No duty to protect
This seems like a big deal:
Following an investigation by FDLE, former Broward Sheriffs Deputy Scot Peterson, 56, was arrested in Broward County today on seven counts of neglect of a child and three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury. The arrest comes after a 15-month investigation into the actions of law enforcement following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.
The FDLE investigation shows former Deputy Peterson did absolutely nothing to mitigate the MSD shooting that killed 17 children, teachers and staff and injured 17 others, said FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen. There can be no excuse for his complete inaction and no question that his inaction cost lives.
We’ll see how this plays out given court precedent and all.
June 4th, 2019 at 4:41 pm
The original ruling was that no particular individual has a right to protection by the police, who are tasked with policing crime for the general welfare. Since he was shooting up a crowd, this wasn’t a case of an individual claiming that they were owed protection, but a case where he was providing protection to one individual — himself — at the expense of the general welfare.
June 4th, 2019 at 4:41 pm
Hmm. Yet we’ve been told, over and over, for generations now, that the first responsibility of a LEO was to return home safely every day. That’s the “Safety First” theology, isn’t it? And so the last thing any LEO should do is put himself in a dangerous situation. Therefore it is his duty to avoid active crime scenes.
This of course runs afoul of the parallel assertion that LEO’s are owed our total admiration and even worship for putting their lives at risk every day for our sakes.
Safety First, AND, we owe them our very lives. Put those two together, and what do you get? It can only mean that their primary responsibility is to murder us at the slightest inkling of danger, before any actual danger manifests.
June 4th, 2019 at 5:31 pm
Phelps above gives me hope for the prosecution that I didn’t have before. Hopefully they’ll get him on the perjury even if the real charges don’t stick.
June 4th, 2019 at 5:49 pm
How do we know that dude has no vestige of honor and self-respect?
Because he hasn’t eaten his gun (yet), and at this point I don’t think he ever will. I’d say how can he live with himself, but then that gets back to my question.
June 4th, 2019 at 7:34 pm
The perjury charge seems promising, since that one completely sidesteps the “no duty” precedent. I assume the reasoning for that one is that he swore an oath of office and then by his (in)action violated it.
Having government people prosecuted for perjuring their oath of office is a very good sign. There are lots and lots of government employees at all levels and branches of government who should be very scared if that sort of thing takes off.
June 4th, 2019 at 8:29 pm
Maybe, but my guess is that it has to do with the
excusesstatements he made immediately after the shooting to explain just exactly what he was doing when the shit hit the fan.June 4th, 2019 at 9:05 pm
Don’t make a big deal out of the so-called “no duty to protect duty precedents”. Those are from “when seconds count, the police are minute away” kind of cases. Not when they’re there and do nothing but hide.
The municipal cops who responded, got there as fast as they could, and went in, while this guys was hiding …. Yeah, those guys are covered. Even though they got there too late.
June 4th, 2019 at 11:11 pm
IMAO it’s ass covering for ex-sheriff Scott Israel by and for new Sheriff Greg Tony.
June 5th, 2019 at 6:06 pm
Deputy Peterson’s actions seem to have become the new normal for cops. My local cops did the same thing when my neighbor’s daughter was caught in a home invasion. They arrived in force without lights or siren, and just stood around in neighboring yards waiting for the gangsters to exit. They eventually caught 2 of the 3 perps.
June 5th, 2019 at 8:34 pm
In his favor, he himself did not shoot any of the kids “because he saw them reaching towards their waist and feared for his life”.
June 6th, 2019 at 9:17 am
Someone in the anti-gun crowd realized that if they didn’t throw this fool in prison that it would seriously under cut their argument of “You dont need a gun. The police will protect you.”
June 6th, 2019 at 11:35 am
That’s the doctrine for a standoff. They did the home invasion, cops showed up, they hunkered down, the cops hunkered down.
The current doctrine for active shooters is to confront immediately with whatever force you have, and you don’t wait for backup. If they had heard gunshots inside the house in your situation, the current doctrine says that it just shifted to Active Shooters, and the cops that were there surrounding the house are expected to storm in, whether SWAT was there yet or not.
No shooting going on, no active shooter. (See: Active.)
June 9th, 2019 at 10:36 pm
Phelps:
No guns, just the normal kitchen knives, later found in the yard. Was actually a burglary of an occupied home. When they discovered someone behind a locked door, they attempted to break it down to reach her, instead of running. She was talking to dispatch while this transpired. 11 years old.
They didn’t know the cops had arrived, since the cops did their best to be incognito. The gunfire probably would have occurred if I had heard her father’s phone call about the situation. He’s really pissed at them, and so is the Chinese community he has talked to about it.
They were so incompetent that they only caught one due to falling into someones pool. The second required a dog to be brought in, and they didn’t even know about the 3rd one that simply walked down the sidewalk and disappeared. That was discovered when they reviewed a neighbor’s surveillance video.