Scott Peterson the Broward County, Florida, Sheriff’s Deputy who was caught on videotape, standing outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for four or five minutes waiting for backup, as deranged young killer Nicolas Cruz, armed with an AR 15 assault rifle killed 17 students and staff and wounded 14 others. Peterson, on the job for many years as resident campus Security Officer. has been crucified by the press, the talking heads on TV and now even the President of the United States has piled on too—claiming Peterson “was not up to the task.” This author’s suspicion is that all these tough talkers have been unnecessarily and unfairly hard on Peterson who has been accused of cowardice, shirking his duty, being irresponsible and worse. But part of their attack on Peterson is related to the fact that Peterson’s hesitation to enter the school had to do with the overwhelming firepower of the AR15 he would have to face. Peterson’s behavior undermines the popular idea of the NRA that an “armed good guy” could stop a mass murderer. But that idea is a fantasy.
Peterson’s most aggressive critic has been microphone hogging Sheriff Scott Israel who claimed watching the CDC video of Peterson “cowering” outside of the building while kids were being killed inside made “my stomach turn”.
My thinking is that Peterson, standing orders were probably to wait for backup, which he did. But more importantly this officer was likely armed only with the standard police issue Glock 9mm automatic pistol with a magazine holding nine rounds, Upon hearing the intimidating stuttering blasts of the AR15 assault rifle reverberating through the halls, Peterson knew immediately that he was completely outgunned by the armed perpetrator or perpetrators who was or were armed with an assault weapon spraying high velocity rounds through the school halls at a rate of thirty to forty per minute. Entering the school armed with only pistol and nine shots to confront a killer armed with a military style assault weapon would be suicide—and Peterson with decades of police experience knew it. (One of my WWII and Korean War veteran ROTC instructors US Army Sargent Dale Jazinski once claimed that if we (his students) were ever posted as officers, “you guys ain’t gonna get an M1 rifle and are probably only gonna be issued the M1911 .45 cal pistol, and if so, you better stand close to a trooper with an M1– cause with that side arm you might as well just throw rocks at the enemy.” No one —not even tough old Sargent Jarzinski would have asked a person armed as Peterson was, to walk into a hail of bullets and certain death. We do no ask our police or even our military to go to those extremes.
I would ask all those who called Peterson a coward to ask themselves honestly would they ready to do more than Peterson did under the same circumstances? I would expect that tough talking Sheriff Scott Israel who stated that Peterson should have gone in and “killed the killer” would not have done anything different.
Talk is cheap—-and Israel seems an expert at cheap talk.
The idea that a “good guy with a gun” is all we need to solve the nation’s mass murder epidemic is a fiction perpetrated by those in the GOP and NRA who would rather do nothing. What is patently obvious is that it is necessary to strictly limit access to powerful assault weapons like the AR15. Such weapons do not belong in the hands of civilians. Anyone who possesses one immediately outguns any armed “good guy” (unless this person is similarly armed like a Special Forces trooper). In the Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS shooting experienced officer Peterson, a policeman with many commendations, to his record and a “good guy with a gun” was there. But Peterson was massively outgunned and he knew it.
Unless we turn schools into “hardened” military encampments (that sounds scary) we will face this tragic problem again and again (I feel bad having to write that) unless we attack the real problem—-ridiculously loose and easy access to military grade assault weapons.
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