2 SWAT Officers Suspended After Running In At Parkland Massacre

The police response to the mass shooting at the school – specifically that of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office – has been highly criticized for the incident commander’s failure to use updated active-shooter response methods.

Broward County Sheriff’s Captain Jan Jordan has been criticized for ordering officers to set up a perimeter rather than sending them in to stop the shooter, whose whereabouts were still unknown.

Several police officers and medics have reported that they believed more lives were lost because the incident commander wouldn’t let them respond earlier.

Some critics have called the officers who stayed outside and waited for permission to enter “cowards,” but now Miramar police are punishing two members of their own elite unit who did rush toward danger to try to save students’ lives.

Miramar Police Detectives Jeffrey Gilbert and Carl Schlosser were suspended from the Miramar SWAT team eight days after the shooting in Parkland, according to the Miami Herald.

Both remain on active duty with the department, but working in different capacities, the Sun-Sentinel reported.

“Effective immediately you have been suspended from the SWAT Team until further notice,” Miramar SWAT team commander Captain Kevin Nosowicz wrote in a Feb. 22 memo. “Please make arrangements with the training department to turn in your SWAT-issued rifle.”

The memo said Det. Gilbert and Det. Schlosser acted “without the knowledge or authorization from your chain of command” and created an “officer safety situation due to dispatch not knowing your location or activity” by heading to the massacre-in-progress independently.

A Miramar PD spokesperson told Blue Lives Matter, “Miramar PD had numerous officers and a victim advocate respond, without incident. The two SWAT officers temporarily suspended from the SWAT team, but not active duty, were not suspended for responding, but for NOT advising that they responded. They did not advise prior to self-dispatching, during the incident, nor immediately following. This is an officer safety issue, a violation of policy and goes against incident command training and the best practices learned from other mass casualty / shooting incidents.”

The Broward County police union disagreed strongly with discipline being levied against the detectives.

“While it may have been a violation of policy to not notify their supervisors that they were going there, their intentions were brave and heroic, I think,” Broward County Police Benevolent Association (PBA) President Jeff Marano told the Sun-Sentinel on Wednesday.