Video delays misled cops at Stoneman Douglas shooting
“They are monitoring the subject right now. He went from the third floor to the second floor, the third to the second floor … They’re monitoring him on camera,” an officer said on radio transmissions recorded by Broadcastify, an audio streaming website, at 2:54 p.m. In fact, Cruz was already long gone — he had escaped the school’s freshman building 26 minutes earlier and was sitting at a McDonald’s a mile away, a timeline released by the Broward Sheriff’s Office shows.
The video images were “delayed 20 minutes and nobody told us that,” said Coral Springs Police Chief Tony Pustizzi.
Pustizzi said the video delay made a chaotic situation more confusing, but he does not believe it slowed efforts to rescue injured students. “We got in so fast, we’re pulling them out. It made it harder to identify where the guy was.”
Police radio transmissions reviewed by the Sun Sentinel reveal more details about the confusion at the scene as officers tried to determine what was happening and how best to respond to the worst school shooting since the
Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012.
They show:
-- At the same time the shooter escaped, police were saying they were entering a building, though it’s unclear from radio transmissions whether it was the right building or a neighboring one.
-- Police initially could not get to the security cameras and couldn’t immediately find someone to help them.
-- Police communication was hampered by outmoded radios that left some transmissions inaudible.
The school is in Parkland, which is protected by the sheriff’s office. Also, an armed sheriff’s deputy — called a school resource officer — is assigned to the school.
At one point, police were looking for that officer, Scot Peterson, because he “would be the one to have access to where the cameras are,” according to the police radio broadcast.
Peterson was on the 45-acre campus during the attack but not in the targeted building, Schools Superintendent
Robert Runcie previously told the
Sun Sentinel.
“We need somebody with the camera systems ASAP,” an officer stated at 2:43 p.m., about 15 minutes after the shooting stopped, according to the sheriff’s timeline. “Where’s the principal? Who’s with the principal? And we need to start making a plan here.”
Video delays misled cops at Stoneman Douglas shooting