COWARDICE REWARDED

Parkland cop, fired after school shooting, will get his job back with full back pay

By Eileen Kelley

South Florida Sun Sentinel
May 14, 2020

A sheriff’s sergeant who was fired for sitting in his car and failing to react while a gunman slaughtered students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will get his job back.

An arbitrator has dismissed the case against Brian Miller. According to a statement from the union that represents deputies and sergeants, the arbitrator found that the Broward County Sheriff’s Office violated Miller’s due process rights when Sheriff Gregory Tony terminated him long after state law allowed it.

Miller was fired in June, 16 months after former student Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people and wounded 17 more with an AR-15 rifle on Feb. 14, 2018.

Miller will received considerable money when reinstated. He was paid more than $137,000 in 2018. Including a year’s salary any overtime that he would have received, as well as medical reimbursements, accrual of time, paid holidays and time off.

Cruz’s rampage exposed widespread failures at the Sheriff’s Office. The deputy assigned to the school, Scot Peterson, was charged with multiple counts of child neglect. Peterson was widely criticized for taking cover outside the school while Cruz was gunning down people inside. But the criticism didn’t stop with Peterson.

Broward Sheriff Scott Isreal was ousted over the department’s failures in Parkland and at a mass shooting a year earlier at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. His replacement, Tony, canned Miller and then deputies Joshua Stambaugh and Edward Eason a few weeks later.

The Stambaugh and Eason cases are still making their way through the system. They, too, contend they were fired beyond the time allowed under state law.

Miller was the first supervisor on the scene. He arrived in time to hear three or four shots. As a supervisor, he didn’t rush to take command. Instead, a state commission investigating the shooting found that Miller took his time putting on a bulletproof vest and hid behind his car on Holmberg Road, not going on the radio for 10 minutes.

“Miller failed to coordinate or direct deputies’ actions and did not direct or coordinate an immediate response into the school,” a report from a commission said. "Sergeant Miller’s actions were ineffective and he did not properly supervise the scene.”

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, a member of the commission, called Miller “an absolute, total failure,”

The Professional Standards Commission, another body that reviewed the case, recommended that Miller lose his sergeant’s rank. Tony opted to fire him.

Tony did not return a text message seeking comment Wednesday evening. At the time of Miller’s termination, he said: "We cannot fulfill our commitment to always protect the security and safety of our Broward County community without doing a thorough assessment of what went wrong that day. I am committed to addressing deficiencies and improving the Broward Sheriff’s Office.”