SUNRISE, FLA. (WSVN) - SUNRISE, Fla. (WSVN) — The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission determined that a Broward County Public School’s criminal justice diversion program was not relevant to the Feb. 14 massacre.
Despite clearing the program, the commission said it still has its issues and met to discuss them at the BB&T Center in Sunrise, Tuesday.
“We got to figure out how to get all the right information in the right system so that the community-based systems in the schools are talking,” said Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the commission’s chairman, “and that everybody in the schools and in the community has access to all that information so that we can make a good decision regarding the kid.”
Known as PROMISE, the program stands for Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Support and Education.
The program allows students who commit minor offenses to avoid being arrested. However, a state law requires school districts to enter the diversion pre-arrest information to a database.
BCPS said too much information was being entered into the database, which caused confusion.
“We are doing everything we can to collaborate in the appropriate way,” said a representative for the school district. “We can argue about whether a diversion program is with a capital D or a small d, Capital D being statutory. We will comply with making sure that our records are available.”
The school district said the public database makes students more prone to arrests, so it reclassified the PROMISE program to a pre-diversion program, which some have said was done to skirt the law.
“You embarrass yourself when you say the PROMISE program is not a diversion program and that was published,” said Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, “and it is a diversion program, so help the superintendent stop embarrassing the school system.”
“If a kid commits a crime, whatever that crime is — a battery, a theft, a possession of marijuana, criminal mischief — whatever it is, if they’re getting something other than arrest for committing a criminal act, it’s a diversion,” added Gualtieri. “You can call it whatever you want. You can put any label you want on it. You can call it by any name. You can spin around nine times, and you can pretend it’s not, but it is a diversion. Period.”
The Broward County State Attorney’s Office said there has been a lot of confusion regarding the program and that they want things to be clearer.
“Things were being referred to PROMISE that perhaps should not have been, and the follow-through was lacking,” said Assistant State Attorney Maria Schneider. “If they want to refer students to the PROMISE program for disciplinary purposes, they should, but then they should call it something else.”
A lot of work needs to be done with the program, and the MSD Commission believes it is the first step in the right direction.
“We narrowed the issues. Did we come up with any for-sure solutions? Maybe not today, but I think we got closer,” said Gualtieri.
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