I need to be upfront with you before you read another word. I am not a neutral observer of this story. My son Alex was murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and I am one of the more than 50 plaintiffs in the case I am about to describe. What follows is my perspective as a father who has spent 8 years waiting. But the legal principle underneath it belongs to everyone reading this, especially those of you who wear a badge.
On July 30, Florida's 4th District Court of Appeal ruled that the Broward Sheriff's Office must face a jury over how its deputies responded the day 17 students and staff were killed and 17 more were wounded. The agency had argued that sovereign immunity shielded it entirely. The court disagreed. Jury selection is set for March 17, 2027.
8 years. That is how long it has taken to get to the point where a jury simply hears the facts.
Here is the part I want every chief, sheriff, and agency counsel in America to sit with, because it matters far beyond Broward County.
The court distinguished between two different things. An agency's written policies and procedures, which are discretionary planning decisions and do carry immunity. And how officers actually behave in an emergency, which is operational conduct and does not.
In plain terms: having the right active shooter policy in a binder does not protect you if your people do not execute it when it counts. The document is not the defense. The response is.
I think that is exactly right, and I think it should change how agencies think about readiness. If immunity attached to paperwork, the incentive would be to write a beautiful policy and never test it. This ruling puts the weight where it belongs, on training, on drilling, on command discipline in the first four minutes, on whether an officer moves toward the sound of gunfire.
Most people know the story of the school resource deputy who stayed outside. He was acquitted of criminal charges in 2023 and remains a defendant in this civil case. But the public conversation has fixated on one man, and that has quietly let a much bigger failure go unexamined.
It was not one deputy. Other deputies arrived on scene and also did not enter the building. That is the case we want a jury to see, the full picture of what the agency did and did not do that afternoon, not a single name used as a lightning rod.
And here is what I keep coming back to. Sheriff Gregory Tony has publicly acknowledged that his deputies failed during the Parkland school shooting. He said it out loud. Yet for 8 years his agency has filed motion after motion to delay our case and have it dismissed. You cannot admit the failure in a press conference and then spend nearly a decade arguing that no jury should ever hear about it.
To be fair, the sheriff did not lead the agency in 2018, and BSO has said its filings were well founded in Florida law and not intended to cause delay. Readers can weigh that. What is not in dispute is the calendar. Other institutions connected to this tragedy resolved their cases with our families years ago. BSO is the last one standing, and we are only now getting a trial date.
Some people hear a lawsuit against a sheriff's office and assume it is about anger, or money, or blaming police. It is not. I have worked alongside law enforcement for 8 years. Some of the finest people I know are SROs and first responders who would have run into that building without a second thought, and who are furious about what happened in Broward precisely because they know better.
Accountability is not the opposite of supporting law enforcement. It is what makes trust possible. When an agency fails catastrophically and nothing is ever examined in the open, two things happen. The public stops believing the next reassurance. And the agency loses its most valuable teacher, which is an honest, public accounting of what went wrong.
This is the same argument I make about data every week. Transparency is a safety measure. A trial is just transparency with a jury box.
If you lead or advise an agency, take the court's distinction seriously and ask one question: when was the last time we tested our active assault response under realistic conditions, not on paper? Immunity may cover the policy you wrote. It will not cover what your officers actually do in the first four minutes. Document the training, not just the plan.
I would trade every ruling, every headline, and every day in court for one more afternoon with my son. Since I cannot have that, I will settle for the truth being told out loud, in front of a jury, at last. Accountability is finally coming.
For Alex. And for all of them.
Max Schachter
Per our No Notoriety commitment, the perpetrator is not named. Learn more about school safety at schoolsafetydashboard.org.