Resource Officer Who Refused To Stop Parkland Shooting Just Got What He Deserves
It must be brutal in Broward these days.
Since the February mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the gun grabbing element of American society has been out in force, trying to pin the blame for the massacre on the NRA, gun-owning Americans, and even the Second Amendment itself.
But a lawsuit filed this week in Broward County Circuit Court is making its point a lot more personal.
According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Andrew Pollack, the father of massacre victim Meadow Pollack, has filed a wrongful death suit against former Deputy Scot Peterson, the school resource officer assigned to the school who did nothing to stop the gunman on his mission of murder.
The suit also names three mental health facilities for failing to properly deal with the confessed gunman, as well as the couple the gunman lived with.
But it’s the part about Peterson that’s deeply, deeply personal.
In a Twitter post Monday night, Pollack said he was filing the lawsuit against Peterson so that “where ever he goes I want people to recognize him and say that’s one of the cowards of Broward. The SRO let those children and teachers die on the 3rd floor!”
I filed a wrongful death suit against Deputy Peterson today. I want to expose that coward so bad. Where ever he goes I want people to recognize him and say that’s one of the cowards of Broward. The SRO that let those children and teachers die on the 3rd floor!
— Andrew Pollack (@AndrewPollackFL) April 30, 2018
This suit has nothing to do with money. I want to be sure anywhere he goes in this country he will be recognized as the coward that could have gone in and saved the students and teachers on the third floor.
— Andrew Pollack (@AndrewPollackFL) May 1, 2018
According to the Washington Examiner, the lawsuit describes Peterson as “pusillanimous” and a “coward,” and states that the then-deputy “cowered in his safe location between two concrete walls outside of Building 12 the entire time Nikolas Cruz trained his AR-15 and rained bullets upon the teachers and students.”
The lawsuit isn’t Pollack’s first public attack on Peterson. In an interview with Fox News’ Martha MacCallum in March, he called the former a deputy a “liar” and “an embarrassment of an officer.”
According to the Palm Beach Post, Peterson’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Peterson himself could not be reached, the Post reported.
But the lawsuit is scathing in its description:
“There was only one person on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus on February 14, 2018, between 2:22 p.m. and 2:27 p.m. who could have stopped Nikolas Cruz. There was only one other person on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus on February 14, 2018, between 2:22 p.m. and 2:27 p.m. who was armed. There was only one person on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School campus on February 14, 2018, between 2:22 p.m. and 2:27 p.m. who was trained to deal with an active shooter,” it states, according to the Sun-Sentinel.
“Unfortunately for the teachers and students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, that one person was Scot Peterson.”
Everyone — especially every man — would like to think he would meet the challenge heroically, even if it cost him his life in the process. And an armed and trained officer of the law has a moral duty above most civilians.
But the fact is, not everyone will, not everyone does; and man or woman, cop, soldier or civilian, they deserve the consequences.
As security footage from the Feb. 14 killings show Peterson was safely outside the building for the full time the shooting was taking place, he clearly didn’t engage the gunman, and that’s a moment he’s no doubt going to carry to his grave with him.
But Pollack’s lawsuit is going to make sure the rest of the world doesn’t forget it either.
Things are getting brutal in Broward these days, and it looks like they’re going to stay that way for a while.
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