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Cowardly Parkland Cop Nets $8,700 Per Month Pension, $3,000 More Than Average Cop's Salary

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Crime might not pay, but cowering can.

The Broward County sheriff’s deputy who waited impotently outside the high school in Parkland, Florida, where a crazed gunman slaughtered 14 children and three adults in February, is enjoying a six-figure annual pension thanks to his 32 years in uniform before the mass killing, news outlets reported this week.

And the victims’ families are furious.

According to the Sun-Sentinel, Scot Peterson, the school resource office on duty at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, has already started receiving a state pension of $8,700 a month after putting in his retirement papers less than a week after the killings.

That comes out to more than $100,000 per year, which is not bad at all for a 55-year-old man.

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And considering that, according to the law enforcement career information website DiscoverPolicing, the average salary for police officers and deputies in the U.S. is about $61,000 a year, Peterson in retirement is going to be bringing in more than $3,000 more per month than the men and women still risking their lives on the job.

The news infuriated the families of Stoneman Douglas students, who already had a pretty low opinion of the former sheriff’s deputy.

Andrew Pollack, who has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Peterson over the death of his daughter, Meadow, said the money would be better spent on improving security at schools.

“This guy is a disgrace. It doesn’t change when he looks in the mirror,” Pollack told the Sun-Sentinel. “He’s a disgrace and a coward.”

In a Twitter post, he went even further.

Another father of a Parkland shooting victim also took to social media to express his outrage at the cushy retirement Peterson’s getting from Florida taxpayers.

“This infuriates me in ways people cannot comprehend,” wrote Fred Guttenburg, whose daughter, Jaime, was also killed. “My daughter would still be alive if this person did his job.”

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Does this former deputy deserve a pension like this?
As CNN pointed out, Peterson was suspended without pay immediately after the shooting, and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel was reportedly considering firing him when he turned in his resignation.

Now that he’s safely retired, the checks are coming. Peterson received his first pension payment of $8,702.45 in April, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

Nice work if you can get it.

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Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro desk editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015.
Joe has spent more than 30 years as a reporter, copy editor and metro editor in newsrooms in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Florida. He's been with Liftable Media since 2015. Largely a product of Catholic schools, who discovered Ayn Rand in college, Joe is a lifelong newspaperman who learned enough about the trade to be skeptical of every word ever written. He was also lucky enough to have a job that didn't need a printing press to do it.
Birthplace
Philadelphia
Nationality
American




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