CNN’s Jake Tapper Takes on Sheriff Israel Over Botched Shooting Response

The Broward County Sheriff’s Department is doing damage control – and it ain’t going well.

In response to the news that their department had been called to the household of the Stoneman Douglas high school shooter Nickolas Cruz 39 times, they clarified that it was actually “only” 23 such incidents, and asked the media to “STOP REPORTING 39. IT’S SIMPLY NOT TRUE.” (Their emphasis, not mine).

Whether or not it was 23 or 39 is irrelevant – what’s relevant is that they were useless 100% of the time.

Though I suppose it’s also relevant that the Broward County Sheriff’s Department lied through their teeth, because you can read their public statement (left), compared to the log of police calls from the Cruz household (right), in the tweet below.

As Dana Loesch pointed out, the kid even called the police on himself.

Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel appeared at a CNN town hall last week to pretend to have the moral high ground, while possessing not-yet-public knowledge that a number of their armed school resource officers hid and did nothing as the tragedy unfolded.

While CNN has been explicitly pushing the gun control narrative, when Sheriff Israel appeared on host Jake Tapper’s show, what ensured was a half-hour-long interview decimating the sheriff, who legitimately tried to defend the actions of his officers who did nothing.

When asked whether a more competent sheriff’s office could have prevented the horrific tragedy that claimed the lives of 17 people, Israel said, “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, O.J. Simpson would still be in the record books.”

Tapper’s response couldn’t have been any more blunt: “I don’t know what that means.”

As Reason Magazine summarized,

Throughout the interview, Israel declined to take personal responsibility for what happened. He also refused to confirm or deny reports that several of his own deputies waited outside as the shooting was underway. When told that a first-responder was stopped by his deputies and prevented from entering the school to provide medical attention to victims, the sheriff said he didn’t know whether that was true or not.

“At this point we have no reason to believe anyone acted incorrectly or correctly,” said Israel.

Israel made one notable exception: Scot Peterson, the school resource officer who was caught on security camera declining to enter the building to confront Cruz. Peterson was placed on unpaid leave and has since resigned.

In the interview, Israel seemed prepared to blame everything on Peterson. The sheriff even implied that if it’s true his own deputies did not enter the building, perhaps that was because the SRO said something over the radio that caused them to hesitate.

You can watch the full 30-minute trainwreck below.

What did you think of that interview? Did Tapper hold the sheriff’s feet to the fire? Tell us what you thought below, and share this story over Facebook now!