.

He did not mention Peterson’s inaction on that broadcast, even though, as he told Tapper on Sunday, he had seen video footage earlier that day showing that the deputy had stayed outside.

The sheriff said Sunday that his office waited until Thursday, the day after the broadcast, to corroborate that the deputy had not entered the school and to notify families of the victims about the finding.

“I’m not on a timeline for TV or any news show,” he said.

Israel said he has asked the Police Executive Research Forum, based in Washington, to conduct an independent after-action report on how his office responded to the shooting.

He rejected suggestions that his office had missed repeated signs that Cruz was a threat to Stoneman Douglas High, even though at least 23 calls involving Cruz were made to deputies over the past decade. The sheriff’s office is investigating how two of those calls were handled, and has placed the two deputies who responded to them on restricted duty.

Israel indicated that he was unaware until after the shooting that there had been a long list of calls directly involving Cruz.

“I can only take responsibility for what I knew about,” the sheriff said. Almost none of the incidents involved offenses that would merit an arrest, he said, adding: “our deputies did everything right.”

“Our deputies have done amazing things,” he said.

The state House speaker, Richard Corcoran, wrote to the governor Sunday, asking him to remove the sheriff from office for “incompetence and neglect of duty.” “Sheriff Israel failed to maintain a culture of alertness, vigilance and thoroughness,” Corcoran wrote.

The speaker’s letter followed one sent Saturday by Rep. Bill Hager, a Republican from Boca Raton similarly asking the governor to remove the sheriff.

Israel dismissed Hager’s request in the CNN interview. “It was a shameful, politically motivated letter that had no facts,” Israel said. “And of course I won’t resign.”