Parkland school cop ‘never went in’ during the shooting. There were other failures, too.
In November, a tipster called BSO to say Cruz “could be a school shooter in the making,” but deputies did not write up a report on that warning. It came just weeks after a relative called urging BSO to seize his weapons. Two years ago, according to a newly released timeline of interactions with Cruz’s family, a deputy investigated a report that Cruz “planned to shoot up the school” — intelligence that was forwarded to the school’s resource officer, with no apparent result.
The school’s resource officer, Scot Peterson, 54, was suspended without pay, then immediately resigned and retired. Two other deputies have been placed on restricted duty while Internal Affairs investigates how they handled the two shooter warnings.
Cruz ditched the weapon and escaped, blending in with fleeing students. He was captured about an hour later and confessed to the killings. He is now awaiting trial and could face the death penalty.
Since the massacre, law enforcement and education authorities have come under intense scrutiny for their handling of Cruz over the years. BSO, the county’s largest police department, is also under the microscope for its response to the shooting — chiefly for how school resource deputy Scot Peterson responded once the gunfire erupted at 2:21 p.m. on Valentine’s Day.
Peterson — named school resource officer of the year for Parkland in 2014 — was in another building, dealing with a student issue when the shots sounded. Armed with his sidearm, Peterson ran to the west side of Building 12 and set up in a defensive position, then did nothing for four minutes until the gunfire stopped, the sheriff said.
“When we train police, the first priority is to stop the killing,” said Pete Blair, the executive director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University.
According to a BSO timeline released during the press conference, the department had fielded 23 calls in the past decade related to Cruz or his family.
The first report came in November 2008, when Cruz — then 9 years old — threw a rock at another boy outside their Parkland home. In the following years, Cruz’s mother called police to report various disturbances: her sons were fighting, Cruz hit her with a plastic vacuum-cleaner hose, the boys left the home through a bedroom window.
Then came the first serious red flag.
According to BSO, a deputy talked to the anonymous caller, then determined that Cruz “possessed knives and a BB gun.” That information was forwarded to Peterson at the Douglas campus, police said. The internal affairs unit is now investigating why nothing came of the report.
▪ Sept. 28, 2016: An investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families rules Cruz is stable, despite “fresh cuts” on his arms. His mother, Lynda Cruz, says in the past he wrote “hate signs” on his book bag and had recently talked of buying firearms.