The Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association began an electronic vote of no confidence for Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel on Friday. The vote is open to all 1000+ members closes on April 26.
The Sun Sentinel reached out to Association President, Jeff Bell:
Israel has refused to take responsibility for the disastrous performance at the school, where several other arriving deputies also stayed outside or took cover behind cars, unsure of where the gunfire was coming from. “The sheriff still blames one person,” Bell said, referring to Peterson. “As an agency we’ve not taken any responsibility for this.”
Israel placed much of the blame on one of his deputies, who waited outside of the building unresponsive listening to the gun fire as Nikolas Cruz Killed 17 students.
WPLG 10 says Israel called the vote “unfortunate and appalling” and characterized it as a bargaining tactic to “extort” the county into giving the deputies a pay raise:
“This is the work of another union and does not represent how the members of the PBA feel,” said Bob Lahiff, director of BSO membership services. “We will let the (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) investigation continue and not jump to judgments, as others have done.”
However the vote pans out, there seems to be quite a lot of finger pointing and defending on both sides of the issue trying to place blame on the other. What is clear is that somebody dropped the ball in a big way, and the System failed everyone.
