News briefs

Parkland ex-deputy breaks down outside courtroom: ‘I did the best I could’

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Scot Peterson, the school resource officer accused of hiding from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting instead of trying to engage the gunman and protect the students, broke down in a Broward courthouse hallway Wednesday, saying he “never” would have sat idle while students and staff were killed.

Standing outside the courtroom where his lawyer had just argued to dismiss child negligence charges against him, Peterson lost his composure, fighting back tears as he described how his life changed after Nikolas Cruz shot and killed 17 students and staff at the Parkland school.

“I didn’t do anything there to try to hurt any child there on the scene,” he said, his voice cracking as he continued. “I did the best that I could with the information. I did the best ... I’ll never forget that day. You know, not only kids died, I have friends that died. And never for a second would I sit there and allow anyone to die, knowing that animal was in that building! Never!”

Peterson, 58, is charged with multiple counts of child neglect for failing to come to the rescue as Cruz was making his way through the school’s hallways. But the law he’s accused of breaking specifically applies to caregivers, and lawyers disagree on whether a cop on campus meets the legal definition of that term.

“The prosecutor could not find a single case in the history of our criminal justice system where a school resource officer was charged under this statute,” defense lawyer Mark Eiglarsh said during the hearing.

Eiglarsh read from numerous state laws that define a “caregiver,” one of which appears broad enough to include the former deputy and another that appears to explicitly exclude him. “This definition does not include the following persons when they are acting in an official capacity: Law enforcement officers,” he said, reading from one statute.

Prosecutors say courts have broadened the definition of caregiver to include, under specific circumstances, a teacher, a landlord, a baby sitter and even a kidnapper. Broward Circuit Judge Martin Fein asked Eiglarsh why he shouldn’t let a jury settle the question.

—South Florida Sun-Sentinel

EPA bans all food uses for the pesticide chlorpyrifos

WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced it will ban the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on all food in response to an appellate court ruling. The pesticide has been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders in children, including low birth weight and delayed motor development.

Chlorpyrifos is typically used on crops such as strawberries, apples, broccoli, citrus and corn.

The EPA issued a final rule revoking all tolerances, which establish the amounts of the pesticide allowed on food, and said it will also issue a notice of intent to cancel all registered food uses under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act.

“Today EPA is taking an overdue step to protect public health. Ending the use of chlorpyrifos on food will help to ensure children, farmworkers, and all people are protected from the potentially dangerous consequences of this pesticide,” Administrator Michael S. Regan said in a statement. “After the delays and denials of the prior administration, EPA will follow the science and put health and safety first.”

In April, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court ruled that the EPA must issue a final rule in response to a petition to revoke all food tolerances first filed in 2007 by the Pesticide Action Network North America and Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Obama administration proposed prohibiting the pesticide in 2015, but the Trump administration denied the petition in 2017and in 2019 further denied all objections raised in response. The court found EPA’s “egregious delay exposed a generation of American children to unsafe levels of chlorpyrifos.”

The EPA said in light of the decision it determined that current aggregate exposures from the use of chlorpyrifos do not meet the legally required standards “that there is a reasonable certainty that no harm will result from such exposures.”

—CQ-Roll Call

Pope Francis urges people in US, Latin America to get vaccinated

Pope Francis is encouraging people in the Americas to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

The head of the Catholic Church is joining six cardinals and archbishops from the United States and Latin America in a video to encourage coronavirus vaccinations, calling it “an act of love.”

“Thanks to God’s grace and to the work of many, we now have vaccines to protect us from COVID-19,” the Argentine-born pontiff says in his native Spanish in a short video produced by the Ad Council and the COVID Collaborative.

“They bring hope to end the pandemic, but only if they are available to all and if we collaborate with one another,” he added.

In the three-minute video, titled “Unity Across the Americas,” leaders of the Catholic Church — representing the U.S., Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Peru and Brazil — join the 84-year-old pope to convey a message that vaccines bring hope and that they are the best way to protect people from a deadly disease.

“Getting the vaccines that are authorized by the respective authorities is an act of love. And helping the majority of people to do so, is an act of love. Love for oneself, love for our families and friends, and love for all peoples,” Francis continued.

“Love is also social and political ... it is universal, always overflowing with small individual gestures capable of transforming and improving societies,” he added.

The PSA, delivered in Spanish, Portuguese and English, was made in cooperation with the Vatican’s Dicastery for Integral Human Development, and it’s a part of the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative’s groundbreaking COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative.

—New York Daily News