The more we hear about the Broward County Sheriff’s office (BSO), the more it appears to be a seething, effervescing cesspool of cronyism, inefficiency, duplicity, and stupidity.

There were 40+ contacts between law enforcement, including school resource officers, and the shooter. The shooter committed acts that could have had him charged with aggravated assault and barred from legally possessing a firearm. But the sheriff’s department appears to have pursued, in collusion with the school superintendent, a policy of tamping down juvenile arrests so they would have better statistics. Whether BSO deputies cowered outside or followed policy is basically immaterial.

If they were afraid to go in, then the department needs to be held to account for that leadership failure. If it was actual policy that kept them out of the area, leadership needs to be held responsible. No matter how you cut it, bad policy or bad leadership, 17 students and faculty died in what seems to have been a preventable attack.

And all the while Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel has done nothing but shift blame onto others and extol his own sterling qualities.

There are places, though, were sheriffs seem to realize that there is more to their job than going to conferences and getting their picture taken with Hillary Clinton.

This is an indictment and repudiation of everything we’ve learned about the BSO. Someone should tattoo this on Sheriff Israel’s ass so he can read it frequently.