Sheriff Scott Israel has been at the forefront of this tragedy and controversy surrounding the handling of the Parkland shooting, also because of his direct involvement in his own personal ties to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. Sheriff Scott Israel received a vote of no confidence from a majority of the officers in Broward County and is now facing the possibility of losing his position as sheriff.
00:00:13.000I'm an independent journalist, and I'm here today to speak to you to urge you to further look into Sheriff Scott Israel.
00:00:20.000Sheriff Scott Israel, of course, has been at the forefront of this tragedy and this controversy surrounding the handling of the Parkland shooting, also because of his direct involvement in his own personal ties to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas.
00:00:34.000One thing that was extremely troubling to me during his own comments today while he was addressing questions about the school resource officer Scott Peterson is the topic of whether or not these officers need to be rotated.
00:00:48.000And I would argue that Sheriff Israel's statement in which he said he had no reason previously to rotate Scott Peterson is entirely false.
00:00:57.000If you recall, directly after the Parkland shooting, a report came to light that showed that Scott Peterson was involved in covering up an assault that was carried out by Brett Israel, who is Sheriff Scott Israel's son during the time that he attended Marjorie Stoneman.
00:01:13.000And I just want to ask everybody here today if you think that it is right, that it is moral, it is ethical to have a sheriff who claims to care about student safety, who claims to care about having people in positions of power who can do their job when he himself has been directly involved in covering up incidents of abuse and bullying and assault carried out by his own son while he was a student there.
00:01:36.000And, you know, if you look at this entire situation, regardless of whether it be Brett Israel and Sheriff Israel, there's a lot of things that Sheriff Scott Israel has done that have been extremely unethical.
00:01:49.000I would like you all to ask, does anybody here think that it is right for Sheriff Israel to have signed off on Nicholas Cruz to have been able to register to vote on July 25th, 2018 from the Broward County Jail, where he was able to register to vote despite the fact that he murdered 17 people?
00:02:04.000Because that, obviously, I mean, a lot of people here upon hearing that, it opened up a lot of heartache and a lot of pain for the community.
00:02:10.000And I think that Sheriff Scott Israel has a lot to answer to.
00:02:13.000Sheriff Scott Israel received a vote of no confidence from majority of the officers here in Broward County and he is completely unfit to continue serving as the Broward County Sheriff.
00:02:22.000And I think that everybody in this room would agree.
00:02:24.000His handling of this situation has been entirely atrocious, along with Robert Runcie as well.
00:02:30.000And I hope that Robert Runcie, now that he has won his election to continue being superintendent, I hope that they seriously consider the promised program because it's getting people killed.
00:02:40.000And under no circumstance whatsoever should students be allowed to commit crimes and assault people and be able to not go to jail simply for the sake of the county receiving more funds for the government to keep these kids out of jail.
00:02:52.000If you commit a crime, regardless of how old you are and you're attending the public school system, you should go to jail.
00:02:58.000And if Nicholas Cruz would have been sent to jail instead of being protected by Sheriff Scott Israel and Robert Runcie, this probably could have been avoided.
00:03:06.000You know, the fact that this was reported to the FBI numerous times and the fact that Sheriff Scott Israel and deputies received multiple reports to respond to Nicholas Cruz's home, this is on law enforcement.
00:03:16.000And regardless of what Sheriff Scott Israel says, however much he wants to protest against guns, he has a lot to answer to.
00:03:22.000And I would also like to point out the hypocrisy of Sheriff Scott Israel claiming to be anti-gun and to get AR-15s off the street when he is being represented by Stuart Kaplan, who is a former FBI agent and is also representing the gun store that sold Nicholas Cruz the AR-15, which he used to kill the 17 victims.
00:03:38.000So thank you so much for listening to me today.
00:03:40.000And I sincerely hope, like I've stated, that all of you take into consideration whether or not Sheriff Israel should even be continuing his position as Broward County Sheriff, because trust me when I say that he has a national reputation for being a disgraceful individual.