parkland sheriff captain jan jordan perimeter EMT
courtesy parklandtalk.com

And you thought the details of what happened in Parkland couldn’t have made the Broward County Sheriff’s Department look any worse. First we learned that the BCSD had 39 prior encounters with the shooter before he opened fire in the school. Then it was disclosed that school resource officer Scot Peterson, and then some of his fellow deputies, stayed outside while the shooting was going on, listening to the sounds of students and teachers being murdered.

Peterson, it seems, had earlier done Sheriff Scott Israel a solid by allegedly covering up a sexual assault charge against Israel’s son, an assault that happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglass High.

When backup arrived outside the school, rather than enter and engage the shooter — something that had been standard law enforcement tactics ever since Columbine — they were instead ordered to remain outside the building and form a perimeter, a delay that no doubt cost more lives inside.

Now, according to the Miami Herald, not only did Sheriff’s Israel’s finest fail to enter the school and challenge the shooter, but the captain in charge that day — the one who ordered the perimeter — also prevented EMTs from going in, letting victims bleed to death.

During the chaos of the Parkland school shooting, paramedics from Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department were desperate to go inside the building where students were wounded and dying.

Michael McNally, deputy chief for Coral Springs fire-rescue, asked six times for permission to send in specialized teams of police officers and paramedics, according to an incident report he filed after the Feb. 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 people dead.

But every time McNally asked to deploy the two Rescue Task Force teams — each made up of three paramedics and three to four law enforcement officers — the Broward Sheriff’s Office captain in charge of the scene, Jan Jordan, said no.

Captain Jordan, who had virtually no tactical command experience before being brought into the Broward County Sheriff’s Department by Sheriff Israel, dithered.

“The [BSO] incident commander advised me, ‘She would have to check,’ ” McNally wrote in the report released Thursday by Coral Springs. “After several minutes, I requested once again the need to deploy RTF elements into the scene to … initiate treatment as soon as possible. Once again, the incident commander expressed that she ‘would have to check before approving this request.’ “

You may remember that the shooter actually escaped the school that day by dropping his gun and filing out with all of the other students after the massacre. He bought a drink at a nearby Subway and strolled into a McDonald’s before he was eventually found and arrested. Meanwhile, back at the school . . .

Even after the shooter had been arrested, the answer remained the same.

Capt. Jordan still keep the EMTs out of the building for some unspecified, inexplicable amount of time.

But remember, this was all the NRA’s fault. They’re the ones with blood on their hands.

This wasn’t a law enforcement travesty and had absolutely nothing to do with departmental incompetence or cowardice on the part of the Broward County Sheriff. The NRA is the reason the shooter was never arrested, even after the BCSD and the FBI had received dozens of reports about his violent, disturbing behavior, including fights and bringing a knife to school.

NRA members practically stood in the schoolhouse doors that terrible day, keeping Scot Peterson and his pals from getting into the building. It was NRA leadership who advised setting up the perimeter rather than going inside to stop the shooting.

And now we learn that when Capt. Jordan delayed even further, repeatedly telling EMT’s “she would have to check” if they could enter the building and tend to the wounded, no one at the NRA’s Fairfax headquarters would give her the go-ahead she so desperately wanted.

How could the NRA have been so heartless and uncaring?

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83 COMMENTS

  1. Sounds like a LOT of lawsuits will and should get filed…and some people should get fired (with no pensions)…just sayin’

  2. Just like The Pulse we will never have the number of students who bled out waiting for EMTs released.

  3. Lot of cowardice at the leadership level.
    Sounds like the whole department needs to be purged from the top down.

    • The Broward county cowards should at least hang their heads in shame or more appropriately hang themselves for their shame.

    • one does have to wonder how many would’ve lived had the medics been released in a timely manner with Deputies to provide protection for the medevac operation….

    • Considering that so many of these mass shooters are using 9mm and 55gr .223, many of the mass shooting deaths since Columbine could have been prevented by quicker medical responses (and also with CHL-holders stopping the psycho).

  5. Almost sounds like a conspiracy…of DUNCES. Or cowards. But it’s all lawful gun owner’s fault😖😩😡

  6. Wow…. Guess Broward needs to fire all its Deputies and arm the Paramedics at least they have the balls to go toward the sounds of gunfire and try to save the wounded.

  7. So the sheriff’s dept. weren’t just cowards then, but potential murderers as well?

  8. Just about when I think it can’t get any uglier…

    Negligence, Ignorance and ineptitude come to mind a little to readily here.

    But at least the officers got to go home safely! /sarc

  9. This makes it evident why the socialist establishment is making such a grand issue and an attack platform from this particular shooting. The cancer is deep within this one. Like the “Russia probe” against Trump, the guilty ones are coming back to the scene of the crime and projecting their guilt onto others.

  10. Firings at a minimum, but in a perfect world, indictments should be getting handed out. These people are an abject disgrace to the uniform.

  11. Gonna go all sexist here..

    Once again, the incident commander expressed that _she_ ‘would have to check before approving this request.’ “

    • Gonna go even more sexist…if I was picking people to be in tactical command of an active shooter situation based solely on appearance… she’d be towards the bottom of the list

    • I think you mean “I’m going truthful”. Sometimes the truth stings a little.

  12. Cops should not have the authority to prevent medics from going to the wounded…EVER. Those medics are adults and able to make adult decisions about their own safety.

    • This is the nut of the issue. EMT’s/Medics aren’t stupid, and I’ve yet to meet a single EMT or Medic who isn’t also a shooter. We know the threats. We also know how fast someone can bleed out of a wound that could be closed off or slowed down quickly and reliably and how much time might be purchases for the addition of starting an IV to prevent uncompensated hypovolemic shock. It might only for a few minutes, but those few minutes might make the difference.

      This issue of preventing EMT’s/Medics from going into a scene is something we see again, and again, and again, and again, and again. At Columbine, people bled out while medics were waiting for the police to figure out which thumb they wanted up their butts… and that started a pattern of behavior of LEO malfeasance we see again, and again and again.

      The nut of the issue here is police department incompetence and malfeasance. Until and unless courts open law enforcement officers to personal liability for their malfeasance and incompetence, they’re going to continue making stupid decisions and costing lives.

      • Would I let an unarmed medic into an active shooter situation? No. Would I let a tactical team with medics and armed law enforcement? Absolutely! That’s why they are called Tactical.

        • And when, exactly, will those officers be making entry?

          I’ve heard since Columbine (from cops) that the “new mindset” the “new plan” was that the first LEO’s on scene, SWAT or not, were to enter and engage.

          We see in encounter after encounter since Columbine that this isn’t happening. But in Parkland, we see a level of incompetence and mendacity that surpasses all tolerance by well informed taxpayers – and still, LEO’s close ranks behind their “blue line.”

          EMT’s are going into situations every day that aren’t exactly safe without cops there. Firefighters go into dangerous situations every day without cops holding their hands.

          Cops have shown that they’re simply not willing to do their jobs, and when citizens demands some accounting for LEO malfeasance, LEO’s hide behind their qualified immunity to duck responsibility. This has culminated to the ironic extent that we now have Castle Rock v. Gonzales, wherein not even someone with a court order can demand accountability for LEO’s to offer protection.

          So we arrive at this result: If LEO’s (and especially their leadership) are not willing to do the jobs for which they signed up, perhaps they should stand back, disclaim any responsibility at all for anything other than the paperwork after the fact, and get out of the way of those who are willing to run into these situations to do so, risk be damned.

          • Completely agree with regards to this Broward County incident. Maybe I haven’t paid enough attention to recent incidents. I know the department I worked for, shortly after Columbine, began training for active shooter incidents, and you’re right, SWAT or not, arriving officers would immediately move in and eliminate the shooter. And, as far as I know, that was the training throughout the country.

            I haven’t heard or read of active shooter incidents where LEO;s have not followed this training. From what I’ve read, it’s just the opposite. You make it sound like this is routine, where LEO;s hold off and let innocents get gunned down. Sorry, I just have not seen this.

  13. If this is indeed true, the sheriff needs to be impeached, the captain needs to be fired along with any supervisory deputies. Then, they all need to sued for everything they have.

  14. There is a difference between emt’s and paramedics , they’re not interchangeable terms .

    • In the industry, EMT can indicate the level of training if you use a suffix: eg, EMT-B, (for Basic) EMT-A (Advanced), EMT-I (Intermediate) and EMT-P (Paramedic). We have all four levels here in Wyoming.

      In my PCR’s and paperwork, I use the above terms rather than “EMT” and/or Paramedic.

  15. Tin Foil Hat tells me”Shits going to hit the fan in the near future. Armed resistance must be eliminated, those damned pesky American patriots and their Constitution are fucking up our NWO.”…… It is a conspiracy and “they” are using children now to perpetuate ” their” agenda.

    • Please put the tin foil hat away.

      After David Hogg put out the tweet ” I can’t remember a time before school schootings did happen every week” one of the Benghazi survivors tweeted back that he could and not so politely told Hogg that he should be introspective as to why his generation is shooting up the place.

      Snowflakes are intrinsicly violent people and we are raising lots of snowflakes. Hogg is a bully and had many of the characteristics of a Ted Bundy style serial killer.

  18. How is Scott Israel still employed? The citizens of Broward County should tar and feather him and then run him out of the state on a rail!

    • If my daughter had died in that school, I’d be thinking of murder right now. The Broward Cowards really do have blood on their hands.

      Even leaving the school shooting fiasco aside, it’s clear that these people are they type who make life a little worse for everyone. Taking them out of public circulation — or at least out of public office — would be a public service.

  19. I feel terrible that there are parents who now have to wonder if their child died simply because this feckless commander delayed a Tactical first aid team from entering. What a terrible burden and I hope they are able to put the blame where it belongs, the shooter and a crappy law enforcement response that day and the years that proceeded it. Law enforcement has become so risk adverse that they are completely ineffective. Cowardice + incompetence = Broward County S.O.

  20. When every single action relating to this shooting before, during, and after lead to increasing casualties, and not a single action reduced them, it becomes very hard to avoid the idea that they wanted students to die so they could push their agenda.

    • Yep. Not that they planned it that way, but…wait, no…they did.

      Not the Broward Cowards, but the whole progressive-left machine. This is the world they’re creating, one crappy socialist policy at a time. In their collectivist utopia, no individual life ever matters, and dead children are a propaganda bonus. Deep down, the progbots really do want this crap to happen.

  22. And nothing will come of this.

    They will all keep their jobs and Peterson will get his pension. No justice just blame gun owners. Typical bait and switch bullshit.

    If you are a Democrat you can literally get away with murder. If this was Republicans they would all be in jail by now.

      • When he retires (which will be soon), Scott Peterson had better move out of the county very quickly. Otherwise he might be the guest of honor at a community based necktie and necklace party.

  23. One cant help but wonder if this whole thing was allowed to deliberately happened.

    FBI was warned many times but they did nothing.

    Sheriff Israel and his corrupt force were warned many times but did nothing.

    Broward school board simply expelled him and florida social services including cruz’s psych knew he was an active danger to himself and others but did nothing.

  24. “Then it was disclosed that school resource officer Scot Peterson, and then some of his fellow deputies, stayed outside while the shooting was going on, listening to the sounds of students and teachers being murdered.”
    Forgot the part about the chief of security riding in a golf cart with Scott to the scene, cowering outside alongside him, retaining his job as chief of security to this day even after this monumental screwup, using his position to target and harass pro-gun students as part of an intimidation campaign, to include questioning minors with law enforcement present in a closed room, despite not being an LEO himself, without a lawyer or legal guardian present.

    • Never talk to them, ask to make your phone call. If they refuse your phone call then just smile cause you got ’em big time.

  25. Since February, a tragic experiment has been run in our country. An experiment in how best to deal with a mass shooting.

    In Illinois and Maryland, two separate shooters were stopped before they could kill anyone by an immediate armed response.

    In Texas, a fairly quick (4 minutes) armed response most likely limited the amount of casualties the shooter was able to inflict. 10 people died.

    In Parkland, Florida there was no immediate armed response to the shooting and, as we learn now, no immediate medical aid given the wounded. 17 died.

    What more proof do you need that the faster an armed response occurs, the less deadly these shootings are? This isn’t a hypothetical anymore. Anyone honestly looking for a “solution” to the problem of mass shootings needs to embrace what we’ve learned from painful experience.

  26. Not protecting the children as individuals isn’t actionable.

    FORCIBLY PREVENTING medical care for the victims IS.

    There should be no settlements, only judgments.

    Everybody involved should end up living under a bridge and eating roadkill.

    • “Everybody involved should end up living under a bridge and being roadkill.”
      FIFY

  27. I’m sure that to the police unions, these walking tumors are “heroes in blue”, just like the sociopaths who shot Charles Kinsey, handcuffed him and tried to allow him to bleed to death without treatment.

  28. The O.I.C. should be suspended, investigated and fired. Form a perimeter was debunked post Columbine. I have seen EMS standoff until we arrived and secured the scene, but if they had teams of EMS and LEO trained to deploy together (a very good idea); and didn’t release them? She should be drawn and quartered. You don’t have time to “check” in a situation like that. You make a command decision. Or surrender your rank.

    • You make a command decision. Or surrender your rank.

      It’s indefensible to promote somebody to Lt who can’t command.
      But she’s a Captain and she still can’t make a decision under pressure???

  29. OK, I’m declaring shenanigans. There’s no way any event could be a perfectly screwed up as this one. It demonstrates literally every ding on the disarm everybody (but me) folks. This Parkland event turning out to be a perfect storm of anti-gunner, feckless whackjobbery getting people killed.

    Ahead of time we have the activist, “progressive” orientation of the community; to the diversion programs; the fake stats because we need our funding; quota-firiendly hires; our safety first (not yours) policies; miserable execution; forcibly disarmed alternative defenders.

    Afterwards there’s ignoring the people who stepped up with what they were left with, promoting the clueless whiners, the layers of cover-up, and let’s not forget the WWE show-trial, complete with theme music. And, of course pan-national promotion of “laws” that have nothing to do with what happened.

    Seriously, could they do any worse? The thing the anti’s haven’t done to damage their case, yet, is go full tinfoil hat n declare that obviously this whole thing is a false flag operation, designed to discredit them. Because it’s too perfect.

    I am on the verge of convincing myself.

    • It certainly is a sequence of policies, actions, incompetence and post-shooting PR that seems, with each issue taken out of the larger context, to be representative of an epic level of incompetence on the part of several policy makers and LEO’s in Broward County.

      Laid end to end, in sequence, with years of actions, policies and malfeasance considered in total… to be so utterly improbable that it defies the maxim of “Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.”

  30. All these facts and fails. And still they say the solution is to disarm the country.

  31. If I were an emergency medical worker, I would have gone in or the cops would have shot me when I pulled a knife on their captain.

  32. People hoping for some accountability here should hope for the Tooth Fairy to leave a Kugerrand under their pillow for lost teeth – because they’re going to get that Kugerrand sooner than you’ll get accountability of Sheriff Israel for his malfeasance.

    This is Broward County, folks. If you start digging into the politics, demographics and money sources of that county, you’ll understand why Israel will probably never be fired, and will even more probably be re-elected if/when he stands for election again.

    • If that’s the case, and I have no reason to doubt it, it’s a great reason for the honest folks to move the hell out of Broward County. Let the dirt bags keep it for themselves.

  33. Can they just fire EVERYONE in BCPD already?

    The corruption and incompetence go all the way down from the top.

    I already sent a letter to Gov. Scott that his political credit with me will perpetually be zero as long as Sheriff Israel still has a job.

  34. I think setting up a perimeter and waiting outside promotes LEO and EMT safety as everyone on the “A-Team” knows they are going home that night.
    Remember, the more kids that die, the more they can be used to promote “Gun Safety”.

  35. I’ve been thinking about this. First reports said when the local PD arrived they bypassed the SO and made entry. (Good for them!) My question is; if all this is true, why didn’t EMS piggyback on them?

    Next, there were a lot of comments about cowardice. I’ve worked with a few cowards. Cowardice is the one unforgivable character flaw in an L.E.O. It’s okay to be scared. I’ve been scared, but you do what you have to do because it’s what’s expected of you. I think there is a certain element, a small one, that get into law enforcement because they think the badge and the gun badge will mask that character flaw. It won’t. Get a paper route.

    Last, I’ll bet you every firearm I own that there are deputies on that perimeter that are frustrated and angry at not being unleashed. From what I know, the only confirmed coward on the scene was the O.I.C

    • I would take that bet. Your kind aren’t soldiers, where discipline and obedience is absolutely critical to the rank and file and MUST be maintained with extremely harsh penalties for failing to follow orders. Any one of those cowards could have grabbed a rifle, disobeyed orders, and gone in. They would have been fired, big freaking deal. Honorable LEO agencies (which I’m told are nearly all of them, though I have my doubts) would be tripping over themselves to hire such a brave and clearly upstanding cop. And yet, none of them did. So either they weighed it and decided that an inconvenience was worth the lives of kids, or they chose not to do so out of cowardice

      • Red, how about you prove your excellence and become a cop. Show us how brave you really are. Yea, if I were towards the end of my career, I would have violated orders and gone in to take out the shooter. But like most, I had a family to to provide for. I think in this case I would have won a lawsuit against Broward County, seeing it appears the captain in charge was a political appointee with no real experience. And, you may be wrong about other departments falling all over themselves to hire a deputy who was fired for violating direct orders. You talk a good game, but you really don’t have a clue.

        • Hey Marty, isn’t it funny how these guys that have never done the job, and never will, can tell everyone else how to do it? Most of those guys you couldn’t melt and pour on the job

          • Yea Paul, armchair quarterbacks. Their all experts because they watch cop shows on the boob tube.

      • But, Red I was a soldier. The first time I flew in an airplane it was at Ft. Benning, Ga. It was a C-141 Starlifter. An E-6 Black Hat slapped me on the ass and yelled, “Go!” I was glad to. Never had a worse case of motion sickness in my life. I did not want to puke in that aircraft. Never had a problem after that. MOS was 11B1P. Airborne Infantry. Are you a veteran?

  36. You know Marty, I never realized how much I’ve seen until I started posting on this site. Never really thought about it. Just did my job. Came home to my family. Got up the next day and did it again.

    But here’s something to think about. I was a founding member of my agency’s dive team. Learned between the military and law enforcement. Now that was an ugly, dirty business. Diving for three day old bloated bodies in local lakes, ponds and rivers. What are you going to do though. Those families would spend all night on the shore waiting for us to start again the next day. All night. They would bring us hot coffee and sandwiches and ask to hold hands while they prayed for us and the lost. Don’t see too much of that on the media do you? So, Red. Why don’t you get your SCUBA certification, come on down to Florida and volunteer at our next drowning. Summer’s moving in, we have a little water around here and fishing is popular. Won’t be long.

    Marty, what am I saying. That was just a fantasy I once had. All L.E.F. ever does is eat doughnuts, stand around while children are murdered and look for the next opportunity violate a citizens 2A rights. Oh yeah. Right. We sell those illegally confiscated firearms to the crack dealers. Those we don’t drop next to our recently shot innocent citizens.

    Jesus, I grew up thinking this was the United States of America.

    • You’re right Paul, I’ve had to be top side when the divers brought up those bodies. But what I think got to me the most was when it was the children and believe it or not, the pet animals. I once had to shoot a young German Shepard who got hit by a car. Tears were forming and a Black lady came up to me and started hugging me.

      Now a days it seems everybody forgets about the victims. Every word I hear from the press is about the suspects. They had a hard upbringing, they were miss treated. I get so tired of it I want to puke.

      But, like you, we had a job to do and we did it to the best of our ability. I’ve just learned to ignore the naysayers. And, I wouldn’t trade any of my 31 years on the job. Everyone said after I retire, I would miss the people, but not the job. Hell, I miss the job as much as I miss the people.

      • I miss the good parts of the job. Like the time I jumped an EMS call. Old guy was about to drive his wife to a doctor’s appointment when he had a heart attack. I got the patient out of the car. No pulse. His wife was begging me, “Please save him!” Began CPR until EMS arrived. I took off to set up the LZ for Life Flight and pathfindered them in. Bird airborne. I asked the paramedic, “What do you think?” He replied, “You brought him back, but I don’t know.” Heard nothing for a couple of weeks. Human Resources calls me in. Gives me a copy of a letter from the patient’s daughter. Her father died three days after arriving at the hospital. She wanted to thank me because those three allowed her time to get to town from the Midwest and say goodbye. That, I miss.

        The quadruple homicide that wiped out a family where I was first on scene? Not so much.

        • Yea, the crime scenes were not good. I was a field evidence technician, so I got called to all non homicide crime scenes in my area.
          I got a call of a vehicle going thru a guard rail and down into a river. Got there, ran down an embankment and there was a vehicle upside down in the river. With the help of a private citizen, we waded into the water, uniform, gun and all. Water was on fire from the gas leaking. I pushed the water away, the citizen forced open the door and we dragged the victim to the river bank and began CPR. When the police Ambulance arrived we loaded him into the ambulance and continuing CPR took him to the hospital. Doctors were able to bring him back and he recovered from his injuries. I ended up getting a Life Saving Medal for that one. Some things you just never forget.

  37. Amen, brother. Well, I’m on eastern time and I have to be at my parents house at 0700 hrs to drive Dad to a doctor’s appointment. Stay on top of the dirt.

  38. Do I understand the above article correctly, in that “responsible on scene law enforcement failed to act, stood in the way of aid to shooting victims due to their need of NRA permission to act, permission not forthcoming”. Re the person or persons peddling this tale, one wonders as to what in blazes they might be smoking.

  39. I am a retired LEO Commander and was in charge of a tactical unit. The actions of the Sheriffs Dept. in this case is a travesty. They did not follow standard procedures and violated their moral oath. Back in the mid-90’s we were teaming with our paramedics and incorporating them into tactical training. Due to the small size of our Dept. I proposed that we arm the medics with sidearms for self protection. All were already experienced with firearms and would undergo the same training as the officers. They were equipped with all other tactical protective equipment. The City Manager and Fire Chief fought me tooth and nail on this issue and it never happened. The bureaucrats suck! Obviously this Sheriff had people in command with no tactical experience or focus. Damn Shame.

    • Larry, you’re absolutely right, bureaucrats suck. I was pretty lucky. For many years I worked for a chief who was a cop’s cop. After several police officer deaths, the chief went on the news cameras and flatly said to all “If you try to pull a knife or gun on my officers, they will shoot you”. You can imagine the moral on our department under this chief was extremely high. He always had our backs. With all the chiefs I worked for in my 31 years, only one was what I considered a bureaucrat, He was the only chief we ever brought in from an outside department and I didn’t trust him at all to cover my back.

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