LIKE, YESTERDAY: Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel Needs To Resign For Incompetence.
In the days since the shooting, as allegations of incompetence and misconduct stacked up, Sheriff Israel has shown absolutely no willingness to accept any responsibility for the gross failures of his department. Yesterday, in an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN, Israel was asked about how his department dropped the ball. His shocking response was the playful old quip, “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were candy and nuts…” Even Tapper, who hosted the town hall and is a former gun control spokesman, seemed shocked. He reminded the sheriff that they were talking about an incident that left 17 people dead.
But that response, as horrible as it was, wasn’t even the height of Israel’s bizarre hubris yesterday. He also claimed he has provided “excellent leadership” to the department. Not only is his assessment of his own leadership delusional, it’s dangerous. Israel assures us that independent investigators will look into the actions of his department and assess what went wrong. But given his own assessment, that he did a bang-up job, how can anyone have confidence that he will implement any changes that investigators may recommend?
Had Israel responded to the shocking and obvious failures of his department by admitting very bad mistakes were made by himself and others, had he acknowledged those mistakes and promised to do all in his power to do a better job, then maybe continuing his tenure as sheriff could be a reasonable option. As it stands, his refusal to do so makes it clear to any reasonable person that he has absolutely no business being the sheriff of anything, let alone one of the largest police departments in the country.
After Waco, Janet Reno at least paid lip service to accountability, stating that “I made the decision. I’m accountable. The buck stops with me,” before dodging any actual accountability. Israel is too smug to observe decency even in the breach.
