When Nikolas Cruz, the alleged gunman in the 21st century’s version of the “St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,” began shooting at his former schoolmates in Parkland, Florida, two security guards were in the vicinity.
One, Aaron Feis, was unarmed and rushed toward the gunman, eventually giving his own life shielding students from the bullets. The other, Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, was armed but stayed outside the school until the carnage was over, his supervisors say.
Feis, who also worked as an assistant football coach at the school, is being rightfully hailed as a hero. Peterson is being harshly portrayed as anything but. President Donald Trump, echoing most probably the sentiments of many Americans, pronounced Peterson a “coward” or someone who “didn’t react properly under pressure.”
Both of these men’s lives and their reactions during those chaotic early minutes of the mass shooting would make an interesting movie. Someone will probably tackle one or both of the subjects some day.
What Peterson deserves, however, is not vilification but sympathy. He is also a victim of that massacre. He will be haunted most likely for the rest of his life by failing to live up to what was expected of him by his law enforcement comrades, by society and, most likely, by himself.
Chances are Peterson, as anyone in law enforcement must, had played out in his mind what he would do if forced to deal with an active shooter. Odds are as well that Peterson would not have imagined himself hunkering down outside for four excruciating minutes while bullets were flying and defenseless people, mostly children, were dying inside.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when Peterson’s reaction would have been textbook law-enforcement policy. Outgunned officers were trained to wait for backup, such as better-equipped SWAT units, rather than try to take out a threat themselves. That changed, as USA Today reported, after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. Now officers are trained, no matter the firearms or tactical disadvantage, to immediately go toward gunfire, as research shows that mass shooters, when confronted quickly by law enforcement, usually kill fewer people.
But it’s also asking the outgunned, solo officer to be the sacrificial lamb. The same USA Today article cited a Texas State University study of 84 active-shooter incidents from 2000 to 2010. One third of the time when a lone officer responded, the officer was shot, sometimes fatally.
Jesus, in his farewell discourse with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion, said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
Jesus’ definition of “friends” almost certainly would have been broad, covering not just the people we intimately know, but most of our fellow travelers in this world. After all, he gave his own life for all mankind, both sinners and saints.
But Jesus also would have known how terribly hard what he was asking is. To sacrifice one’s own life for others goes against the strongest, most primal instinct not just in mankind, but all animal life. The species have survived these hundreds of millions of years because they are wired to put self-preservation over every other impulse. It’s why when there is danger, most people run away from it, not toward it.
President Trump should be careful about rendering judgment on anyone’s perceived lack of bravery in the face of an imminent mortal threat. The closest Trump came to facing such a choice occurred when he was a young man and his fellow Americans were dying over in Vietnam. Over an eight-year span in the 1960s and early 1970s, Trump applied for and got five deferments, four for continuing his education and the last one for bad feet. He did what lots of other kids from wealthy families did during the draft era. They used every avenue available to avoid that war, possibly because they thought it was unjust but mostly because they worried about their own skin.
Trump had years to contemplate whether to jeopardize his life to possibly save others. Peterson had minutes to decide. That the deputy flinched should not, of all people, surprise our president.
Most of us are luckily spared from making these life and death choices. It’s a tribute to those who serve in the military or work in law enforcement or other areas of public safety that so many of them, even when scared to death, will still put their lives on the line rather than run to safety.
All of us like to think, or at least hope, that we would do the same. But until you are faced with mortal danger, until you are asked to suppress your own instinct for self-preservation to save someone else, you don’t really know whether you can do it.
It is certainly unkind — and arguably unfair — to call Peterson a coward for how he acted during the Parkland shooting. True, he wasn’t a hero. But what he was was mostly human.
Contact Tim Kalich at 581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
