In this case, the State Attorney tried to extend “caregiver” to the role of SRO to charge him with child neglect. There was no precedent in case law to back it up. An SRO is not a caregiver, so 827 just wasn’t going to work, but it’s all they had to go with. – Stuart Klearman, author of Infringed: Assaults on our National & Constitutional Rights
A jury has acquitted Scot Peterson, the then-school resource officer who failed to act to protect students during the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
Peterson, a former Broward County sheriff’s deputy, arrived at the school’s 1200 building with his gun drawn 73 seconds before the gunman reached the third floor but backed away after he heard gunfire. He took cover outside the building for more than 45 minutes until the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, was taken into police custody.
Peterson was charged with seven counts of felony child neglect for four students who were killed and three others who were wounded on the building’s third floor. He also faced three counts of misdemeanor culpable negligence for the adults shot on that floor, as well as a perjury charge for comments he made to investigators in the wake of the shooting. The charges focused on the victims killed and injured on the third floor because Peterson had not yet arrived to the building when the shootings on the first floor took place and no one was killed on the second floor.
By BRITTANY BERNSTEIN
