Scott Israel (born 1956 or 1957) is an American law enforcement officer in Florida, and the former Broward County Sheriff.
Israel was chief of police in North Bay Village, Florida, from 2004 to 2008, during which time he was named Police Chief of the Year in Miami Dade County. He later served as the 16th sheriff of the 6,000-member Sheriff's Office in Broward County, Florida, from 2013 until 2019. In 2016, Broward County voters re-elected Israel as Sheriff with 72% of the vote - the largest electoral win for a Broward County Sheriff in 80 years.
He has been outspoken regarding gun violence and gun control, and opposed open carry legislation. Israel called for a ban on assault rifles to be reinstated, and said that he does not believe that people with mental illness should have access to firearms. His views made him a target of conservatives across the nation, in part due to his criticism of the National Rifle Association, and what he considers to be lax gun laws.
The Parkland high school shooting occurred in his jurisdiction in February 2018 while he was Broward County Sheriff, and his department and deputies were criticized. Newly elected Florida governor Ron DeSantis suspended him three days after taking office 11 months later. Israel appealed to the Florida Senate, which appointed J. Dudley Goodlette (R), a former member of the Florida House of Representatives, to serve as Special Master and hear testimony and evidence with regard to the propriety of the suspension. After Goodlette conducted a trial, he issued his report in September 2019, finding that Israel's removal by the governor had been improper, and recommending that Israel be reinstated. Nevertheless, in October 2019, the Florida Senate voted to confirm Israel's suspension.
Early and personal life Israel was born in New York, raised in the Bronx and in Baldwin, Long Island, and is Jewish. His father Maurice "Sonny" Israel (May 31, 1928 – June 1, 2006) fought in the Korean War as a US Marines sergeant (1950–1954), and was a New York City homicide detective and a Palm Beach Sheriff's Office deputy with a combined 44 years of service.
Scott Israel attended Baldwin High School. He earned his bachelor's degree in political science and government at SUNY Cortland ('77), and played quarterback in college football there. He then took a course of study at the FBI National Academy.
His wife Susan is Christian, and they raised their triplets (Brett, Blake, and Blair) with extensive exposure to both faiths. The triplets were all bar/bat mitzvahed, and when they became adults he said: "they each have the free choice to decide their own faith." In school, Brett was a starting quarterback for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Blake was a midfielder for the lacrosse team and a safety for the football team, and Blair was a sprinter on the track team.
Career Fort Lauderdale Police Department (1979-2004) He became a patrol officer for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in 1979. Israel later worked undercover in narcotics, and served as a SWAT team commander, before retiring from the department as a captain in 2004. In the 1980s he was investigated for ten incidents by the department’s Internal Affairs division. None of the complaints were sustained, however, and the department eventually destroyed the old files. During his career with the department, he received 59 letters of commendation.
North Bay Village Chief of Police (2004-2008) From 2004 to 2008, Israel was the chief of police in North Bay Village, Florida. He was named Police Chief of the Year in Miami Dade County. Israel resigned that position in 2008 to run for Sheriff as the Democratic nominee, but narrowly lost the general election to the incumbent Republican sheriff whose campaign outspent his by approximately $200,000.
Broward County Sheriff (2013-2019) First term Israel, running as a Democrat, was elected Broward County Sheriff in 2012, defeating incumbent Sheriff Al Lamberti (R) by a 53% to 47% vote. In the campaign, Lamberti outspent Israel by approximately $460,000. Israel was the first Jewish sheriff in Broward County history, and the second in Florida's history. The department has 6,000 members, and the county had nearly two million residents.
In May 2015, Israel said that he was concerned with the nationwide increase in shootings of unarmed men, and that he had told his deputies that if any of them shot an unarmed suspect, they would have to answer to him.
That same year, Israel began to implement a plan for all 1,500 uniformed deputies to wear body cameras, a program which was fully implemented by the end of 2016. During Israel's tenure as Sheriff, burglaries dropped 42% in BSO-patrolled areas (from 5,556 to 3,210), and violent crime dropped nearly 20% (from 23,983 incidents to 19,564). He also increased diversity among BSO personnel, increasing the percentage of Asian, Hispanic, and African-American deputies; and stressed the concept of community policing. Israel also expanded the use of juvenile civil citations (instead of criminal arrests), making their issuance mandatory to all eligible youth, in order to help keep juveniles out of the criminal justice system and give them second chances.
He is known for being outspoken regarding gun violence and gun control, and opposed open carry legislation. During his first term, Israel built a record of being the most progressive sheriff in Florida with his approach to body cameras and civil citations for juveniles.
Second term In 2016, Broward County voters re-elected Israel as Sheriff with 72% of the vote - the largest electoral win for a Broward County Sheriff in 80 years.
At the same time, Israel was a target of conservatives across the nation and the National Rifle Association (NRA), in part due to his vocal criticism of the NRA and what he considered lax gun laws. During a CNN town hall in February 2018, he told an NRA spokeswoman that the NRA was obstructing the police’s ability to keep people safe.
Fort Lauderdale airport shooting
In the January 2017 Fort Lauderdale airport shooting, a mentally ill shooter flew to Florida from Alaska and using a legally purchased Walther PPS 9mm semi-automatic pistol, legally checked in his luggage, without warning opened fire in the airport. He killed five people and injured six others.Matthew Lippman (2019). Essential Criminal Law J. Dudley Goodlette (September 24, 2019). "Report and Recommendation of Special Master," The Florida Senate.
A Broward County Sheriff's Office deputy in the terminal immediately responded by running to the sound of gunfire, apprehending the suspect within 85 seconds after it began. The following year, he was named Deputy of the Year by the Florida Sheriffs Association. The deputy had been trained to react immediately to an active shooter, and said: "I was basically going, reacting, what I was trained to do. So I went towards the shooting." The other responding BSO officers also reacted in a manner that the Special Master who was appointed to review the law enforcement response, former Florida Senate President J. Dudley Goodlette, later said was "textbook." The Special Master found that the shooting "was not preventable by Sheriff Israel or anyone else".
The BSO's after-action report did not find any negligence on the part of Israel. It did, however, criticize the agency for failing to take control due to leadership issues from the incident commander (a colonel) on the scene, and problems with Broward County's failing radio communications system which was controlled by the county rather than the sheriff's office, which was one of its many users."Petition for Writ of Quo Warranto," Israel v. DeSantis, Circuit Court of the 17th Judicial Circuit of Florida, March 7, 2019.
The Senate's Special Master J. Dudley Goodlette, who examined all the evidence of the incident in a two-day evidentiary hearing, said no evidence supported the notion that the shooting and later chaos could have been avoided with better BSO training and preparation.
After the shooting, Israel called for a ban on assault rifles to be reinstated, and said that he didn't believe that people with mental illness should have access to firearms. He said: "All I'm going to do is speak my mind. If I'm on an island, I'm on an island. I'm not going to worry about who is with me or who is not."
Parkland high school shooting
On February 14, 2018, a 19-year-old shooter, armed with a semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle that he had purchased legally, entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and opened fire on students and staff.Jack Buckby (2020). Monster of Their Own Making; How the Far Left, the Media, and Politicians are Creating Far-Right Extremists He murdered 17 people, and injured 17 others, shooting 140 rounds in less than six minutes. In the aftermath of the shooting, Sheriff Israel came under scrutiny for both the actions of his deputies and what was seen by some as his department's failure to act sufficiently in reaction to warning signs about shooter and former student Nikolas Cruz.
During the shooting, a 32-year veteran armed sheriff's deputy (Scot Peterson) arrived at the school within two minutes of the start of the shooting, but did not enter the building or peer in its windows, and instead retreated to another building and hid for 48 minutes, while telling other deputies to stay at least from the building. Afterward Israel criticized the deputy, saying that he should have "went in, addressed the killer, killed the killer". It was later discovered that there may have been at least two other deputies, who arrived later, who also did not enter the building. Coral Springs police officers who arrived at the scene were surprised to find that the deputies still had not entered the building. A Florida sheriff on the panel said that several of the Broward deputies on the scene failed to take command, and seemed disengaged or were distracted or failed to act at all, driving back and forth outside the school during the shooting. This led to disciplinary action against additional deputies. As to Israel, the Special Master tasked with reviewing his suspension, who recommended that the suspension was inappropriate, found "Sheriff Israel does not (and cannot) supervise each deputy." The Special Master noted that the BSO had 5,600 budgeted positions.
Israel said his agency had received 23 calls involving the killer in some way over the prior several years, as well as calls relating to his brother. With regard to some of the calls, handled both in person and by phone, deputies met with Cruz’s mother. The Broward Sheriff Office stated on February 24, 2018: "Since 2008, BSO responded to 23 incidents where previous contact was made with the killer or his family."Tweet , Broward Sheriff, February 24, 2018. Through a public records request, CNN found that the sheriff's department had received 19 calls relating to Cruz himself (some when Cruz was as young as nine years old; they ranged from a call to the police reporting that Cruz was cursing, to a call saying he had shot a chicken with a BB gun). A total of 45 calls related to the Cruz home, Cruz or his brother (his brother was the subject of the majority of the calls), over the prior decade. The majority of the calls resulted in no written report.