Two school officials in Broward County, Florida, including Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, have been arrested in connection with a major jury investigation into the district.
Robert Runcie, who came to the district from Chicago in 2011 and had numerous ties to the Obama administration, is accused of making unspecified false statements under oath to the grand jury investigating school safety under the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act, possible misuse of state security funds and fraud.
The act was carried out in response to the deadly shooting at Parkland School that killed 17 and 17 injured on Valentine’s Day 2018. Toe government. Rick Scott signed the new measures in March 2018.
Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie is accused of making unspecified false statements under oath to the grand jury, which is investigating the safety of the school under the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Act.
(Joe Cavaretta / Sun Sentinel / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
The single perjury in an official charge is a third-degree offense.
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He did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment, but his lawyers said in a statement that politics were to blame for the arrest and that he would plead not guilty.
“We are confident he will be acquitted,” they said.
Authorities did not immediately disclose how Runcie allegedly distorted himself – a fact his attorneys cited as arguing he would work and would continue to cooperate with the investigation.
Runcie’s critics claim that crimes, bullying and other problems have been regularly reported to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and other district schools, and few have done voluntary safety assessments. These issues fall only within the scope of the investigation of the grand jury.
And Barbara Myrick, the district attorney, is charged with illegally disclosing secret proceedings of the jury, also a third-degree offense.
The Florida Department of Legislation arrested them both early Wednesday in the district’s administrative building, but neither was named in custody later that day.
Rosalind Osgood, chairwoman of the Broward County School Board, did not immediately respond to a Fox News request for comment on the arrests. But in a statement released earlier in the day, she said the district would continue with normal operations for the time being.
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Runcie, Broward’s first black superintendent, joined the district in 2011 after visiting Harvard and Northwestern Universities and spending his early career in business.
He moved to the field of education in the early 2000s and was chief of staff at the Chicago Board of Education, where he liaised with Obama administration officials Rahm Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff and then mayor of Windy City, and Arne Duncan, who left the schools of the city to become the US Secretary of Education.
He is admitted to having increased the graduation ceremony of the Broward County School District. But critics have also targeted his indulgent disciplinary policies, such as allowing Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz to briefly attend Stoneman Douglas a year before the massacre, despite a history of violent behavioral problems.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.