FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida sheriff’s deputy who failed to confront a gunman during a Feb. 14 school massacre is receiving a monthly state pension of $8,702.35.
The SunSentinel reports 55-year-old Scot Peterson, who resigned and retired after the shootings, began receiving payments in April.
Surveillance video showed Peterson outside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School as the gunman killed 17 people inside with an AR-15 assault-style rifle. Broward Sheriff Scott Israel said Peterson should have gone inside. President Donald Trump called Peterson a coward.
Peterson later said he thought the shots were coming from outside the building.
Pension payments are based on the 32 years he worked and the average of his five highest-paid fiscal years.
Shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz has been jailed since the shooting. He faces 17 charges of first-degree murder.
Five draft deferment shit head coward says what?
If that is his pension what the fuck was he making?
It appears that I made a serious error in my career choice…
This thing where people think governments honoring contractual obligations is scandalous really drives me fucking crazy. It’s a form of a stupidity that transcends ideology.
Rule of law doesn’t give you cosmic justice, people. To get cosmic justice, you need an absolute dictator with infinite wisdom and beneficence. Rule of law only means we put fences around the power of people with power to inflict harm in an arbitrary or capricious fashion, because there is no such thing as a dictator with infinite wisdom and beneficence. And sometimes that means cosmic justice doesn’t happen.
Peterson was a deputy for 32 years. “Normal” retirement is usually 20 years of service and either 50 or 55 years of age and out. I’m sure his pension provides for additional benefits for staying on the job for these years after normal retirement.
Peterson didn’t write the employment contract or pension plan.
He earned his pension. This is not a scandal.