Studer Community Institute

Connecting with the community

January 26, 2014
/ Shannon Nickinson
/ community-dashboard

The numbers last year were Chip Simmons favor. He hopes -- with the help of the dedicated men and women on his police force -- to keep it that way in 2014. When the Pensacola Police Department turned in its 2013 crime data to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the numbers showed a 14 percent drop in crime overall from 2012; and 18 percent drop in violent crime. The drop -- the largest single yearly reduction in the city in more than 14 years -- was enough to earn Chief Simmons a top spot at Mayor Ashton Hayward’s recent morning media availability. “That’s a big deal,” Hayward said. “Public safety is the number thing that people ask me about whether we’re at a town hall meeting or on the street…. And our clearance rate is over 40 percent for 2013 and the state’s has been at 25 percent. Residential burglaries are down 39 percent. “That’s a very big accomplishment,” for the Pensacola police force, Hayward said. Simmons credited the mayor with being willing to free up money for overtime in the city budget to cover targeted patrols based on call volume, and a partnership with the Escambia Sheriff’s Office, the State Attorney’ Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms through the Gun Crimes Task Force. “We decide to do that, just as a test to see if it would work,” Simmons said at the media briefing. “It’s been so successful that the Sheriff (David) Morgan and I decided that we would just keep that thing going. We’ve put some bad guys in jail for a long time.” When he and I talked in office a couple of days later, he continued to praise the hard work of his officers and give them credit with for decrease. But after 27 years on the force, he knows the worm can turn. “We can be here today talking about the crime rate is down and tomorrow we could end up having some kind of incident,” he said. “That’s the nature of being a police officer.” He notes that 14 percent decrease overall is based on the department’s submission to FDLE is based upon the city’s population estimate from 2012. The rate could change a bit based on what population estimate FDLE uses, and Simmons says he doesn’t know how they arrive at their formula. “Overall reported crime is down and that’s what we’re going with,” he says. Q: What other things are crediting with the drop? I know you did some targeted patrols in certain neighborhoods. A: We think that controlling the drugs goes a long way toward controlling the other crimes, (such as) residential burglaries, (and) armed robberies. The street level drugs were our number 1 priority and then everything was a by-product of reducing that. Q: Some of the drug crime data is favorable, also. A: And what’s important to show is that we have a 6 percent increase in arrests. In the big picture, we took these initiatives where we had more officers on the street. The mayor and I discussed using overtime the past couple of years. We’ve applied for a grant to add $25,000 more to that for this year specifically and we will continue to use that in those areas to make sure that we don’t see another uptick. Q: If that continues is there going to be an increase in the budget because you can’t be on overtime forever. A: The grant has been a Department of Justice grant that has been available over the last couple of years, and that grant will be available at some level and next year and for some years after. The mayor also freed up money in the city budget for overtime to address the problem for an immediate impact. The federal grant is supplementing that so that we can continue it not just in the summer months but in the winter months as well. And it has allowed us to expand efforts toward residential burglaries. As we speak, we’ve had over the last two weeks two officers working in this overtime capacity in the areas off Scenic Highway because we noticed there were some residential burglaries, and that would not be possible without support of the administration and men and women of the police department. Q: You said you’ve been able to use data more effectively. Explain that please. A: We were able to use a data analyst to get the extra officer to areas where we need them. This is stuff that has been out for a long time and you would think that it is common sense to be honest with you, but now we (using it) to try to get on the trend a little earlier. I have a meeting with the captains every morning and we go over specific crimes that took place. Every burglary is mentioned so that all of divisions are aware of it, not just investigations or patrol, but neighborhood services as well...We felt like gun crime and residential burglaries were our two really high priorities. Q: Because you can make a dent in those presumably? A: We certainly wanted to make a dent in those…. We were able to combine that with the gun response team to track every weapon that is recovered in Escambia County. Q: How does that work? A: Historically, we have had our investigators handle cases in the city and the Sheriff’s Office handle cases in the county and the ATF handled from a federal level, the bigger level cases. We realized that these people who are inclined to use guns are not going to stop at a jurisdictional border. They don’t care if its in the city or county, they want to use that weapon for a drug ripoff or some sort of robbery. It’s good (now) that we’re all in the same room. Q: Is ATF in charge of that? A: Yes. All of their computer databases (now) are available on a local level. For us at the police department, that’s not happened before. ... ATF has tremendous databases to track weapons and where they came from and who’s supposed to have them or who bought them. [caption id="attachment_12869" align="alignright" width="300"]

Boxed guns in the Pensacola Police Department evidence room[/caption] Q: Any trends about where our stolen guns are coming from? A: My understanding is the ones that we are recovering are stolen locally in Escambia County…. And people would be surprised at the number of guns stolen throughout the area because people keep guns in cars and then they leave the cars unlocked and so people reach in there and grab a gun that’s there. There is just a tremendous number of firearms that are seized. Some of these cases are going federal. which mean even longer prison sentences….Now, these things go up and down. We may have family feud things going on, like we did in 2012, or neighborhood clashes. In 2013, that specific aspect has gone away. We have people who are angry with other people but it’s not to the degree that it was in 2012. We’re seeing the fruits of that labor now. Some of the violent people are off the streets. (With) drugs, someone always takes their place and the feeling is if there is money to be made or drugs to be sold, there’s going to be someone that’s willing to take that risk. It’s a dangerous game that they play and that’s why they have they have those firearms. Q: You’ve been on the force 27 years, and you’ve said you feel like there was more responsiveness from the public than ever before? What’s behind that? A: Social media and the way it is and our ability to share statistics. It allows us to communicate with neighborhood leaders, presidents of homeowners associations. The department has a Facebook page and post a lot of things there. We have crime reports that download every night at midnight. So you can go to our website, pull it up and see what happened. And if I know a burglary has taken place in my neighborhood I know to be a little more suspicious. To me, that the single greatest thing that enables that communication with our neighborhoods. Q: On the other hand, we’ve heard that in some neighborhoods, law enforcement isn’t getting enough communication. A: It’s an issue. On one hand we have neighbors who call us every time the cat jumps at something. And on the other hand we have bona fide violent crimes, homicides, that have taken place and no one knows anything. Q: But someone knows. A: No one tells anything, let’s put it that way. They tell us they know nothing but there’s no way, because it happened in crowd, or it happened where people knew where they were going and who they were meeting, but they’re not giving the information to us. Sheriff Morgan and I have met with a number of people and discussed this with them. If you know something you’ve got to help us. You’re letting this stuff tear apart your community. There are people that are fearful because you’re accepting this. There is CrimeStoppers where you can let us know anonymously and no one will know it is you. But there neighborhoods where no one will step forward and say, ‘Look for this guy. He was driving this car.” Little information like that can help. All of our investigators work very hard. If we just had a little information, we could put them in jail. Q: Is it an element of not trusting someone who doesn’t look like they do in a blue uniform? A: I’m not naive enough to dismiss that entirely….We have made inroads in diversity in the workforce. I think it’s more the blue uniform than the color of the officer’s skin. My senior captain (Capt. David Alexander III) is African-American and they’re not calling him either and he is over investigations. I think there is that don’t help the police mentality. It is an obstacle for us, and I think that it is one of the bigger obstacles in certain neighborhoods getting out of the situation that they are in…. dangerous people will remain there as long as people remain silent. Q: What do you do about that? A: In the 80s, that’s where we were with community policing, with the idea of letting people see an officer more, then they build that trust. That works to a degree. But you will hear law enforcement say that there comes a time when people have to help themselves and I agree with that to an extent. You have to be in a neighborhood and say, “We’re not going to tolerate this anymore.” Q: Even so, a 14 percent drop in crime, and an 18 percent drop in violent crime, is good news. A: Look at it in the context of what’s happening in Pensacola. There is much more of a positive vibe, and how much we are moving forward. Gallery Nights, which brings thousands of people, into downtown… The Blue Wahoos, during baseball season, bring thousands of people almost every night of the week to downtown. We have concerts and fireworks and festivals… We just had the Pelican Drop. I don’t know that we made a single arrest during the Pelican Drop. I left at 1 a.m. and we hadn’t made any arrests, maybe we made a couple later than that. We had some drunks that we dealt with. But people need to know that you can go to events, or a ballgame, or to eat and feel safe. So if you measure the reduction in terms of how many people are downtown, I think it’s even a little better.

Q: For example, I don’t think I am likely to be murdered by my husband, but the chances may be greater that someone might burglarized my house. Some of the largest reductions are for example, a 39 percent drop in residential burglaries, but the homicide rate is what everyone sort of pays attentions to. A: And the homicides are one of the crimes that we are going to have the least amount of what we can do to prevent. Because, as you said, they happen in domestic violence situations, or while someone is meeting someone in a secret location or in a house doing a drug deal. It’s difficult for an officer’s presence to diminish the chances of that…. we felt like if we could slow down the gun crimes, as a by-product it might reduce the homicides as well. Where this month they might have been inclined to rob somebody, maybe next month they might have been inclined to shoot somebody, so that we feel like has been a by-product reducing violent crime. And I understand that Escambia County has had some reduction as well. The challenge now is to continue with that downward trend. Q: In some ways you can’t control what people will do, but if I as a citizen feel like when something bad happens, you are going find the guy who did it, I can live with that. A: And that’s exactly it. We’re very proud of our clearance rate its been over 40 percent for years and years. I think there are some agencies who may not spend as much time on every crime as we do. We’re not perfect, we have work to do, but I can tell you that every time someone’s house is burglarized, we have an investigator assigned to that case, we compare that to other cases, and that’s where the clearance rate comes in. Q: What’s the focus for 2014? You’ve said you think drug crime is at the root of a lot of the other crime. A: I think I say drugs are the root of all evil. Drugs is a big issue, and we are always working on it, but we’re going to try to work on that more at the forefront this year. But our priorities aren’t going to change in terms of gun crimes and residential burglaries. We’re going to try to keep those down.

Back to Blogs

Connecting with the community

Recent Posts