My first thought while watching Sheriff Eric Flowers talk about school security during an interview with a TV news reporter from a West Palm Beach-based CBS affiliate earlier this month?
What in the name of Barney Fife is he doing?
There was Flowers – sounding too much like the bumbling deputy from “The Andy Griffith Show” – bragging about something nobody was supposed to know, just to make himself look smarter and tougher than everyone else.
“If they’re coming at us with an AR-15,” Flowers said, referring to potential school shooters, “we’re gonna return with the same or greater firepower.”
In other words: If a bad guy with a gun shows up at one of our schools, there will be a well-armed good guy ready to open fire.
In fact, Flowers went on to reveal that every school resource officer (SRO) and deputy is equipped with an AR-15 assault rifle that, during the school day, is stored in a safe in an on-campus office, where the weapon can be quickly accessed if needed.
The SROs take the rifles home at the end of the day – they’re enclosed in a carrying case, so students never see them – then bring them back to school each morning.
“Our folks are there to protect the kids,” Flowers said in the interview, during which he said the SROs are trained and prepared to confront the threat posed by school shooters.
“Us bringing guns to campuses only keeps the schools safer,” he added. “We’ve seen what happened in Parkland. We’ve seen what happened in Uvalde. Our folks are not gonna stand by and wait for something bad to happen to kids in Indian River County.”
While the practice of putting an AR-15 in every school might be cause for concern for some parents – the concept is, at the very least, controversial – there are credible arguments on both sides.
That’s a debate for another day, however.
What’s troubling is Flowers’ decision to announce to the world school-security measures that are discussed annually in closed-to-the-public meetings with School Board members and the district’s upper-tier administrators.
Those measures are supposed to be kept secret, and they should be.
I’ve spoken to military veterans and experienced law enforcement officers, and every one of them told me: There’s no good reason to tell enemy combatants the specific types of weaponry you have at your disposal, where those weapons are stored, or how and when they’re transported.
So why did Flowers do it?
Better yet: Why did he choose to disclose such sensitive information now?
And why didn’t he – if only as a professional courtesy – notify school district officials of his intention to go public?
I presented those questions to both Flowers and the Sheriff’s Office’s public information officer, Lt. Joe Abollo, over the weekend, but neither responded, despite the buzz the revelation created.
The video of Flowers’ interview is circulating on social media, and the story has been picked up by news outlets and websites across America as students return to school.
As you’d expect, even the National Rifle Association chimed in on Instagram with a “Hats off” to Flowers for “doing what’s right and protecting our students!”
Truth is, though, putting AR-15s in schools wasn’t Flowers’ idea.
Those assault rifles have been in our schools for the past two years, dating back to Flowers’ predecessor, Deryl Loar, a three-term sheriff who embraced the policy after discussions with his undersheriff – Jim Harpring, now the Indian River Shores town manager – and school district officials.
For those who don’t know: Harpring served on the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission, which was formed after the mass shooting in Parkland.
The School Board here approved the purchase of gun safes on campus in December 2019, when members voted to split the cost with the Sheriff’s Office and other local law enforcement agencies.
Prior to the installation of the safes, SROs kept rifles in their patrol cars, which were parked on campus. Now, SROs don’t need to leave the building to retrieve the rifles, which allow them to shoot more accurately from a greater distance.
Few school officials were aware the AR-15s were on campuses across the county, however. Not even School Superintendent David Moore knew they were there.
“The policy was in place before my arrival,” Moore said, “and nobody said anything to me.”
You can understand, then, why Moore and School Board members were stunned when they learned of Flowers’ interview, which left them both puzzled and concerned.
“I was not a happy camper,” School Board Chair Teri Barenborg said.
“I had no idea this was coming. I thought this was confidential information. I don’t think we should be having these conversations in public.”
She said school district officials meet at least once each year to discuss school security and, because the information is so sensitive, those sessions are always held behind closed doors in executive session.
“The reason those meetings are closed to the public and media,” School Board member Mara Schiff said, “is that we don’t want to advertise how we secure our schools.”
School Board Vice Chair Peggy Jones was alarmed by Flowers’ willingness to offer details about the weaponry at the schools, and she plans to address it when school officials meet with law enforcement leaders next month.
“I don’t know why he would do that,” she said. “I wonder how he would’ve felt if a School Board member had gone public with this information without consulting him.”
Fortunately, despite a rash of other on-campus disturbances last year, SROs haven’t needed to arm themselves with the AR-15s in the two years the safes have been in schools.
Hopefully, that won’t change.
And, perhaps, that was Flowers’ intent all along – to go on TV and scare off any would-be school shooters with macho talk about AR-15 assault rifles.
It’s fair to wonder, though, whether his decision to do the interview was an attempt to rehabilitate his image after his extramarital affair was publicly exposed and his deputies were involved in couple of questionable shootings.
Regardless of his motivation, Flowers, who talks so much about transparency, should have told Moore and Barenborg he was planning to shoot off his mouth about the AR-15s.
Maybe one of them would’ve convinced him to hold his fire.
