I know most people expect an officer tasked with defending a school to rush in and engage anybody actively gunning down students. But officers just want to go home to their families at night like everybody else so sometimes they need to make a tactical retreat to keep themselves safe:
PARKLAND, Fla. — Video footage released Thursday from the Florida school where 17 people were killed on Valentine’s Day appears to confirm that a sheriff’s deputy did not try to confront the gunman accused of staging the massacre.
In fact, it does not show disgraced Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson doing much of anything.
In the opening minutes, Peterson is seen walking and talking with what looks like a staffer at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. A short time later the two of them ride out of view in a golf cart.
I imagine that at least a few Broward County taxpayers are feeling as though they didn’t get their money’s worth out of their sheriff’s department after witnessing four of its deputies abandoning their children to die. Too bad for them though. Even though the sheriff’s department failed to protect their children, the taxpayers will be forced to continue funding the department. To make matters worse, this lack of accountability will likely motivate other officers tasked with protecting schools to also tear around in a golf cart while the children under their care are murdered.