For people who use guns to protect themselves and others on a daily basis, it’s always a bit odd to see police officers in support of gun control. Yet that’s exactly what happened in the aftermath of the school shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
CNN held a town hall event, in which the NRA’s Dana Loesch took questions from and debated survivors of the Parkland shooting. Opposing her on stage was Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, who took the anti-gun stance.
Within days it would be clear why – because he needed to deflect blame away from his own Sheriff’s department, which had received at least 45 calls related to shooter Nikolas Cruz over the years. Furthermore, an armed school resource officer from his department refused to enter the school as the massacre was unfolding. Even CNN grilled him over his Department’s incompetencies when they were made public.
The title of “Sheriff” is an elected position, and the residents of Broward County are clearly not happy, according to CBS Miami:
Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is facing a no-confidence vote from the union representing his own deputies.
In a statement from Jeff Bell, the president of the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association, “the move follows many instances of suspected malfeasance, misfeasance, failure to maintain fiduciary responsibility by the Sheriff, failure to properly investigate possible criminal misconduct by members of his senior command staff and the lack of leadership that has crushed morale throughout the agency.”
Bell says the historic move is due to the dysfunction of the office, which has been piling up for years. But it was Israel’s behavior after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 people dead that pushed the rank and file over the edge, he says.
Bizarrely, some of the officers were angry that Israel did end up criticizing the armed school resource officer who refused to enter the school.
Bell also says Morale among deputies and sergeants is non-existent. He says his members are tired of mixed messages from leadership and confused over some of the department’s policies.
One example, he says, is the active shooter policy, which states a deputy “may” go into a building and engage the shooter to preserve life. But in training, Bell says, deputies learn to enter the site of the shooting and confront an active shooter. Deputies have to make split-second decisions, he said, so their guidance and training should be identical.
This is the first time the union has held a no-confidence vote against a sheriff before.
Think this vote of no-confidence is deserved? We certainly do.
Should Sheriff Israel be voted out of office during the next election? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
