Broward Sheriff’s Union Pres.: I Place a Lot of Blame for Fla. Shooting on the Broward School Board

RUSH EXCERPT:

BELL: "I think that’s the one entity in this whole conversation that has not been brought up. Some of the fault of put on the Broward county school board. For years they know the schools are soft targets. They claim they want tougher security but don’t want to cough up the money to pay for the security. And then when they are fortunate enough to have a school resource deputy on scene, an armed police presence, a lot of the liberal-thinking principals on campus there don’t want the police officers making arrests on campus and don’t want the drugs to be found on campus and don’t want the warrants to be shown on campus because it looks like bad stats at the school. I place a lot of the blame at the school board with that and some of the programs. For example, the promise program. Nobody wants to fill the jails with juveniles. Every police officer will agree on that. The promise program is an intervention program where we stop filling the jails with kids and get them into programs. When that program started, we took all discretion away from the law enforcement officers to affect an arrest if we choose to. There’s a lot of parents out there screaming for help in terms of mental health services and family intervention for services."