O.J. Simpson Detective Rips Broward Sheriff, School Resource Officer

Amid new revelations detailing the law enforcement breakdown that contributed to last month’s carnage during a mass shooting at a Florida high school, retired Los Angeles Police Department detective Mark Fuhrman on Friday blasted the sheriff and school resource officer.

New video released Thursday of the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, adds to the disturbing picture of school resource officer Scot Peterson avoiding the building where the slaughter was taking place.

In addition, Judicial Watch released portions of a Broward County Sheriff’s Office training manual it obtained through a Florida Sunshine Act public records request. This manual instructs officers to “confront the shooter” as soon as possible during an active-shooter situation and not wait for backup.

Fuhrman, who was one of the detectives on the O.J. Simpson murder case and now is a Fox News analyst, said on “The Laura Ingraham Show” that Sheriff Scott Israel deserves much of the blame.

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“Scott Israel is, you know, just by first blush, a terrible leader,” he said. “And the first reason he’s a terrible leader is because he tells everybody how great of a leader he is.”

Fuhrman also passed harsh judgment on Peterson, who resigned his job in the wake of the shooting.

“He wasn’t physically or mentally capable of doing that job,” he said. “He was waddling around with the 40 pounds he was carrying on his waistline and jumping in a golf cart … It’s tactically not correct.”

Fuhrman (pictured above) also criticized the sheriff’s captain who instructed arriving officers to stay outside the school.

“You have this idiot saying, let’s put this 500-foot perimeter around this,” he said. “I don’t know where this could possibly come from, but it starts at the top … I have a feeling that there’s a problem throughout this department.”

The apparent inadequate training at the department is obvious to anyone who works there, Fuhrman said.

“They also know if their training is lacking or it is insufficient, because they have associations with other agencies,” he said. “You have Coral Springs right next door. Coral Springs acted completely different than Broward County.”

Fuhrman said the problems exposed by the shooting response go far beyond Broward County, however. He said many law enforcement agencies have been diminished by an ethos that took hold in the 1980s.

Related: Training Manual Clearly Tells Florida Deputies to ‘Confront the Shooter’

“This is exactly what happened to law enforcement at the same time it happened to society, and we are paying the price,” he said.

Fuhrman said too many law enforcement agencies worry more about diversity hiring quotas than quality and excellence.

“It’s the largest problem,” he said. “Everybody gets a trophy; we’ll make concessions and exceptions for everybody so we can make everything color-coded. And everything just looks pretty under the Christmas tree. But, unfortunately, law enforcement isn’t an encounter group. It’s a war.”

PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter.