Alleged Corruption in the Broward County Sheriff's Department

You recall the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. You know that disaffected students blamed it all on the NRA and initiated a children’s crusade for more gun control. The notion of out-of-control children calling for more control smacks of irony.

Anyway, if you read this blog regularly, you know that the man most responsible for failing to stop Nikolas Cruz was the Broward County Sheriff: Scott Israel. In a better world, Sheriff Israel would have handed in his badge and taken responsibility for the manifest failures of his department. Not only did his deputy, Scot Peterson, assigned to duty at the high school that day, run away from the shooting, but Israel’s deputies had investigated Cruz dozens of times before he set about to murder his classmates.

We also know that many people have called for Sheriff Israel to resign, and that his own department cast a vote of no confidence in his leadership. Israel has refused to go peacefully.

In the follow-up, you have also heard that Deputy Peterson has now retired from his job and is receiving a very generous pension. I mention these facts to bring you up to date and to prepare you for what is coming.

The story was reported by a Miami local news station and by the Daily Wire. As it happened, one of Israel’s sons was arrested four years ago for sexually assaulting a boy in his high school. The incident was allegedly covered up by no other than Scot Peterson.

Here is the Daily Wire account:

A local Miami news station released an explosive report on Thursday night about a "disturbing assault" that happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School four years to the day before the tragic shooting in February. The alleged incident involved one of the sons of Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel and was allegedly "covered up" by Officer Scot Peterson, the resource officer who infamously failed to confront the Parkland shooter.

WPLG Local 10 investigative reporter Bob Norman reported Thursday that two 17-year-old students at the school allegedly bullied a 14-year-old freshman boy, with one of the 17-year-olds holding down the student while the other 17-year-old kicked the victim, grabbed his genitals, and then grabbed the victim's own baseball bat and began shoving it against his buttocks "simulating rape" through the boy's clothes.

The father of a shooting survivor, a man by name of Royer Borges, has called for an investigation:

"Now I ask you: If this wouldn't have been the sheriff's son, would a sexual assault have been reduced to a simple battery?" Borges asked in his statement. "Was deputy Peterson allowed to retire with his pension because he protected Sheriff Israel's son from having a felony arrest? These are the questions that I and I'm sure many people from this county want answered."