Tough Words For Sheriff Israel, Who Totally Deserves Them.

I’ve written before about this friend I have who is one of the most brilliant people I know, and  I’ve BEGGED him to write a book because his life experiences are so fascinating, and he has this incredibly frustrating habit of never allowing me or anyone else to credit him for the things he writes.  He’s always like, “Sure – you can share it.  But no attribution, please.”

FOR REAL.  He’s this impossible combination of brilliant, humble, happy to share his thoughts, but also deeply private.

I look forward to every FB post he writes, and I take those small doses of his written thoughts and eat them up.

Yesterday, I shared his thoughts about Scot Peterson’s inaction in Parkland, Florida on my own FB wall. BEHOLD:

The “this” he referred to was a link to the news story about Peterson failing to do his job.

I shared my friend’s words on Twitter and in our Facebook Group too.  And it got reshared a bunch, because it’s awesome.

Today?  Today he wrote this:

One note on the man who is now the most-loathed sheriff’s deputy in modern America, the real-life Timothy Upham of Parkland, Florida. He had enough time in service to have retired just a few days back, and that ought to give us pause as we direct opprobrium upon him. It is likely deserved — even as we should have the humility to see ourselves, even our worst selves, in his fatal hesitation — but it is also likely not the whole story. Men are products of many things: nature, history, circumstance, and culture. There is such a thing as an irredeemable person, and I have fallen short under the counsel of good men too often to be unaware of this truth.

There is also such a thing as an organization and a culture that gets precisely what it tolerates, which is rarely the same thing as what it proclaims. I have seen this often enough as well. In the moment of decision, the Broward County sheriff’s department had its man on the scene, and it was a man with sufficient years of service to put in for retirement. Those sufficient years also mean sufficient inculcation of institutional values, institutional behaviors, and institutional priorities. A man among the corporate masses in this sort of situation does not survive so long in such a modest position without becoming a willing bearer of all those things. He was an organization man, or he would not have been there. Let us understand that.

Let us therefore understand two things that come from this.

First, the performance of the Broward County Sheriff himself over the past several days, having first sought to blame external forces, and then yesterday having sought to blame one of his own subordinates, is the performance of a failed leader. Leadership accountability is difficult and sometimes requires assuming responsibility for events beyond your control — for example if one of your career men turns out to be a coward despite all best efforts. When that happens, though, the leader assumes that responsibility regardless. This is ownership and it requires the very thing lacking on the fatal day: courage.

It is for the citizenry of Broward County, Florida, to render judgment on him in his office.

Second, even in the most charitable interpretation of its leader and his actions, the Broward County sheriff’s office — having failed in various ways before, during, and after the massacre that was its supreme test — is a broken organization that requires at best wholesale reform or total disbandment. This doesn’t mean everyone within it is a poor performer: to the contrary, it is likely the majority are perfectly diligent and competent law-enforcement professionals. But good men are not sufficient to overcome bad culture. They deserve an institution worthy of their potential.

The question now is whether press and public will understand all this, and impose accountability where the leader will not.

I have the unfortunate answer to that question, and it’s a resounding NO. Everyone is far too focused now on doing completely pointless things like preventing people from buying AR15s until they’re 21 in Florida, and blaming the NRA for last week’s shooting (and basically any crime ever committed with a gun.)

My friend is eloquent and thoughtful, and I appreciate his posts so much, particularly because I’ve been the polar opposite of eloquent and thoughtful about this on Twitter, where I’ve tweeted at Sheriff Israel a few times telling him he’s a complete disgrace and that he needs to immediately resign.  Daisy and I have been talking endlessly on our show about how these school shootings are not a gun problem but a cultural problem, but to be honest, I hadn’t thought about the culture of the law enforcement institutions themselves, and it’s an excellent point.

Thoughts?