Broward County’s school superintendent was arrested Wednesday morning on a charge of lying to a statewide grand jury.
Robert Runcie, who briefly flashed into the national spotlight three years ago following the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, stands accused of one count of perjury for allegedly lying to the panel as it investigated the implementation of school safety laws.
That probe included looking at whether school systems and education officials committed fraud by taking state funding intended for safety initiatives and either didn’t spend for that or diverted it to other programs, according to the indictment.
It also says the grand jury was investigating whether school officials under-reported crime data to the state Department of Education.
What Runcie allegedly lied about is not detailed in court records.
In a tweet, Kyle Kashuv, a former Douglas High student who survived the February 2018 massacre and then became a proponent for Second Amendment rights, tweeted in response, “I’m asking everyone who follows me to share this story. Three years ago a monster killed 17 people at my High School. Local officials’ corruption allowed it to happen. Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie arrested on a perjury charge. Justice.”
Runcie was a proponent of Broward County’s PROMISE program, which allowed students who committed misdemeanor crimes to be diverted to an alternative school instead of the criminal justice system. Critics argued that allowed them to elude the attention of law enforcement.
The accused shooter in the Douglas High massacre, Nikolas Cruz, was referred to the PROMISE program.
But Runcie and other school officials lied about that.
“Nikolas Cruz, the shooter that was involved in this horrific accident at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, had no connection to the PROMISE program,” Runcie told local media in a 2018 interview.
A month later, the school district acknowledged that Cruz had been sent to the program after vandalizing a school restroom a few years earlier.
A special state commission established to investigate the shooting, which was chaired by Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, and which includes Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd as a member, recommended that PROMISE be shut down.
On Wednesday, the Broward school system’s general counsel, Barbara Myrick, was also arrested for unlawfully leaking grand jury proceedings.
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