{"id":107741,"date":"2020-11-29T08:15:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T13:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=107741"},"modified":"2020-11-28T19:05:14","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T00:05:14","slug":"the-cowards-of-broward-dont-just-leave-children-to-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=107741","title":{"rendered":"The Cowards of Broward don’t just leave children to die"},"content":{"rendered":"

They also leave crippled pensioners at the mercy of violent felons intent on doing harm.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Bill Norkunas (Photo credit South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A couple years ago, when Deputy Scot Peterson of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida stood by while his students were shot and killed by a crazed gunman, he earned the nickname “The Coward of Broward.” In the immediate aftermath of the February 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland it also came out that other deputies who responded to the shooting were staging instead of going in and confronting the threat. The latter has been the standard operating procedure for 20 years in an active shooter call.<\/p>\n

Do you suppose the BCSO has learned their lesson? The sheriff was even fired by the governor. Let’s see how they behaved more recently when a resident of the county was confronted with an armed subject.<\/p>\n

Seventy-year-old Bill Norkunas, a childhood polio survivor, headed over to the light and flicked it on hoping to scare away whoever was there. Instead, the light was a beacon drawing a young man to his front door, a door made of glass.<\/p>\n

And then for the next 15 minutes, Norkunas stood there, barefoot and unclothed, with his crutches, on one side of the glass pane trying to steady a gun in his trembling hand while the stranger stood on the other side, pounding on the door, banging it with his hip or gnawing at the thick hurricane-grade glass with a garden paver.<\/p>\n

Norkunas, who suffered minor injuries from the glass digging into his foot, has no idea why the man, later identified as 23-year-old Timothy Johnson of Fort Lauderdale, tried to break down his door on Nov. 7.<\/p>\n

And as bewildering, and just as terrifying to him, is the knowledge that a squad of Broward sheriff\u2019s deputies responded to his Tamarac neighborhood, but none came close to his home to stop the man. Instead, they waited down the street until he walked over to them and surrendered, witnesses told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.<\/p>\n

The result is a palpable sense of outrage toward the Sheriff\u2019s Office with many in the neighborhood questioning why deputies would leave a terrified, disabled man to fend for himself for as long as they did.<\/p>\n

The Sheriff\u2019s Office refused to answer questions about the response, including why no one showed up at Norkunas\u2019 home, whether policy was followed or broken, and whether the situation could have been handled better. Instead, the department released this statement:<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin days of the incident in Tamarac, the Broward Sheriff\u2019s Office began a thorough review into how the deputies on scene handled the response to this fluid and rapidly evolving situation. The review into this incident is ongoing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Broward Sheriff\u2019s Office responds to tens of thousands of calls for service each year. The vast majority of these calls are handled appropriately with satisfactory outcomes. [The Broward Sheriff\u2019s Office] constantly reviews and assesses its responses to emergency calls in order to provide the highest level of service to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 911 call<\/p>\n

Neighbors would not call the response \u201cthe highest level.\u201d Instead of stopping the would-be-intruder at Norkunas\u2019 door, witnesses said, the deputies stayed down the street and around a corner, some 500 yards away while Norkunas and his neighbors flooded the 911 emergency communications system begging for help for almost 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he opens the door can I shoot him?\u201d Norkunas asks the 911 dispatcher about two minutes into his phone call for help.<\/p>\n

By the third minute, Norkunas is telling the dispatcher that the stranger is trying to kick the door in, according to recording of the call. While still on the phone with the dispatcher, Norkunas can be heard warning the stranger that he better leave or he is going to get shot. Until this point in his life, Norkunas had never pointed a gun at anyone before.<\/p>\n

\u201cGet the cops here quick,\u201d he barks into the phone at minute four.<\/p>\n

Three minutes later, Norkunas\u2019 voice is weary: \u201cSheriff, hurry up please.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three more minutes pass. \u201cWhere the hell are the cruisers? … They are still not here. Jesus Christ. There\u2019s still no cruisers. Come to my house, please please.\u201d<\/p>\n

He tells the dispatcher his glass door is smashed in and he doesn\u2019t know what to do. The dispatcher tells him the deputies are canvassing the area to \u201cmake sure no one else gets hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

A dispatcher hears the glass breaking and alerts the 18 deputies who had been assigned to go to Norkunas\u2019 home, according to a dispatcher\u2019s log that documents the call and response. The Sheriff\u2019s Office initially refused to release those public records, as well as the 911 call and police report, until the Sun Sentinel\u2019s attorney got involved.<\/p>\n

Still, the breaking glass did not seem to be enough to get deputies to move in on the man outside Norkunas\u2019 door.<\/p>\n

Norkunas continues to plead with the dispatcher on the 911 call, saying his home is at the end of the cul-de-sac. He says there are two cars in the driveway and there\u2019s a light on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he gets inside this house, I don\u2019t know what I am going to do. I\u2019ve never shot anybody,\u201d he tells the dispatcher.<\/p>\n

Norkunas stayed on the phone with a dispatcher from the time he made the call at 9:26 p.m. until Johnson, the suspected intruder, walked directly to the deputies and was detained 15 minutes later, according to witnesses and the dispatcher\u2019s log.<\/p>\n

Where were the sirens? The whirling blue lights? The men and women who put on the uniform each day ready to serve? What were they waiting for?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been on this earth 70 years, and I have never seen anything like this,\u201d Norkunas said in an interview. \u201cNo officer came to my house. None.\u201d<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Norkunas said a sergeant explained procedures for setting up a perimeter so that Johnson could not escape, but also admitted they could have done better. Norkunas said he was offered $500 from a victim\u2019s fund. He said he turned it down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unbelievable. Eighteen (18!) cops respond to this call of a single person attempting to make entry to an occupied dwelling by force. Not a single one went up to the house to engage the suspect? This is absolutely not the SOP for how to respond to a call of this nature.<\/p>\n

Instead of doing what is right and just plain good manners, like stopping the crime before it gets worse, they just stand around. They were forming a perimeter? Good for you guys. That’s great when you’ve got a guy going into an unoccupied building and want to pen him in. The priority here is to get the bad guy away from the innocent victim. If he runs and you can’t find him, at least the victim isn’t in the process of being attacked or butchered while you’re playing grab ass with your partners a block away.<\/p>\n

The entire BCSO has now re-earned the nickname “The Cowards of Broward.” If I were a resident there, I’d start looking to relocate. Whatever rot is in that department runs very, very deep.<\/p>\n

Thanks to KoB for sending this one in and getting my blood pressure up. My cardiologist thanks you, good sir!<\/p>\n

Source; Sun Sentinel<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

They also leave crippled pensioners at the mercy of violent felons intent on doing harm. A … The Cowards of Broward don’t just leave children to die<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,185,238,406,227],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-crime","category-government-incompetence","category-guest-link","category-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107743,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107741\/revisions\/107743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}