A Florida jury is currently deliberating whether Scot Peterson, 60, is guilty of 11 counts that include felony child neglect and culpable negligence. He has pleaded not guilty.
Mr Peterson’s case has added a legal and moral dimension to a fraught national debate over law enforcement’s responsibility to protect students during school shootings, which are a common occurrence in the United States.
Update: Scot Peterson acquitted of all charges
The guy hid in an alcove and didn’t even try to help kids evacuate. I have no idea how the jury reached the conclusion that they did. The New York Times article said that prosecutors had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Peterson, who did not testify, should be considered someone “responsible for a child’s welfare.” If the school resource officer is not responsible for a child’s welfare, just what is their job?
That jury of his peers is the same peers that overwhelmingly voted in the same buffoons that allowed this shit to happen in the first place. Uvalde as a whole id a pretty awful bunch of people.
I watched a fair bit of the trial and it’s not really fair to say that Peterson just “hid in an alcove”.
There were various factors that meant that he couldn’t get an exact location of where the shooter was, so he hesitated and spent a good deal of time trying to decide where to go. Should he have just taken his best guess and gone to that location, even if that meant potentially going to the wrong place? In hindsight, probably. But that doesn’t mean that he was criminally negligent to not do so.
This is a 60-year-old guy who is out of shape and possibly not the brightest bulb in the box. Are there other officers who would have done a better job? Absolutely. But is failing to get a hold on the situation quickly enough and take decisive action a crime? The jury were not convinced by the prosecution that it is.