A Really Good Move

New governor Ron DeSantis of Florida just fired the sheriff of Broward Country Scott Israels for his mishandling of the mass shooting a year ago at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.  When the shooting began, a deputy was outside and heard it.  Rather than going in to try to confront the shooter, the deputy waited.  When six more deputies arrived, they too waited and did not go in to get the shooter.  It took police from the Coral Springs department to charge into the building and stop the attack.  And the point is that the Broward deputies were following the procedures put in place by Israels which did not direct them to confront a shooter in a situation like this.  There's no way to know for certain, but it seems that at least some of those who were murdered that day would have survived had the Broward deputies stormed the building to confront the single shooter.  The situation is even worse if you consider that no long prior to the school shooting, there had been a shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport which had been mishandled by the sheriff's department.  On top of all this, the sheriff's department had been warned twice in the months prior to the school shooting that Nikolaus Cruz, the shooter, had amassed an arsenal of weapons and was possibly preparing for a school shooting.  (The sheriff's department did nothing despite the warning.)

Israels clearly deserved to be dumped.  He wouldn't even take any responsibility for the improper handling of the situation.  Instead, he blamed gun laws alone for what happened.  One can debate whether or not gun laws played a part in the massacre, but it is not debatable that major responsibility fell on the mishandling of the matter by the Broward sheriff's department.

Ron DeSantis deserves congratulations for taking this action.