Cop Who Cowered in Fear as Parkland Kids Were Murdered Now Receives $8.7K per Month Pension

in #news6 years ago

By Rachel Blevins

 Parkland, Florida – The police officer who was publicly shamed after  he was caught by surveillance camera waiting outside of a high school  while children were shot and killed inside, was allowed to quietly  retire and is now making more than $100,000 a year from state pension  funds. Scot Peterson, 55, a sheriff’s deputy who served as the school  resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was allowed to  retire one week after a former student opened fire, killing 17 people on  Feb. 14. Peterson was openly criticized for his blatant lack of  response during the shooting, but after a few weeks, his name faded from  the headlines. 

The former deputy is now receiving a state pension of $8,702.35 each month, which equals around $104,428 per year, according to a report  from the Sun-Sentinel. Peterson worked in Broward County for 32 years,  and a spokesperson for the sheriff’s department confirmed that he is  being investigated for his actions during the shooting, but they did not  say how long the investigation would take. 

One of the main questions that was being asked in the immediate  aftermath of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas was why suspected gunman  Nickolas Cruz was not apprehended by a school resource officer during  his rampage, especially considering the fact that his troubled  record—which showed that he was disciplined 58 times  by the school district between 2012 and 2017—should have made officials  aware that he may return to campus after he was suspended. Cruz also left several threatening comments on social media in which he stated that he planned to become “a professional school shooter,”  and he directly threatened other students with physical harm. 

The FBI  received multiple credible reports about Cruz in the months leading up  to the shooting, and police were called to his home nearly 40 times in recent years over reports of “mentally ill person,” “child/elderly abuse,” “domestic disturbance,” and “missing person.” 

Yet not only was Cruz allowed on campus on the day of the shooting, but one student claimed  she ran into him in the hallway and jokingly told him she would have  expected that he would be the one to carry out a school shooting, while  gunshots rang out in the background. 

Police claim Cruz exited the school  by blending in with other students who were fleeing. As the veteran officer who was stationed at the school, Scot Peterson  should have been aware that a suspended student was threatening  violence, and when he heard reports of gunshots, he should have been the  first one to confront the shooter.

 In the limited surveillance footage that has been released  from the day of the shooting, Peterson can be seen running towards a  golf cart at about the same time the first 911 call was made to Coral  Springs Police reporting a shooting. 

It was during that time that Peterson reportedly said over his police radio, “Be advised we have possible, could be firecrackers, I think we have shots fired, possible shots fired—1200 building.” 

According to a timeline of the shooting from the Sun-Sentinel, Cruz was picked up by an Uber at 2:06 p.m. and dropped off at the school at 2:19 p.m. He then entered the freshman building at 2:21 p.m. The shooting reportedly lasted 7 minutes, which  included enough time for a freshman student named Chris McKenna to find  Cruz loading his rifle, and then to flee to get help when Cruz told  him, “things are gonna start getting messy.” 

The news that Peterson waited outside of the building while a  massacre was ongoing and children were being killed inside sparked  outrage among many, and in response, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel  said, “I am devastated. Sick to my stomach. He never went in.”

 If Peterson had chosen to stay on the job, he would have been suspended,  but he likely would still be receiving his full paycheck. If he had  confronted the shooter as soon as he heard reports of gunshots, the  death toll from the massacre could have been significantly lessened. 

Instead, Peterson was allowed to quietly retire, and the treatment he received serves as a reminder of both Broward County’s long history of police corruption and the lack of accountability police officers in the United States face on a daily basis. From a police captain who was caught on camera beating a woman in a bar, to a police detective who was found guilty of creating child pornography  involving girls as young as 13 years old, police officers are often  allowed to quietly retire after they have been caught committing heinous  crimes, and Scot Peterson will likely be just another name on the list  of corrupt cops who are now enjoying their state pensions, while  escaping all consequences for their actions. 


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It's very sad to read about this.. especially because he could've done something to avoid a lot of things that happened that day! I hope that they will investigate every single bit and maybe even think about their decision of retiring again.. He might have a good excuse, I don't know anything about him, so I won't judge him by what I hear, but it's certainly not the best way to deal with something like that..

The standard of policing in the country just degrades as you hear news like this, it really creates serious trust issues where you question whether you can trust police to do their proper job nowadays or not.

As awful as his cowardice was the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the Constitution does not impose a duty on the state and local governments to protect the citizens from criminal harm. Many, many people have tried to sue police departments for failure to protect but the courts have explicitly ruled police are under no obligation to protect someone. The only time these cases have proven successful is if the police promised someone protection through a prior relationship with them, which I would take that as something along the lines of guaranteeing protection if someone agrees to testify.

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