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EDITORIAL: PROMISE program cleared, but changes necessary | Editorial

South Florida Sun Sentinel - 7/13/2018

July 12--Though the PROMISE program did not enable the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, investigations of the shooting have shown why the Broward school district needs to reform it.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who chairs the state commission investigating the shooting, says it has found nothing on Nikolas Cruz's record that would have prevented him from buying the AR-15 he used to kill 17 people and wound 17 others on Valentine's Day.

The idea of a link between PROMISE and the shooting, Gualtieri said, "is something we can put to rest and move on from."

"It's completely irrelevant. It's a rabbit hole. It's a red herring. It's immaterial. And that's why we're taking it off the table and the community needs to know that that has nothing to do with what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14."

The conclusion was not surprising. A month ago, Gualtieri said that PROMISE -- Preventing Recidivism through Opportunities, Mentoring, Interventions, Supports and Education -- didn't have "a hill of beans to do with the outcome of this."

Still, the conclusion matters.

Immediately after the shooting, right-wing commentators blamed the tragedy on the diversion program that the Obama administration had praised as a way to modernize school discipline. President Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio piled on. Conservative websites conducted their own examinations.

National Review quoted one of those "investigations." It alleged that Cruz "was able to escape the attention of law enforcement, pass a background check and purchase the weapon he used to slaughter three staff members and 14 fellow students because of Obama administration efforts to make school discipline more lenient."

In fact, that's wrong.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, one of Florida's most conservative sheriffs, agreed with Gualtieri. Judd called PROMISE "a train wreck," but also dismissed the program as a cause of the shooting.

The premise behind the counseling-and-mentoring program is sound. It seeks to divert students arrested for in-school misdemeanors from the criminal justice system and thus avoid a record that could limit their future. In that sense, it's the same as diversion programs for adults who commit misdemeanor domestic violence.

Broward had good reason for adopting the program in 2013. During the previous year, the county had the highest number of in-school arrests in Florida. Yelling in class had become disorderly conduct.

Neither did the school district act alone. It worked with the offices of the state attorney, sheriff and public defender, as well as the chief judge and the NAACP. The agreement made clear that diversion would apply only to 13 misdemeanors. Felonies wouldn't qualify.

After the shooting, Superintendent Robert Runcie hurt the program's credibility by insisting Cruz had not been in it, when in fact he had. The commission's investigation also found the program had lost track of Cruz.

PROMISE will be an issue in this year's school board election. Broward sheriff's deputies endorsed District 6 challenger Richard Mendelson -- a former Stoneman Douglas teacher -- in large part because he has criticized the program.

Still, perspective is necessary. The commission found "no evidence that PROMISE is being used to divert prolific or high recidivist offenders." Neither did it find evidence that referring the same student multiple times had compromised safety.

Some changes, however, are needed.

As the Sun Sentinel first reported, a student can commit a second offense without being considered a repeat offender, as long as it's not the exact same violation, in the exact same year. And the next year, they start with a clean slate.

It makes no sense to give misbehaving students a reset every year. Offenses should carry over to populate any emerging picture. The commission report notes that while PROMISE is "largely consistent" with state civil citation programs, that "reset is unique."

Broward school board members have already signaled their intent to change that feature. They also want to prevent students from entering the program after a third offense. So, too, should they reconsider the rules for sharing information with police and better document discipline incidents.

In May, we criticized as premature the $24,000 raise awarded the director of the PROMISE program. That criticism still seems justified, given how the program lost track of Cruz. There's also reason to question the claim that 89 percent of participants didn't commit a repeat offense last year, given how narrowly the program defines a repeat offense.

In the end, 17 people died at Stoneman Douglas not because of the PROMISE program, but because of missed signals, dropped balls and loose gun laws that facilitated a young man bent on evil.

Nevertheless, this diversion program needs work, not only for the students it seeks to help, but for the community it seeks to serve.

Editorials are the opinion of the Sun Sentinel Editorial Board and written by one of its members or a designee. The Editorial Board consists of Editorial Page Editor Rosemary O'Hara, Andy Reid and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson.

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(c)2018 the Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)

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