To protect and serve

We make certain assumptions in life, and most of them are valid. It's not outlandish to plan on getting hot water when you turn on the tap, and when you put the trash out at night, you can count on the county coming along in the morning to take it to the dump.  And certainly, when there's a police, fire, or medical emergency, you can be sure that the right people will respond to your 911 call.

But what about when an armed maniac is prowling through a high school gunning down students and teachers, and there is an armed School Resource Officer on the premises?  We expect that person to display the gallantry for which police everywhere justifiably pride themselves, and enter the fray to take out the killer, come what may.

Yeah, we thought that would happen, and then came the crisis at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine's Day 2018, when Scot Peterson, the armed officer who should have responded to the 1200 Building on campus, did not do so. He stood outside the building while unspeakable carnage went on, for 48 minutes.

After a year and a half of investigation, the state of Florida has charged Peterson with eleven counts to condemn his actions, or lack thereof. One of the charges is for perjury, and it is clear that Peterson lied about how many shots he heard and what he was doing while Nikolas Cruz ALLEGEDLY carried out his murders.

All of this is obviously weighing heavily on Peterson, seen here at his arrest (left)
 and while still an active deputy sheriff (right).

Some experts see a little cloud over the other charges — seven counts for felony neglect of a child and three for culpable negligence.  There is a fine point, say some experts, between the responsibility of a "caregiver" (a parent, adult household member, or other person responsible for a child’s welfare), who has a legal duty to protect children in, say, a school, and that of a police officer. Indeed, Peterson’s attorney, Joseph DiRuzzo says his client was not a caretaker, legally speaking.

Things have changed since the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School. In those days, police were trained to wait for backup and exercise a high degree of caution before acting. But now, best practices for police departments hold that they should enter an active-shooter situation as soon as possible.

Down in Florida, they call Peterson "The Coward Of The County," which is wryly wrong, because in that Kenny Rogers song by that name, the "coward" actually rights the wrongs done to him by the evil Gatlin boys, standing up for what was right.

Perhaps a more apt Kenny Rogers song would be "The Gambler," because Peterson gambled that by cowering outside the scene of the slaughter, he would be safe and no one would ever know what a poltroon he actually is.

Humans have dealt with this "fight or flight" reflex since the first time a caveman came upon a sabre-toothed tiger way back in the day. We've come a long way since Og's day, and it says here that I can't think of a cop I know who would have turned tail like Peterson did.  We can't know how any of us would respond in his shoes, but we can expect more valor.