FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ The controversy over the ouster of former Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel spilled into a meeting Thursday of the state commission investigating the Parkland school massacre.
Max Schachter, whose 14-year-old son Alex was killed in the attack, expressed anger at senators who voted to reinstate the sheriff last week during a special session of the state Legislature. Those senators lost, with the majority backing Gov. Ron DeSantis' decision to remove Israel.
Schachter said at least two senators falsely claimed that the state commission investigating the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School had voted against recommending the sheriff's removal.
"During the hearing last week concerning the former sheriff, Scott Israel, it was mentioned by different senators that we debated and voted not to recommend the removal of Scott Israel," he said Thursday morning, during a telephone conference call held to finalize the commission's latest report. "I do not remember that at all. I would like to know if that is true. Did we debate and did we vote not to recommend Scott Israel's removal as a finding and recommendation?"
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, chairman of the commission, confirmed that there had not been such a vote. Schachter attacked the senators, who he did not name during the meeting, for claiming there had been.
"I found it completely upsetting that two different senators would go to that extent and say that. That's not true," he said. "I personally took it as an affront to all the days, hours and months that I have dedicated to investigating the truth behind how and why my little boy was murdered, and I'd like an apology from those two senators that chose to be dishonest for purely political reasons."
The Senate voted 25-14, mostly along party lines, to uphold the governor's decision to remove him over law enforcement failures in the Parkland shooting. All five Broward senators voted to reinstate Israel.
One senator who made that claim about the Stoneman Douglas commission was Sen. Perry Thurston, a Fort Lauderdale Democrat. He asserted in debate on the Senate floor last week that the Stoneman Douglas commission had voted against recommending Israel's removal, noting the commission had taken extensive testimony and gone through "thousands and thousands of pages" of documents.
"When the issue came up of removing the sheriff, they unanimously voted not to," Thurston said. "So we're going to second-guess them? We're going to disregard them?"
Sen. Lauren Book, a member of the commission and a Broward Democrat who had voted against ousting Israel, angering many Parkland parents, said during the Senate debate that the commission had discussed the sheriff's removal but never voted on it.
"Mr. Schachter, I want to make sure that I'm very, very clear. I can't speak for any other member of the Florida Senate. I never said, nor did I suggest, that we took a vote on it," she said. "What I did say was that it was something that was discussed at the commission meetings and that it would not have been sustained. That was all that I said.
"I apologize if you feel that that is somehow disrespectful or not a representation of what you know to be true," Book said. "For that I'm very sorry. But I can't speak for any other member of the Florida Senate."
