Jewish sheriff reacts to shooting in his county

As he leads the police response to the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel is the county’s first Jewish sheriff. A 2016 campaign flier reported on that year by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel centers on the role that faith in general, and Judaism in particular, plays in his life.
“My Jewish faith is a central part of my entire life,” the flier quotes Israel as saying.
“My late father Sonny Israel fought in the Korean War and became a police officer because he believed in the call from the Talmud that ‘Whoever saves one life saves an entire world.’ Those words guided my brother and I, as we also became police officers.”
At the same time, Israel said he is as comfortable in churches as in synagogues.
Israel is the sheriff in charge of the area that includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 faculty members and students were killed by a 19-year-old, Nikolas Cruz, Feb. 14.
Israel’s children, triplets, had attended the school. In a video recorded by a local NBC affiliate, he called the mass shooting a “horrific, homicidal, detestable act.”

Source:  ijn