(Fort Lauderdale) An American police officer, who had remained undercover during a massacre in a Florida school, appeared on Wednesday for “culpable negligence” on the first day of an unprecedented trial.
Scot Peterson, 60, is accused of failing to arrest Nikolas Cruz who, armed with a semi-automatic rifle, shot dead 14 students and three adults at his former high school on February 14, 2018 in Parkland.
At the opening of the proceedings, prosecutor Steven Klinger reproached this police officer attached to the security of the establishment for having remained sheltered “in an alcove”, despite the instructions applicable when a shooter enters school.
“You have to go in and you have to look for the shooter, do everything to try to stop the killing,” he said, pointing out that Scot Peterson had 32 years of experience and had been trained to respond to this type of situation.
On the contrary, when the first shots rang out, the policeman took shelter in a reinforcement “which he did not leave […] before it was all over”, “in all, he spent 48 minutes there”, asserted the prosecutor.
Scot Peterson, who faces 97 years in prison, pleads not guilty and claims to have stayed outside the building, because he did not know where the shots came from.
” My client […] did everything he could with the information available to protect lives”, pleaded his lawyer Mark Eiglarsh, presenting him as a “scapegoat” in this drama which had strongly shaken the United States.
His trial, which should last several weeks, is being closely followed because it could set a precedent.
The National Association of Agents Deployed in Schools (Nasro) told AFP that it had never, until then, identified any prosecutions against police officers who remained passive during a shooting or violence in schools.
For Scot Peterson to be found guilty, prosecutors will need to prove that he knew the killer was in the building, that his inaction weighed on the development of the situation, and that he was legally responsible for the young people.
If the jurors agree, other police officers could be worried, in particular those deployed during the shooting at the elementary school of Uvalde in Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed in May 2022. Dozens of tween them had waited more than an hour outside the classrooms where the shooter had taken refuge.
For his part, Nikolas Cruz pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2022 to life imprisonment by a jury, which dismissed the death penalty after three months of grueling hearings.