Scot Peterson served for a few years as a college useful resource officer in Broward County, Florida. His job was largely uneventful—he may catch a child vaping or break up a combat—till simply after Valentine’s Day 2018. That day, a gunman walked into Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty and killed 17 individuals. Shortly after, a video circulated exhibiting Peterson taking cowl beside a wall whereas the gunman was inside capturing. From then on, Peterson turned identified in his city, and in worldwide media, because the “Coward of Broward.” (The unintentional rhyme most likely helped unfold the infamy.)
Peterson was later charged with seven counts of felony youngster neglect, three misdemeanor counts of culpable negligence, and one depend of perjury. He was tried in the identical courthouse the place they tried the gunman, Nicholas Cruz. A jury discovered Peterson not responsible. Nonetheless, the decision didn’t resolve the foremost cultural questions. Ought to we count on a lone, typically poorly educated police officer with a pistol to face down a shooter with an assault rifle? And if the officer fails to try this, are we justified in labeling him a coward?
On this episode of Radio Atlantic, we speak with Jamie Thompson, who wrote The Atlantic’s March cowl story, about Peterson. A longtime police reporter, Thompson realized that some extremely educated SWAT officers have been far much less judgmental of Peterson than members of his neighborhood have been. She regarded into what we’re leaving out after we scale back mass shootings to tales of braveness or cowardice.
Take heed to the dialog right here:
The next is a transcript of the episode:
Information Archival: We’ve got breaking information, and bear with us as a result of we don’t have a lot info presently, however there are experiences of a college capturing. In Parkland, Florida, that’s in Broward County, these are dwell photos proper now.
Hanna Rosin: Six years in the past, a gunman opened fireplace at a Parkland, Florida, highschool.
Information Archival: It appears to be like like a number of accidents right here. This can be a horrible sight for these poor youngsters
Rosin: Seventeen individuals have been killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty. Seventeen extra have been injured. It’s nonetheless the deadliest mass capturing at a highschool in U.S. historical past.
Information Archival: The newest we’ve from the Broward Sheriff’s Workplace is that the college is on lockdown. They’ve informed college students and others to barricade themselves in place, and so they’re now looking for a gunman.
Rosin: That is Radio Atlantic. I’m Hanna Rosin. And we’re revisiting that terrible second not due to the actions of that day, however due to the inaction.
Jamie Thompson: I began following the story on the identical time everybody else did.
Rosin: That is reporter Jamie Thompson, who’s been protecting police for over a decade. Jamie saved monitoring the story for years, largely due to the unlikely one that wound up on the heart of it.
Information Archival: Authorities releasing surveillance video that captures the college useful resource officer Scot Peterson standing outdoors of Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty throughout the bloodbath.
Thompson: There was a really clear picture off a surveillance-camera footage the place he’s standing beside a wall, and on all of the TV exhibits, they’d kind of circle him in vibrant crimson—simply saying, that is the coward who stood by whereas youngsters have been slaughtered.
Rosin: He turned often known as the Coward of Broward. His actual identify is Scot Peterson. And he had a status as a pleasing older college useful resource officer—till that footage began circulating.
Information Archival: Surveillance tape exhibits the college useful resource officer by no means entered the constructing as bullets flew.
Information Archival: The video exhibits Peterson speaking right into a radio handset on his shoulder, then showing to maneuver on a golf cart, and eventually taking over a place outdoors the constructing.
Thompson: , as quickly as they launched the surveillance video of him taking cowl beside the wall, he was kind of universally condemned.
Information Archival: He was a coward, and he froze outdoors the constructing as a substitute of moving into and fascinating the menace.
Rosin: Jamie has written concerning the dilemmas that cops face in all types of conditions, in standoffs, visitors stops, drug busts.
However this scrutiny that Scot Peterson was going through introduced a very new set of questions, which she explored for the March cowl story of The Atlantic.
Why would an armed officer stand by whereas college students have been being shot? What’s an officer’s accountability to face an armed shooter? And if he fails to try this, are we justified in labeling him “the coward”?
Rosin: When the Parkland capturing occurred, Jamie was engaged on one other police story, and she or he determined to ask a few of her sources what they considered Peterson.
Thompson: So I used to be reporting on a narrative in Dallas by which I used to be interviewing loads of SWAT officers again when this occurred, in 2018. And I used to be actually shocked by the SWAT officers’ response to Scot Peterson’s response to the capturing. You’ll count on that SWAT officers, who’re a number of the finest educated, would have been essentially the most judgmental towards Peterson’s failure to enter the constructing,
The SWAT officers principally have been saying that, , most of the people basically has no practical grasp of what it takes to really run up in opposition to an armed gunman.
And I keep in mind one among them telling me: Look, we don’t pay that deputy sufficient to go run into a college and face an AR-15 and die as a result of the nation has kind of failed to repair its lively shooter drawback.
One SWAT officer I keep in mind telling me that he desires to run away each single time somebody shoots at him. And it’s solely by way of loads of coaching and likewise the peer stress of getting different SWAT officers round that makes him in a position to preserve urgent ahead.
Within the face of simply worry, our our bodies do very unpredictable issues after we start to grow to be afraid, and so I believe their response to the capturing was so completely different than most of the people’s response, that, um, I simply kind of saved following the story, and when the trial got here round, I discovered myself actually curious to only see how that will unfold.
Rosin: The Parkland capturing produced two prison trials. The primary was in opposition to the shooter, former pupil Nikolas Cruz. In 2022, Cruz was sentenced to 34 consecutive life sentences with out the potential of parole. One for each particular person he killed or injured.
The second trial was in opposition to Scot Peterson. Now, on one degree, it was unusual that Cruz and Peterson wound up in the identical court docket constructing. However the way in which occasions unfolded in Parkland, it felt nearly inevitable.
Thompson: So the capturing occurred on Valentine’s Day in 2018.
A few week later, the then Broward sheriff, Scott Israel, introduced throughout a press convention that Peterson had failed to enter the constructing and assist the youngsters whereas the capturing was unfolding.
Archival: [Reporter] What was Scot Peterson—was he there when the shooter was nonetheless contained in the constructing? [Israel] Sure, he was. [Reporter] So what ought to he have executed? [Israel] Went in, addressed the killer, killed the killer.
Thompson: He says that he was known as to the sheriff’s workplace to debate the capturing. And he was principally pressured into retiring.
Archival: [Israel] I made a decision this morning to droop Scot Peterson with out pay pending an inner investigation. As is his proper, Scot Peterson selected to resign. The investigation will proceed.
Thompson: He then went again to his home for a pair months and was residing, principally, as a shut-in. He couldn’t go away. There have been reporters; TV vans have been parked out entrance.
So he and his accomplice, Lydia, moved to a secluded cabin up in North Carolina within the mountains. And he basically was attempting to maneuver on. Um, he was contesting some components of his departure from the sheriff’s workplace. So he went again for a listening to a few 12 months after the capturing.
After which says, to his shock, he was unexpectedly arrested.
Information Archival: The previous sheriff’s deputy, who stayed outdoors the college relatively than confront the gunman, is going through severe prison fees tonight over his selections that fateful day.
Thompson: So he was taken to jail, with seven felony counts of kid neglect. He was put in a suicide smock, um, and he says he spent two nights in jail, simply kind of sleepless nights, questioning what was going to occur subsequent.
Information Archival: [Host] In a way, the cost is that he was a coward.
Information Archival: [Guest] Properly, there isn’t a prison cost for being a coward, and I do know he’s being labeled the Coward of Broward, however that’s not prison. What’s prison, presumably, is youngster neglect, is culpable negligence and perjury.
Thompson: Peterson’s trial was believed to be the primary time a law-enforcement officer within the nation confronted prison penalties for failing to maneuver rapidly towards an lively shooter.
Rosin: All the costs mixed added as much as a most sentence of 96 and a half years. Now, six different deputies who heard gunfire additionally didn’t run into the constructing, however none of them have been charged.
Thompson: We are likely to view cops as having the mission to guard and serve.
However courts have persistently dominated that cops don’t have any constitutional responsibility to maintain us protected.
So Peterson’s inaction that day—there isn’t a legislation that simply matches up with what he did or didn’t do. So prosecutors used this, what was described as a novel authorized technique, to label him as a caregiver. So this is able to be like a nanny.
Rosin: That is among the many ironies of this example. The officer who was singled out as a coward for failing to run in the direction of an lively shooter is similar one who may most simply be in comparison with a nanny.
A faculty useful resource officer isn’t investigating armed robberies. He appears to be like into offenses like vaping, or skipping college, or possibly fights within the lunchroom.
Thompson: And for those who met him, I imply, he comes throughout like your grandpa. , he’s humorous. He’s pleasant. He’s good. He bought alongside effectively with the scholars and employees.
Rosin: However within the courtroom, as prosecutors analyzed that video of him standing beside the wall, he was on trial because the coward who’d failed these college students.
Archival: It was from the purpose that Aaron Feis was shot that the defendant knew individuals have been dying. It was from that time ahead that he was the one hope for these victims, as a result of he was the one hope to gradual that shooter down.
Thompson: There have been moments throughout the trial the place the prosecutor assembled all of the items and informed essentially the most horrible story of cowardice you’ll be able to think about: Simply, , as youngsters are dying, this deputy is simply failing to avoid wasting them. It was a narrative the place he was the clear villain, and only a god-awful story.
And I used to be watching Peterson on the protection desk, and he regarded simply nearly in bodily ache over it. It appeared to me there was extra happening there than only a prison trial. It was him on trial as a human being.
Rosin: So Peterson was residing with this very public label of disgrace, the Coward of Broward, for a very long time. And I requested Jamie: Did it make sense to her that he was labeled a coward?
Thompson: I believe it made sense to me. I imply, I believe that when you may have one thing as emotionally devastating as youngsters in a college getting killed and employees members getting killed, you wish to maintain any individual accountable.
You need somebody guilty. And the concept a sheriff’s deputy was standing by with a gun and didn’t do something to attempt to cease the killing is outrageous in lots of people’s minds.
However he seems like he’s been scapegoated. He seems like he’s been blamed as a handy villain when there have been actually plenty of villains and plenty of failed programs at work.
Rosin: So it is sensible as a morality play. It is sensible that grieving dad and mom would really feel outrage that the particular person charged with defending their youngsters didn’t. And possibly it is sensible that the particular person most aware of the college may have executed extra.
However zoom out, and there’s one other query: How did all of us land in a state of affairs the place the skinny line between youngsters having a standard day and mass carnage was a single grandpa sort who had no expertise and little or no coaching going through down somebody with an assault rifle? That’s after the break.
[Music]
Rosin: Journalist Jamie Thompson adopted the trial. She talked to Peterson and likewise to plenty of different individuals who face down lively shooters. She was attempting to determine what was incomplete about this story being informed about Peterson.
And he or she began with: When did this concept of a lone-hero cop going through down a shooter grow to be regular working process?
Thompson: So again in 1999, for those who recall, was the Columbine capturing, and cops who responded to that scene did basically what they’ve been lengthy educated to do, which is to arrange a fringe across the scene and anticipate SWAT. That strategy has lengthy been used primarily as a result of SWAT officers have a complete lot extra coaching than your common patrol deputy.
They are usually higher armed. They have an inclination to take care of extra active-gunman calls. They have an inclination to have a greater template for the way to reply to that kind of state of affairs. There’s a pair—one, specifically, very heartbreaking loss of life in Columbine. There was a instructor by the identify of Dave Sanders who actually heroically saved simply dozens of scholars, attempting to get them out of the trail of the gunmen.
He ended up getting shot, and he was in a science lab—if you had two Eagle Scouts, who have been college students, have been ripping up shirts, attempting to assist cease the bleeding. However he ended up bleeding out on the ground within the science lab as a result of nobody bought to him rapidly sufficient to assist him medically. And so after Columbine, police forces actually began to rethink their strategy, and principally got here to the conclusion that they didn’t have time to attend for SWAT.
In order that bought us to the strategy that’s just about thought of the skilled commonplace at this level, which known as solo-officer response. And that dictates that any cop who exhibits up on scene, even when alone, even when they solely have a pistol, , no matter what gear they’ve or what coaching they’ve been afforded, they’re anticipated to run, and discover the gunman and attempt to cease the killing.
Quite a lot of these active-shooter occasions are over earlier than police even present up, so any delay can actually considerably affect survival charges.
Rosin: So pre-Columbine, the strategy was: Safe the perimeter and anticipate SWAT.
Now it’s: Go in instantly. Even when it’s simply you and a handgun in opposition to an automated weapon. That’s the perfect, and it makes for a satisfying hero scene in a film.
However in the true world, as Jamie came upon, people who find themselves poorly educated or not educated in any respect, they’re much extra prone to succumb to the physique’s primal fight-or-flight response.
Thompson: A kind of widespread saying in legislation enforcement is that officers don’t rise to a second; they fall to the extent of their coaching. So this concept that we’ve that any individual goes to be introduced with an extremely troublesome state of affairs and simply emerge to deal with it fantastically doesn’t actually observe with actuality.
To have the ability to deal with an active-shooter name, you’ve actually bought to have mastered a number of very troublesome abilities. One, you may have to have the ability to shoot very well, whereas somebody is shifting and capturing at you, presumably. Additionally, there’s a complete organic cascade that’s taking place in your physique that’s very troublesome to handle for those who’re not that aware of the best way to take care of stress. So there’s loads of bodily, technical, mechanical issues that cops might be doing to enhance their efficiency, however as a substitute we’ve spent loads of time speaking about disgrace as a substitute of the best way to present cops with higher coaching.
Rosin: You talked to lots of people who’ve confronted lively shooters, regarded into coaching applications. What have been conditions the place individuals have been effectively ready?
Thompson: So I believe that the conditions the place responders have been finest ready are likely to fall in a few classes. One is: SWAT officers, or some number of SWAT officer, exhibits up on the scene and so they occur to have had loads of coaching in gunfighting and the best way to handle stress. They’ve dealt with loads of harmful calls. They’ve bought expertise.
Rosin: Did you speak to anybody who does match our picture of what a hero would appear to be?
Thompson: I did. So I talked to a gentleman named Stephen Willeford, who’s a plumber. And he was at his house resting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, when a gunman confirmed up and began capturing his neighbors in a church close by.
And Willeford, , very like a film motion hero, jumped away from bed, ran out of his home barefoot, grabbed his gun and a few ammo, and ran immediately towards the sound of gunfire. He informed me that he shouted simply the very first thing that got here into his thoughts, which occurred to be “Hey.” So he shouts “Hey,” the gunman comes out and begins capturing at Willeford, who’s taking cowl beside his neighbor’s pickup truck, and Willeford does one thing that’s fairly outstanding.
We’ll typically hear in police shootings, individuals are typically essential of what number of bullets cops fireplace in shootings. However he fired solely six pictures, every one among them rigorously aimed, and ended up chasing the shooter away from the church.
And within the aftermath, loads of cops actually marveled at his efficiency. And after I talked to Stephen Willeford, what he informed me is that he’s been capturing since he was 5 years outdated.
He’s very practiced with firearms. He would inform me about these drills that he and his church shooting-pistol crew would do. They known as themselves the Sinners. They usually—
Rosin: The Sinners, did you say?
Thompson: They known as themselves the Sinners.
Rosin: That’s fairly good. Yeah.
Thompson: And they’d do these very elaborate drills, the place I keep in mind, one among them, him saying that he would, —a whistle would blow after which he would rush to the desk, choose up a child doll, change the child doll’s diaper, put the child on his shoulder, and preserve capturing all of the whereas. And, um, different instances he would follow with a welding hood, the place he may simply see by way of a small eyehole. So he had—by the point that he went up in opposition to an lively shooter at his neighborhood church, he knew precisely what to do.
He’d practiced what to do. He’s a superb shot. He’s very aware of firearms. He is aware of the best way to management his respiration. He is aware of the best way to hit a shifting goal. He is aware of the best way to not get shot himself. And that degree of coaching is simply not widespread on our police forces.
Rosin: That’s actually revealing. So basically, for those who go over every little thing that must be in place to ensure that this to go the way in which our imaginations need it to go, which is what we see within the films, it’s: He most likely has many years of capturing expertise, so he stays calm.
Thompson: And I might notice there have been different officers who’ve confronted lively shooters who possibly didn’t have that degree of coaching. So I don’t suppose that each particular person must be an ace like Stephen Willeford.
However one of many issues that I realized whereas researching this story is that scientists have actually come to consider that a few of us are simply biologically higher geared up to deal with worry and stress, and have a tendency to carry out higher when these moments current themselves.
Rosin: Okay, so Stephen Willeford is possibly a great solo response to a shooter. Like, possibly he has a very good worry and stress response. He undoubtedly has loads of relevant coaching. What does the typical American cop have to coach them for these conditions?
Thompson: Not quite a bit. In loads of states, cops get a median of 20 hours or much less coaching a 12 months. And businesses now are attempting to cram loads of issues into these hours. We’ve got disaster intervention, de-escalation coaching, racial-bias coaching. So there’s restricted time, restricted cash, and loads of issues to cowl. So I believe that almost all policing specialists will inform you that cops are actually not being afforded sufficient coaching, if the general public would really like them to show into Rambo on the day that an lively shooter exhibits up at their college.
Rosin: Yeah, so basically you got here away out of your analysis pondering: The individuals going into these conditions will not be effectively educated to reply to these conditions.
Thompson: I believe most policing specialists will inform you that coaching doesn’t play a sufficiently big position within the every day, weekly, month-to-month lives of cops, that, , our calls for for police are ever greater. We’ve got seen the myriad ways in which they fail each day. And the one strategy to actually reform and alter policing is thru extra coaching, which is dear and time-consuming.
And loads of the specialists that I’ve talked to have mentioned they don’t know if America is prepared to pay as much as change the character of our police forces.
Rosin: 4 years after Parkland, Florida, got here Uvalde, Texas. Nineteen youngsters and two academics died at an elementary college. Not too long ago, the Justice Division launched a 600-page report on that capturing. Right here’s Affiliate Lawyer Basic Vanita Gupta speaking about their findings.
Archival: It’s onerous to take a look at the reality that the legislation enforcement response on Could twenty fourth was an unimaginable failure and {that a} lack of motion by adults failed to guard youngsters and their academics.
Rosin: Jamie learn the report. She mentioned it was thorough and nuanced, however she nonetheless wasn’t fairly glad with that as the straightforward reply.
Thompson: So I believe that it’s value actually occupied with, if six cops had run into that room and began firing—cops who aren’t superb at capturing—when there’s nonetheless youngsters and academics in there, , would lives have been saved, or would extra lives have been misplaced? So I believe the dialog must be extra critically examined.
Rosin: It’s value saying, by the way in which, that the Uvalde capturing is the explanation that Texas is now one of many solely states that requires active-shooter coaching for its cops.
That is why I believe your reporting is so essential, as a result of we’re nonetheless within the period of faculty shootings. They will nonetheless, seems like, occur anytime, anyplace, with tragic penalties.
And but we’re nonetheless looping round, even after a radical investigation, to the identical form of morality play, which is basically asking, The place are our heroes? Like: The place are the individuals on this neighborhood who’re going to kind of stand up and do what we think about in a film would occur in a college capturing? So we haven’t actually damaged that sample.
Thompson: And I believe there’s good the explanation why we haven’t damaged that sample, as a result of for those who have a look at police departments, they’re struggling to rent officers, loads of them are short-staffed, and if you’re a police chief attempting to determine the best way to allocate your restricted coaching {dollars}, do you spend a major quantity of time and money coaching your officers to deal with an active-shooter name, which can or could not ever occur? Or are you higher off specializing in issues like disaster intervention and de-escalation, which can be extra related to the issues that they really are required to do daily? I believe most specialists will inform you that lively shooters are high-risk however low-frequency occasions, so that you simply have to essentially determine how a lot time can we spend coaching on this ability that’s extremely troublesome to grasp however actually doesn’t occur all that always—however when it does, the results are tragic and extreme.
Rosin: Final summer time, Scot Peterson was discovered not responsible on all fees. Jamie was within the courtroom when the ultimate verdict was learn.
Thompson: The second was very tense. I imply, because the deliberations went on for 4 days, Peterson appeared to me to kind of deteriorate by the day, Um, , he appeared to enter the method with a sure degree of hopefulness. I keep in mind speaking to him earlier than the trial, and, and I requested him, , what does this trial imply for you? And he mentioned, , it’s not I’m not responsible; it’s that I’m harmless.
It’s that I’m exonerated from my labeling because the Coward of Broward, that everybody will perceive that I—what I did that day, I did for good motive, and it was a part of my coaching and a part of my expertise that was a wonderfully affordable response.
So when the jury got here again with the decision, he simply laid his head on the desk and wept. It was simply this kind of launch of emotion. However on the identical second, you’ll be able to see a number of the victims’ households sitting additionally within the courtroom. They usually have been ready for somebody to be held accountable for the truth that their youngsters are gone.
They have been very upset when Nikolas Cruz didn’t obtain the loss of life penalty, when he bought a life sentence. And so, to them, the truth that Peterson confronted no prison fees was simply actually yet one more blow, to the impact that nobody was going to be held liable for their youngsters’ deaths.
Rosin: And did he get what he was on the lookout for?
I imply, he was discovered not responsible, however was he thought of harmless extra broadly?
Thompson: It’s fascinating. I talked to him every week or two in the past, and I requested him if he felt like he had—, he had informed me early on that he actually needed to get out of this emotional jail that he’d been residing in for 5 years. And after I requested him if he’d managed to, he principally mentioned he had not.
, you’ll be able to’t undo a phrase like coward. You may’t actually undo the stain that that leaves. So I believe each him and his legal professional have been kind of grappling with this actuality that they’d gotten their second in court docket. That they had had the possibility to inform their story. And possibly individuals understood higher what had occurred, however there’s nonetheless this sense that everybody needs he had executed extra.
[Music]
Rosin: Which, given the tragedy of that day, is comprehensible. That feeling is simply too robust for any court docket verdict to erase.
This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Kevin Townsend. It was edited by Claudine Ebeid, fact-checked by Sara Krolewski, and engineered by Rob Smierciak. Claudine Ebeid is the manager producer for Atlantic Audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. I’m Hanna Rosin. Thanks for listening.
