New Parkland Shooting Police Radio Transcripts Reveal Shocking Incompetence
For liberals, it’s getting harder and harder to blame gun laws.
As the story surrounding the Feb. 14 campus shooting in Florida changes with every passing day, the original narrative that gave arrogant teenagers and opportunistic gun-grabbers license to attack Second Amendment supporters keeps crumbling.
And the latest revelations are just one more chip in the wall of deception that’s grown up around the atrocity.
Recently released records of radio traffic between the Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the deputy stationed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School destroy Deputy Scot Peterson’s excuse for not engaging the gunman as soon as the shooting began.
An attorney for Peterson told reporters after the shooting that the deputy did not enter the building where the incident was taking place because he thought the shots were coming from outside the school, according to CNN.
But, according to a report published by the Miami Herald this week, records of Peterson’s radio exchanges with the sheriff’s office show the deputy knew full well where the carnage was taking place – and even directed other deputies responding to the scene not to go inside the campus building designated Building 12.
“Do not approach the 12 or 1300 building, stay at least 500 feet away,” Peterson told fellow deputies, shortly after the shooting started about 2:20 p.m., according to the Herald.
Meanwhile, the gunman was completing his deadly work – killing a total of 17 people. According to the Herald, no law enforcement officers entered the building until the gunman had thrown down his weapon and mingled among students escaping the violence. (The suspected killer, a 19-year-old ex-Douglas student Nikolas Cruz, was captured off-campus at about 3:40 p.m.)
The Herald’s new account not only destroys the original story Peterson’s attorney gave, it pulls the rug out from a defense of the deputy offered by Douglas student David Hogg, who became an omnipresent media personality in the days after the shooting.
The media loved interviewing Hogg because he demanded the same things the media does – more gun laws, more gun laws and more gun laws. (Though he might have jumped the shark when he went on CNN to proposing that spring breakers boycott Florida until it passes more gun laws. That’s an arrogance his youth can barely excuse.)
In one of seemingly countless interviews, Hogg opined that Peterson’s inability to confront the gunman wasn’t an act of cowardice, just the choice of a man who knew he was outgunned.
“Who wants to go down the barrel of an AR-15, even with a Glock?” Hogg told MSNBC. “And I know that’s what these police officers are supposed to do, but they’re people too.”
Well, the recordings published by the Herald don’t contain any mention of an AR-15, just an apparently panicked sheriff’s deputy confronting the test of a lifetime — and failing.
The latest revelation is just another in a series of facts that have come out since the shooting that show the tragedy could have been prevented at any number of levels if the Broward sheriff’s office had done its job in handling previous calls about the gunman.
It could have been prevented if the FBI had done its job, and performed any kind of follow-up to tips it received about Cruz’s expressed desire to kill.
And there’s no way of knowing for sure, of course, but there’s a good chance the death toll would would have been at least reduced if Peterson had done his job and responded to the gunshots immediately instead of hanging outside the building where the slaughter was taking place. (He has since resigned.)
The dead of Parkland have caused a nationwide discussion about gun control laws. On Friday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed a new law in the Sunshine State that, among other things, raises the legal age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 and gives the state’s law enforcement officers greater freedom to seize firearms from those considered “mentally unfit,” according to CNN.
The same law also allows some teachers to be armed on school grounds, if the local school districts and sheriff’s offices agree.
That’s one possible solution to school shootings that might actually work, and naturally it’s the one liberals oppose (along with their puppets like David Hogg).
But as the recordings published by the Herald show, the only one on the campus that day who had a gun to stop the killing spree failed to do it — then apparently lied about why he failed to do it (that he thought the shots were coming from outside).
The recordings also show the defense offered by that deputy’s supporters was also based on a lie (that he didn’t want to go up against an AR-15).
As the country is finding out, the Parkland killings came at the end of a long, long trail of official incompetence, by the same government liberals trust so deeply. Yet gun-grabbers have focused on nothing but more gun laws in its wake.
But thanks to revelations like the Herald’s report, it’s getting harder and harder to blame gun laws.
That won’t stop liberals from trying, but it’s up to Second Amendment supporters to make sure they don’t succeed.
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