Scott Israel, Broward’s former sheriff who most recently accepted a job as chief in Opa-locka, said he’ll keep his options open after resigning from that agency.
Israel took the Opa-locka police chief position in May 2022 and his resignation, announced this week, is effective in July. His current salary is $125,000 a year.
He was vague Friday at a news conference about why he was resigning, saying he and his wife wanted to have time to travel. “I’m not retiring,” he said. “I’ll be looking at opportunities that may present itself.”
“He’ll let me know,” Israel said, referring to God.
Israel, who was Broward’s sheriff from 2013 through 2019, received praise from the Opa-locka city manager, who said there had been a 30% drop in the crime rate under Israel’s tenure, and the lowest crime numbers in more than a decade. There will be a national search to replace him.
Although Israel’s future is yet unclear, the defense attorney for one of his former deputies plans to highlight Israel’s past leadership missteps. Israel has been subpoenaed by the defense team for former deputy Scot Peterson, Mark Eiglarsh, Peterson’s defense attorney, confirmed Friday.
Peterson is charged with seven counts of child neglect with great bodily harm and other counts stemming from his alleged failure to confront gunman Nikolas Cruz during the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018. Seventeen students and staff were murdered, and Cruz is in prison for life.
The neglect charges specify that Peterson, who was the school resource officer at the time, was a “caregiver” who, according to prosecutors, abdicated his responsibility by hiding behind a concrete column outside instead of pursuing the killer inside the school.
“He threw my client under the bus without even speaking to him,” Eiglarsh said of Israel. “He needed a scapegoat because Israel was taking so much heat for defending all of his officers.”
“What he did was despicable and he must answer for that publicly,” Eiglarsh said.
Israel has previously said that Peterson’s inaction “wasn’t a training issue, it wasn’t a policy issue. It was an issue of courage. He should’ve went in. He knows that.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis removed Israel from office in January 2019, saying at a news conference at the Sheriff’s Office headquarters that “the massacre might never have happened had Broward had better leadership in the sheriff’s department.”
A state commission also faulted Israel’s agency for a variety of lapses that included fumbled tips warning of the shooter’s plans, and non-aggressive deputies who stood outside the school listening to gunshots.
Also among the failures cited: The sheriff’s own policies allowed deputies to decide for themselves whether to go in and confront the killer. Deputies claimed they couldn’t remember specifics of how they’d been trained for an active shooter. The commander at the scene appeared “dream-like” and overwhelmed. And police radios, a problem for years, froze and left cops unable to communicate.
But Israel fought back, trying unsuccessfully to persuade the Florida Senate to restore him as sheriff after a special master said his suspension should be lifted. The Senate declined to do so and officially removed him from office. Then he challenged his removal in court, arguing that the blame for the mass shooting was unfairly placed on him and saying he was scapegoated without a fair chance to defend himself. But in 2020, a federal judge dismissed the case.
He then lost the 2020 Broward Sheriff election to Gregory Tony.
On his one-year anniversary he told CBS-Ch. 4 that as chief in Opa-locka he has worked to repair the relationship between the police and the community by getting outside his office and gaining more visibility.
“I’m a happy police chief,” he told the station. That was three weeks ago.
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Twitter @LisaHuriash