A Florida state lawmaker has introduced legislation that would strip the retirement benefits of former Broward County sheriff’s deputy Scott Peterson, who refused to act during the massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland.
But that wasn’t the worst thing Peterson experienced this week.
State Rep. Spencer Roach, a Republican from North Fort Myers, put forth a bill that would prevent Peterson from receiving benefits from the Florida Retirement System, the Sun Sentinel reported. He would still receive contributions that he made.
HB 1091 notes Peterson’s “wanton or willful neglect in performance of his assigned duties & contravention of his oath of office,” and the bill is to be considered during the legislative session that starts March 5.
The disgraced deputy was close to retirement when a gunman opened fire at the high school, killing 17 people, to include 15 students.
Astonishingly, Kyle Kashuv, a Stoneman Douglas student, confronted Peterson, who was being deposed Tuesday at the Broward County Courthouse, inside an elevator.
The brave student recorded the “face-to-face” encounter and posted it on Twitter.
“Deputy Scot Peterson hid outside while 17 of my classmates and teachers were massacred at Stoneman Douglas. Today I confronted him, face to face, for his crimes. Watch this coward for yourself,” he tweeted.
Deputy Scot Peterson hid outside while 17 of my classmates and teachers were massacred at Stoneman Douglas.
Today I confronted him, face to face, for his crimes.
Watch this coward for yourself. pic.twitter.com/d5WQuohXfL
— Kyle Kashuv (@KyleKashuv) February 27, 2019
“Can you explain to me why, like, 17 people died in school? Fourteen kids, 17, while you stood outside with a gun and did absolutely nothing?” the 17-year-old asked the former deputy.
“That was your job, now you are getting paid like 80K to stand there while you let those kids die,” Kashuv says in the emotionally charged video. “It’s disgusting, it’s despicable and I hope that lives with you for the rest of your life. You had a chance to save those kids. You were the one with the job who was supposed to do it.”
“I don’t know how you live with yourself every day, man. You were the one who was supposed to go inside. You didn’t,” he added. “You know I was a student there that day, in the building right next to it. And fourteen of my classmates are never coming back because you didn’t act.”
As shots rang out, Peterson, who was the school’s resource officer and on campus at the time, was captured on camera at one point hiding in a stairwell.
It’s impossible to say how many lives may have been saved had the deputy acted.
The shooting took place on Feb. 14, and Peterson, who was suspended without pay, resigned a week later, and subsequently retired — in April, he began collecting his monthly pension of $8,702.
Max Schachter, a member of the school’s Public Safety Commission, said at a public meeting last September that Peterson knew the gunman was in the school.
“He was at the front of that building and he didn’t enter,” Schachter said, according to the Sun Sentinel. “He could have done something. Why did he go away and hide?”
Peterson remained outside for “upwards of four minutes” while students were being gunned down inside.
After initially saying that he thought the shots were “probably a few kids acting like idiots” by setting off firecrackers, Peterson later said he thought the shots may have been coming from outside the building.
He never went in.
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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