The Facts
On Thursday, Scot Peterson, the former sheriff’s deputy who, as a school resource officer stayed outside during the 2018 killing of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was found not guilty of any charges related to his alleged lack of response to the mass school shooting.
Prosecutors had claimed Peterson was the “caregiver” of the school’s students and had an obligation to protect them. Peterson, the first police officer to be charged with child neglect as a caregiver, faced decades in prison if he’d been convicted.
The Spin
Narrative A
Peterson’s acquittal is a slap in the face to the still-grieving families who lost people in a massacre that Peterson could’ve stopped. This pitiful inaction and failure to do his job to protect the victims. Even worse, he lied about what he saw and heard and should have been convicted.
Narrative B
No law enforcement officer has ever been considered a legal caregiver of a community’s children, and the charges against Peterson were completely inappropriate. His acquittal is a win for law enforcement. No one deserves nearly 100 years in prison for how Peterson acted at the scene of the crime.