Former Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson is not backing down from his assertions that he did nothing wrong when he did not confront a mass shooter attacking Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
CBS Miami reports Peterson, who is often nicknamed the “Coward of Broward,” wrote a 14-page letter to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission saying he followed his training and what he saw during the incident. He was the school’s only resource officer at the time of the shooting.
“I assessed the situation and acted accordingly to the real-time intelligence I assessed on the scene,” Peterson wrote to the commission, adding, he was “in compliance with the Broward Sheriff’s Office Active Shooter Policy.”
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel noted the findings in the commission’s report do not back Peterson’s letter.
In addition to making multiple false statements about his actions to detectives and in interviews, the commission said there was “overwhelming evidence that Deputy Peterson knew that the gunshots were coming from within or within the immediate area of Building 12″ and they found no evidence he “attempted to investigate the source of the gunshots.”
Peterson had claimed after the shooting he thought the sounds were coming from outside, but in his first radio calls, Peterson said he thought the gunman was inside one of the school’s buildings.
“Former Deputy Scot Peterson was derelict in his duty on February 14, 2018, failed to act consistent with his training and fled to a position of personal safety while [Nikolas] Cruz shot and killed MSDHS students and staff. Peterson was in a position to engage Cruz and mitigate further harm to others and he willfully decided not to do so,” the report states.
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who heads the commission, called Peterson’s letter a “fairy tale,” especially because he chose not to appear before the commission.
“It makes me mad,” Gualtieri told the Sun-Sentinel. “The reason why is he continues to engage in this self-serving rhetoric. He needs to take responsibility for his actions. He needs to fess up.”
