Runcie Israel Scott Stoneman Douglass Shooting
courtesy dailywire.com and Getty

This actually took longer than we expected. “More than a dozen students who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have filed a civil rights lawsuit alleging that numerous officials failed to stop the Valentine’s Day massacre at their school.”

Gee, you mean all the people in charge, both leading up to and on the day of the shooting? Why yes.

The lawsuit names Broward County, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel, Broward County Public Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie, Broward County sheriff’s deputy and school resource officer Scot Peterson, Capt. Jan Jordan with the Broward Couty Sheriff’s Department and school security monitor Andrew Medina among the defendants. It alleges various civil rights violations under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments that caused “severe psychological injury and trauma” related to the Feb. 14 mass shooting that left 17 students and faculty members dead.

As has been chronicled here and throughout the media since the Stoneman Douglas shooting, the handling of the clearly troubled, sometimes violent shooter by the school, the district, the Broward County Sheriff’s Department and even the FBI was a bureaucratic sh!tshow of historic proportions. One that resulted in seventeen dead bodies.

But somehow the NRA was allegedly to blame. The fact that the plaintiffs’ attorneys failed to name the NRA in the suit must have been an oversight.

According to the suit, Runcie and Israel were “both well aware of the potential danger [suspect Nikolas Cruz] posed to the school and its students and faculty, yet they did nothing meaningful to enhance security from this known threat.”

Plaintiffs claim that Peterson, Jordan and Medina’s actions and inactions during the course of their response to the shooting directly led to the death, injury and traumatizing of children, and they blame the county for a lack of training and preventative policies that could have stopped the shooting.

And this suit was filed by “more than a dozen” survivors. Stoneman Douglas High School has over 3,000 students. Look for a lot more of this in the not-too-distant future.

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55 COMMENTS

    • Go for it

      that’s a demORAT tactic….drag people through the court system and sue them over BS in hopes they have a mental break or go bankrupt!

    • @ jwm:
      Be sure to include his boyfriend Cameron Kasky. They were going to the prom together although I don’t know how that turned out. I know this, the only images on the net of Hogg boy smiling is when he’s with Cameron Kasky. Just saying……..

  2. I thought guns were the problem, not people who have the authority to carry guns? They need to make up their mind.

    • Those folks would sue to take guns away from private citizens, and are now suing the highly trained professional police force that refused to use theirs.

      It’s a unicorn world in the sunshine, when snowflakes cover the ground. It’s the time to play. I’m so fine today. I live here the whole year ’round.

      • Who are the “folks” you are referring to? I’d imagine in a school of 3000 kids there isn’t a universal belief in one ideology. If you believe that, then I’d say you were duped by the media. Only 12 kids filed suit and I’d imagine they were the kids who wound up in the hospital whose parents had to foot the medical bills. While the “survivors” like Hogg and baldy want to file suit against the NRA for being evil terrorist baby killers, the adults and insurance companies want to place blame and liability where it belongs.

    • Except for the deputies’ inaction, this isn’t a duty to protect suit. This falls under the category of gross negilgence. The deputies also took positive action to prevent EMTs from entering the building. That is clearly actionable.

      • That is doctrine. Medics stay in staging area until popo have done a mag dump on everyone.

        • From what I’ve read, the BCSD did not follow their own protocols. Once they were off the book, now they’re in the realm of the ad hoc, which means that the decision to restrict entry of EMT’s was the decision of the BCSD employees on site.

        • “That is doctrine. Medics stay in staging area until popo have done a mag dump on everyone.”

          No sir, that WAS doctrine. Current guidelines put out by the ALERRT Center and National Active Shooter Training Conference encourage the use of a Rescue Task Force, which includes law enforcement as well as EMS personnel as part of the initial mass response. This update can be found in the 2016 Homeland Security Guidelines from 2016 and forward.
          It should be noted that this guidance is based on the idea of an immediate response by the initial officer on scene, which also didn’t happen in Parkland. “Wait and see” hasn’t been the official doctrine in decades.

        • JWT is correct. Current doctrine has the EMTs entering as soon as possible. The don’t necessarily enter the hot zone, but the must enter the warm zone and not standby in the cold / support zone.

          First order of business is to neutralize the shooter(s) ASAFP. That is precisely what I train all of my guys to do. I use the Parkland debacle as a prime example of what not to do.

    • They just want money. The county will probably settle for less than what it would cost to defend the lawsuits. It’s a travesty.

      • Money is the only punishment that can be applied in a civil suit like this. Take their pensions, sue the anti gun community so that it hurts and they will not ever put themselves or their departments in that situation again. send the message that we fight active gunners ASAP.
        Money talks, big money out of their pockets yells.

      • I mean, I guess it depends what you mean by ‘conservative’ but if you look at the decisions noted above, you’ll find that the majority opinions were written by some of the judges considered most ‘conservative’ by general standards.

    • They might have a case this time. The commander on scene prevented medics who where willing to go in from doing so.

      If they find that policy was to rush a shooter they might be able to make a negligence case.

      • +1… The nation wide industry standard, common practice, and department policy is to rush the active shooter. There was a systemic failure from the individual deputies to the commanders in following that policy. The individual deputies and commanders are covered by those SCOTUS cases, but the department as a corporate entity isn’t.

    • It may not apply here. I know I’ve had to justify my actions were “in accordance to my department/unit’s policies and training” , and if they weren’t I would have been well screwed. I can’t imagine how some of those decisions fell in line with their official policy.
      Of course, I am assuming some level of professionalism with that organization, and, well…yeah now I see my problem.

  6. At the end of the day, the only person truly responsible for the atrocity was and still is Nikolas Cruz. However, let it be said that these bastards certainly didn’t help. Their idiocy cost lives. At the very least, they should be charged with manslaughter. Even the Broward Cowards didn’t set out to deliberately kill these kids… Probably.

  7. We need to reform the way lawsuits are handled against the government. These people, should they win, will have their pockets stuffed with tax money while the guilty parties will, at most, lose their jobs (and even that is iffy).

    When someone sues the government, the discovery process should name the people who made the bad decisions that resulted in harm being done. If the plaintiff wins the case, the monetary winnings should be sourced from those named government officials. Tax money should be handed out ONLY if those officials have been broken so bad that they would never be able to pay off the court bills in their lifetime.

    If our officials would find themselves broken and destitute from time to time, they might have a greater interest in making sure things are run effectively and well.

    • that’s why townships have insurance policies. especially for liabilities for their police departments….

  9. Can’t wait for all the lulz when the police having no duty to protect the public gets reiterated with this higher profile. There’s certainly a bit of schadenfreude when somebody who has been paying attention gets to watch somebody who hasn’t been get schooled on what they’ve been missing. Almost makes up for the frustration of having to listen to these people who know nothing act like they know better.

  10. But somehow the NRA was allegedly to blame. The fact that the plaintiffs’ attorneys failed to name the NRA in the suit must have been an oversight.
    Everyone knows it was a bunch of guys standing in a cornfield with Mike Pence and some shotguns in Indiana who are to blame. Ask any Chicagoan.

    • “The fact that the plaintiffs’ attorneys failed to name the NRA in the suit must have been an oversight.” I don’t doubt that the plaintiff’s venal legal team gave some thought to including the NRA in the suit, but just couldn’t justify it due to lack of credible evidence. While the standards of evidence and burden of proot are less stringent in civil cases, the plaintiff’s lawyers just couldn’t tie in the NRA except in their propaganda.

      BTW, I didn’t see Hogg-boy in that photo. Is he ill?

  11. This says nothing of the non-intervention being so that they could cook the books for funding due to Obama Administration “avoid the school to prison pipeline” strategy. I hope discovery eats them alive, and if they settle I bet aversion of discovery is why!

  12. I hope they bankrupt those azzwhole’s. I take it Hoggboy isn’t a part of this suit…”I survived!” 2000 feet away 😩😡😏

  13. If I’m not mistaken, police have no duty to protect, according to the Supreme Court. The school administration/district OTOH might be in deep doo doo.

  14. With stellar work by all levels of government and security in this situation please tell me why it wouldn’t be better to abolish all police forces and have citizens handle it on their own in each of their communities? A citizens militia would be far better than what transpired at Parkland.

    • I firmly believe that people ought to be their own first responders in cases of immediate deadly threat. To me, that’s obvious.

      But that’s a very small part of what police do. I know, in my neck of the woods, I’d just as soon not be the one who has to go down to the trailer park – again – to pull Brittney-Lynn and Ray-Bob off each other – again – because they’re in their cups – again. I’d also rather not be the one who has to respond at oh-dark-thirty in a Michigan February to document a car accident where a five year-old was killed. I’ll gladly pay someone else to do those jobs.

      • I agree completely, as far as you go. But you don’t go far enough. When those duties also involve coming to my house to take my guns because some chickenshit asshole in the statehouse told you to, then I advocate dropping the idea altogether, let the trailer park and the highway handle themselves, I REALLY do not want to ever have to shoot a neighbor, just because he is a cop.

  15. Good for them, and I hope they win big! On a side note, because I don’t know where else to put this right now, a sports manager at a Tallahassee Academy Sports was suspended then fired (from Fox news). Because on June 29 he and other employees dared to put their hands on a “customer” who was trying to flee the store with a .40 cal. handgun, ammunition and a backpack , none of which he was planning on paying for…so a customer?? Cops also charged him with a theft of two handguns from a pawn shop earlier in the day. So three counts of grand theft of a handgun for the thug. Since he has lost his job the husband with his wife and young child have put their home up for sale as they can’t afford it without the income he had.
    Me thinks Academy needs to rethink their policies some. Who knows what lives his action may have saved? F**kin’ country is screwed up with all this PC BS!!! Spread this around folks.

  16. The police have no duty to protect. Been litigated, repeatedly. No duty to protect.

    The incident commander, she prevented the EMTs from going in. That’s clearly actionable however.

    • Ironic, since “To Protect And Serve” is written on all police cruisers. Should that be considered false advertising?

  17. students who survived the mass shooting

    what is “survived” = wounded? in the freshman bldg? on campus? heard firecrackers? triggered?

  18. Nailed it!

    Until we get “loser Pays” this will be the norm, and when/if we do get loser pays, it will end.

  19. It likely won’t go anywhere. The Constitution is supposed to protect you from the government, not demand that the government protect you.

    That said, at least they’re suing people that actually COULD have stopped the bad guy if they’d done their damn job.

  20. It’ll be interesting to see, when it enevitably gets tossed out of court, how much blow back this gets on the mainstream media. I hope they report the tossing for weeks. Maybe it’ll get these idiots to see that they are responsible for themselves, and nobody is going to help you when you need it the most. It might wake up at least a handful of people.

  21. The Broward Cowards are being sued? Good. Here’s what I’d consider an ideal outcome.

    1. The case gets national mainstream media attention, becoming a Very Big Deal.

    2. The officials in question are found not liable in accordance with previous court decisions (Warren v. D.C., Castle Rock v. Gonzales, and DeShaney v. Winnebago).

    3. When the Cowards of Broward skate, the message finally starts getting through to the average American that government can’t prevent all the murderous crazies from murdering, has no obligation to save you personally, and WILL NOT save your children when evil literally has them in its sights.

    4. People start to realize that those who are with your children in that critical moment are the only ones who have any chance of saving them. Voluntarily armed citizens can and do save innocent lives every day. And since the government routinely prohibits armed defense in schools, it is the problem, not the solution…ergo, anti-gun governments kill children.

    5. Somewhere along the line, the murder-enabling Broward Cowards get what they deserve. I’m not going to say what that is…we all have our own ideas.

  23. I really do not believe they can win, Police have no duty or responsibility to endanger their lives to protect you. This has been decided by SCOTUS on many occasions. Police are there to investigate crime, nothing more. However, If by some magical unicorn change in the universe and the plaintiff’s prevail, I can see police just calling dispatch and reporting “Car Trouble” when responding to active shooter situations. What next, Just imagine a electrician being required to be electrocuted while doing his job, ridiculous! Face it, Liberals just do not want real world solutions to problems.

    • Officers risking their lives is not what this is about. The suit is a lot smarter than that. It is about not performing their basic duties, including appropriate notifications and investigations, as well as preventing other life saving actions from occurring. This is a gross negligence issue. IF they can prove the department acted against its own policies, they have a very strong case. IF.

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