Today the Broward County Sheriff’s Office released video surveillance footage showing the outside of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School the day of the deadly shooting in Parkland, Florida. You can watch the full 27 minute video above, which shows the actions of the armed school resource officer, Scot Peterson. The video footage does not include sound. It’s not the only surveillance video from campus that day, but the only footage released by the sheriff’s department after an order from a judge. Read on for more details.
Peterson has come under scrutiny for not rushing into the school to help during the February 14 shooting. He has defended his actions, saying that he believed the gunfire was coming from outside. Meanwhile, three additional Broward deputies did not enter the campus during the shooting but were waiting outside, with guns drawn, when Coral police officers arrived. Coral Police officers entered the building when they arrived, and the deputies then joined them.
The video above is not the all of the surveillance footage from the day. Most of the recording above comes from one stationary camera on campus, and the sheriff’s office released the video after being ordered to do so from a judge. The judge ordered that the four clips from the surveillance system be released due to “strong public interest.” The clips do not show the shooting itself or what happened in Building 12. The footage above focuses mostly on Peterson.
There were many surveillance recordings taken on campus that day, The Washington Post reported. The video above begins by showing students walking on campus, their faces blurred. Then you can see Peterson walking with Kelvin Greenleaf, civilian security monitor, as identified by the Miami Herald. The two begin running after smoke from the gunfire triggers a fire alarm. They get into a golf cart to head to Building 12. You can then see them pulling up to the corner of the building, along with blurred images of students. For a period of time, Peterson is obscured by a pole.
The video footage does not contain sound, but last week the sheriff’s office released dispatch recordings that showed what Peterson said during the shooting. However, the sheriff’s office warned that timestamps on the video and timestamps on the dispatch recording might not be “exactly synchronized.” The surveillance video was released after a lawsuit filed by The Miami Herald.
When releasing the video, the sheriff’s office released a brief statement: “The video speaks for itself. His [Peterson’s] actions were enough to warrant an internal affairs investigation, as requested by Sheriff Scott Israel on Feb. 21. After being suspended without pay, Peterson chose to resign and immediately retired rather than face possible termination.”
This is a developing story.