Broward County Cop Ignored Training, Told Deputies to Form Perimeter Instead of Confronting Nikolas Cruz

More amazing leadership

BERNIE WOODALL/REUTERS/Newscom

On the day of the Parkland massacre, Capt. Janice Jordan of the Broward County Sheriff's Office commanded deputies on the scene to secure a perimeter—which they did, instead of entering the building where Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people.

That's contrary to police training, which emphasizes that officers should engage a suspected mass shooter immediately.

According to the dispatch log records obtained by The Miami Herald and Fox News, Jordan issued the command "need perimeter." A few minutes later, she mentioned the importance of setting up a staging area. None of the Broward deputies on scene entered the building, and School Resource Officer Scot Peterson remained outside as well. (Peterson has since lost his job.) The first cop to go inside worked for the Coral Springs Police Department.

Jordan's unwise orders might not have made a difference: According to The Herald, Cruz's six-minute rampage was already over by the time the she issued the perimeter command. It's possible that Cruz ended the mass shooting early because his gun jammed. If that hadn't happened, the decision to set up a perimeter could have been very consequential.

Jordan is currently a finalist for a police chief job in Tequesta, Florida. She told The Palm Beach Post that "Parkland should not affect my chances for this position."

More amazing leadership from a law enforcement agency that failed to take appropriate action before, during, and after the shooting.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

The first cop to go inside worked for the Coral Springs Police Department.

Sure, after they already had a perimeter set up for them.

[Mannie]

Actually, they didn't wait for anything. They went in.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Jack Bauer always had CTU set up a perimeter. Just saying.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

They were always too late and half of them were working for the terrorists anyway.

[Fist of Etiquette]

...Parkland should not affect my chances for this position.

HIRING QUOTA ALERT.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

It's Her Turn.

[Scarecrow Repair & Chippering]

+1

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Another mistake on top of dozens earlier reported.

The only solution is to ban guns and expand police powers.

[KevinP]

And invest more in astroturfing.

Why Did It Take Two Weeks To Discover Parkland Students' Astroturfing?

Quotes:
"Can you believe these kids?" It's been a recurring theme of the coverage of the Parkland school shooting: the remarkable effectiveness of the high school students who created a gun control organization in the wake of the massacre. In seemingly no time, the magical kids had organized events ranging from a national march to a mass school walkout, and they'd brought in a million dollars in donations from Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney.

On February 28, BuzzFeed came out with the actual story: Rep. Debbie Wassermann Schultz aiding in the lobbying in Tallahassee, a teacher's union organizing the buses that got the kids there, Michael Bloomberg's groups and the Women's March working on the upcoming March For Our Lives, MoveOn.org doing social media promotion and (potentially) march logistics, and training for student activists provided by federally funded Planned Parenthood.

What's striking about all this isn't the organization. If you start reading books about organizing, it's clear how it all works. But no journalist covering the story wrote about this stuff for two weeks. Instead, every story was about the Parkland kids being magically effective.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Saw that over on Federalist. This should surprise no one.

[BYODB]

It doesn't. High school kids couldn't organize a luncheon let alone a nationwide effort at anything beyond a hashtag.

[Trigger Warning]

Exploiting traumatized children for political gain is a time-honored leftard technique.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

It's pretty obvious these kids are being shepherded through this process, I'm not sure it amounts to a conspiracy.

[BYODB]

Not a conspiracy, no, but using human tragedy as a front is questionable ethnically. If you have good arguments, you shouldn't need to stand on dead kids and use their still living classmates to make your point.

You definitely shouldn't need to conceal who's writing the script.

[Mannie]

It's called Grave Dancing. Never let a crisis go to waste.

[Trigger Warning]

I prefer Face Dancing.

[Freddy the Jerk]

Tony will be along momentarily to explain why his long hoped-for tiny government expansion (funded by asking obscenely rich fatcats to pay a little bit more) will not be staffed exclusively by people such as these, and that we bitter clinger cousin-fucking crypto Republicans should just turn in our guns and trust the benevolence of caring civil servants to protect us.

[Tony]

That, and cops should be trained to actually protect people instead of focusing on getting the perp no matter the cost to life and property.

[BYODB]

The police raise revenue for the state and not a whole lot else.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Perimeters outside the shooting area are a good way to do that.

[loveconstitution1789]

Tony wants the police to what he thinks they should do.

The reason you cannot trust the state is because the police and other government bureaucrats cannot ever be trusted to always do their jobs.

This is another reason why the government would lose a civil war. The cops are too scared to run after a school shooter. Imagine how they would shit their pants if armed citizens attacked their police stations and stopped them in their police cars to arrest them for treason.

[Tony]

Imagine how you would shit your pants if even 1% of the government services and infrastructure you depend on disappeared.

[BYODB]

Is it the certainly higher than 1% of government that fails at it's stated purpose? If so, I doubt anyone would notice let alone shit themselves.

[Freddy the Jerk]

Nothing left to cut, right?

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Well the IRS dependably confiscates my labor and flushes the proceeds into the black hole of the police state. I can depend on state government to mortgage my grandchildren's future livelihood to pay for pensions of slugs who retire at age 50. And I can depend on local government to claim ownership of my property in the form of a perpetual lien. If 1% of these services disappeared I doubt I'd even notice. I pay for the fucking roads I drive on. I pay for cops who are more likely to kill my dog than protect me from crime. I depend on myself. If I succeed great. If I fail fuck me. Anyone who depends on government is a fool.

[Freddy the Jerk]

Tony wants the police to what he thinks they should do.

Close. He'd never admit it, but Tony wants to use government jackboots to pay the world back for all those swirlies he got in junior high. Off to the camps for anyone who ever crossed him.

[StackOfCoins]

I was bullied in school and didn't become a tyrant. This sort of thing goes deeper than simple inferiority. Tony has statist marrow in his bones.

[Freddy the Jerk]

Visceral hate and just-below-the-surface racism makes him a little over-qualified for the average Big Brother worshiper. There's more to the story...

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

"Cruz's six-minute rampage was already over by the time the she issued the perimeter command. "

Deciding whether or not the perimeter is needed is a lengthy process.

On a serious note, it does matter. If they don't go in right away, that signals to victims that even if the shooter were active, the cops aren't there to save you, they're there to set up perimeters.

[$park? leftist poser]

Synchronizing watches and deciding on hand signals is not something you can just rush through. One person gets a signal wrong and the whole breach team gets wiped.

[KevinP]

So the lessons learned from the Parkland school shooting:
* Local police were called to the killer's home 45 times, but he was never arrested or committed which could have placed him on the background check list.
* The killer was disciplined by his school for offenses including assault, threatening teachers and carrying bullets in his backpack but was never arrested.
* The Broward County Sheriff's Office was informed twice that the shooter was planning a school shooting, but did nothing.
* The FBI were informed two times, once very credibly, that the shooter was planning a school shooting but did nothing.
* The killer took a gun into a gun-free zone where everyone inside was disarmed and defenseless except ...
* ... the police officer assigned to guard the school who hid outside the school building like a coward in the critical moments while the youngsters inside he had to protect were slaughtered.
* This is all the fault of the NRA.
* Law abiding citizens should be disarmed since the government will protect them from criminals.

[junyo]

You left out the greedy Republicans who've dreadfully underfunded our schools, police, and FBI.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

You forgot that guns have totemic powers that take over the users mind and compels them do evil.

[BYODB]

Frankly I don't give a fuck that the FBI was notified and did nothing. I resent the notion that citizens should turn in other citizens on 'what if's' and those who are turned in lose rights. Sure, it might have stopped this kid but it's also a fact it would fuck over a ton of law abiding citizens. It probably wouldn't have done anything to stop this kid either, since 'pre-crime' isn't really a thing and it assumes gun control actually prevents shootings.

[KevinP]

Also good reading:

Behind Cruz's Rampage: Obama's School-Leniency Policy

Quotes (but read the whole article):
Despite committing a string of arrestable offenses on campus before the Florida school shooting, Nikolas Cruz was able to escape the attention of law enforcement, pass a background check and purchase the weapon he used to slaughter three school staff members and 14 fellow students because of Obama administration efforts to make school discipline more lenient.

...
In 2013, the year before Cruz entered high school, the Broward County school system scrapped and rewrote its discipline policy to make it much more difficult for administrators to suspend or expel problem students, or for campus police to arrest them for misdemeanors? including some of the crimes Cruz allegedly committed.
...
Cruz benefited from the lax discipline policy. Although he was disciplined for a string of offenses -- including assault, threatening teachers and carrying bullets in his backpack -- he was never taken into custody or even expelled.

By avoiding a criminal record, Cruz passed a federal background check in February 2017 before purchasing the AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle investigators say was used in the mass shooting.

[loveconstitution1789]

Expect plenty of local government finger pointing and blaming outside groups like the NRA.

The sheriff will never resign. There will no change in SROs being able to protect the kids rather than just running out their retirement clock. There will be plenty of screams for gun control.

[AlgerHiss]

The current status of American copping (local, state, federal...all levels) is completely out of control. It is made up of breathtakingly cowardly, psychotic, sadistic misfits.

If you're a cop, stay away from my family, my neighborhood and my place of business. The trouble we have with criminals, I am fully convinced we'll handle this far better on our own, and as a plus, the constitution will be violated far less.

And if you're a member of "policeone.com", tell them the same thing.

[BYODB]

So the school resource officer gets fired for not charging in guns blazing, but the 'real' police sit on their thumbs and no heads roll.

Exactly as expected.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Guess which are paying their Union dues?

[BYODB]

Exactly.

[Mannie]

The important part is that no policemen were endangered and, most importantly, no pensions were put in peril.

[esd45suf]

I can't wait to watch the Drunk History episode on this shooting, where we learn that the story we were all told of this 'landmark' event that spurred a movement and actual change after years of nothing wasn't true at all. It was really just royal f_ck up after royal f_ck up by multiple levels of government, and all of the things that were changed really had nothing to do with it.

[Gaear Grimsrud]

"The teenager arrived at the school in an Uber at 2.19pm on Wednesday, Broward County sheriff Scott Israel said, and entered the school carrying a rifle in a soft black case. He began shooting at 2.21pm, moving from room to room and between the school's floors, at one point returning to a classroom to open fire again. Cruz then abandoned his rifle and bag and ran from the building, across tennis courts and playing fields, blending in with the students who were running for their lives.

The suspect then went to a Walmart, purchased a drink at a Subway restaurant, and went to a McDonald's. He was arrested at 3.41pm, about 40 minutes after he left the fast food restaurant."

The way I'm reading the timeline the perimeter was also a failure. The perp was hanging out at the mall while cops were preventing EMTs from treating the wounded.

[Don't look at me.]

The Uber dude didn't know it was a gun case? In a gun free zone?

[LarryA]

If teachers are armed ... who will be killed first?

So far, the answer is, "Nobody."

There are lots of schools with faculty carry; all of Utah, large programs in Ohio and Colorado, 1 out of every 7 school districts in Texas. There were even a couple of districts considering it in California, but their Legislature prohibited on-campus carry.*

But so far, no school mass murderer has attacked any school with armed faculty.

(I'm sure it's just a coincidence, right?)

* Rule of thumb: Any time the California Legislature does something, it's safer to do the opposite.

[David Nolan Michael Hihn]

What a story Michael.

[DatCrazyMongoose]

Anyone suggesting we "arm" teachers is a moron. This isn't the military where we force people to do things.

I think the libertarian stance is or should be, "Don't 'disarm' teachers."

As stated below, there are plenty of places where this very thing is happening.