Wednesday the state commission investigating the Parkland shooting was shown a new video clip. All the elements of this clip—security video of Scot Peterson, an animation of the shooter’s movements, and police radio snippets—have been shown separately before. What’s new about this clip is that it syncs all three elements together so you can see what was happening inside the building and outside at the same time.
The impact is pretty dramatic. The Sun Sentinel reports that family members of the victims who were in the room watching this were in tears. Scot Peterson can be seen standing outside while the dot representing Nikolas Cruz is making his way up to the third floor of the building looking for more kids to shoot. Here’s the clip, which is about 90 seconds long:
Commission members suggested that Peterson not only did nothing to stop Cruz himself, he also may have slowed the response of other officers by telling them to stay back and block streets, instead of doing what they are trained to do in this scenario: rush inside and confront the shooter.
Although other sheriff’s officers have been criticized for failing to respond aggressively, commission members said the bad radio calls could account for that. The order to block intersections went to Sheriff’s Office units but not to officers of the adjacent city of Coral Springs, which commissioners said could account for the swifter, more effective response of that city’s police department.
“If you’re a responding Broward Sheriff’s deputy, and you have the deputy that’s on campus, who’s there in the best position, telling you what to do — i.e. lockdown intersections, they’re going to do what the guy who’s on campus is telling them to do,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the commission. “Coral Springs didn’t hear that direction. So Coral Springs is coming right in. Why are they coming right in? Because they weren’t hearing this nonsense direction about locking down intersections.”…
“Don’t tell me that he loved these kids,” said Max Schachter, a member of the commission, whose son Alex was killed in the massacre. “If they were his kids he would have gone in, he would have saved them. He let our children be slaughtered. He did nothing. He’s no police officer, no law enforcement officer. Anybody with a badge would have done something. He did nothing. I hope he rots in hell.”
The commission has subpoenaed Peterson to appear before them and answer questions. Max Schachter says he just wants to ask Peterson one question: “Why did he go away and hide?” Peterson has claimed he wasn’t sure where the shots were coming from but you can hear him specify the 1200 building the clip above.
Gualtieri, the Pinellas County Sheriff, said Peterson is being investigated for professional negligence which could potentially lead to criminal charges. Meanwhile, Peterson, who resigned shortly after the shooting, is receiving an $8,700 per month pension. There has to be some way to strip that pension from this guy who failed to do his job in the worst possible way.
Here’s a local news report on the new video:
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