A Florida police chief is not holding back in her message to officers in the wake of the Parkland shooting: quit if you don’t think you can risk your life to protect others.
Atlantic Beach Police Chief Michelle Cook tweeted Feb. 22nd after reports spread that members of the Broward Sheriff’s Office, including a school resource officer, allegedly did not enter Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the mass shooting that killed 17 people on Feb. 14th.
Cook’s tweet has been liked nearly 2,000 times and retweeted more than 900 times since it was posted.
An ongoing investigation by both the Broward Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into the actions of deputies that responded to the scene. An attorney for Peterson denied that his client did anything wrong and refuted the claims of Sheriff Scott Israel, saying Peterson was “not a coward.”
"Let there be no mistake, Mr. Peterson wishes that he could have prevented the untimely passing of the seventeen victims on that day, and his heart goes out to the families of the victims in their time of need," attorney Joseph DiRuzzo said.
"Mr. Peterson is confident that his actions on that day were appropriate under the circumstances and that the video (together with the eye-witness testimony of those on the scene) will exonerate him of any sub-par performance," DiRuzzo added.
Cook was named chief of the city, Atlantic Beach, in August of last year after a quarter century with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.