Studer Community Institute

"I think these are good, hard numbers"

February 11, 2014
/ Ron Stallcup
/ community-dashboard

Escambia Sheriff David Morgan got some good news out of the crime statistics for 2013. While the big headline is a 9.3 percent reduction in violent crimes from 2012, there were notable decreases in forcible sex offenses, 15.2; burglaries, 12 percent; and a 10.2 percent drop in robberies. It is the 12.56 percent reduction in domestic violence cases that Morgan says is among the best news in the data, which the sheriff’s office sent to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement for inclusion in the Uniform Crime Report. “We are very, very proud of the drop in the domestic violence rate,” Morgan said. “That is a huge decrease. Last year, we had a 1 percent drop. Since I’ve been in office we’ve worked with Dr. (Richard) Hough and Dr. (Kimberly) Tatum (at the University of West Florida) to do a lot of education programs. I think we’ve improved the reporting. I think that’s why we’re seeing the drop.” The drop in the county's crime rate comes as City of Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons also announced a decrease in the city's crime rate of 14 percent overall, and an 18 percent drop in violent crime. It was the largest single year drop in the city's crime rate in 14 years. Morgan spoke with me this week about the data, some of the challenges that remain in local law enforcement. Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Sena Maddison also sat in on the conversation and shed light on the domestic violence data. She is a board member at FavorHouse domestic violence shelter. QUESTION: Do you think that is an actual drop or that we are better at reporting and intervention? ANSWER: We do evidence-based prosecutions. If when we get there and the victim is reluctant, we still go through the process, we gather evidence, we take photos, we interview the parties separately and if there’s any indication (of violence), any bruising, say where the arm has been grabbed or obvious handprints or whatever, if there is furniture that’s overturned, we take all of those photos and we’ll go to the state attorney’s office regardless of the victim’s willingness to assist us. We encourage women to make these reports. We tell them how dangerous the situation is that they are in, because in 2006-07, Escambia County led the nation in the number of domestic violence cases that led to the homicide of the victim. It was just off the scale. I think these are good, hard numbers. Q: I know there is a specialty court for domestic violence, does that help? I know for example, the batterer’s intervention program that is part of that is very intensive. A: Any time we respond to domestic violence, we have to hand out two brochures, and we have reporting requirements within 24 hours to get in touch with FavorHouse. Again we beat the drum for five years and I think, that’s probably one of the stats I’m most proud of. Crimes of passion you can’t control. You can’t control homicides, you can’t control DVs, but you can on the domestic violence side if you have the support of potential victims. Meaning that (you can help teach) people (to) refuse to be in an abusive relationship, so at the first sign of the psychological battery, which is always the first step, you say, I’m outta here. Or if you ever lay your hands on me, I’m reporting you. That’s huge, and a lot of the credit goes to Dr. (Richard) Hough and Dr. (Kimberly) Tatum. they run some phenomenal programs out at UWF. Q: Does that figure include cases that come through Gulf Coast Kid’s House and child abuse? A: Yes, and elderly abuse, all of that comes on the umbrella. You can have a man strike his child and that’s domestic violence. Q: When I spoke with Sgt. (Steve) Kappas, he talked about a model of a family justice center in Tampa that made some progress reducing domestic violence. Is that a model that we might copy? A: We’re finally hopefully going to get our mental health court cranked up here, too. It is where the goal is to reintegrate the family in a loving environment and atmosphere, that’s almost like a group therapy. I’d have to work with Gulf Coast Kid’s House on that one. I’m not sure if that is an arena they want to go into. Sena Maddison: And FavorHouse is going to do the kid’s center. That is something that came out of them getting the IMPACT 100 grant, which is that’s the same mindset of trying to treat the whole family because FavorHouse is seeing third generation abuse at this point and that’s why we went after the grant. Q: I love the idea of having all of the intervention services there at one point. Stacey Kostevecki (executive director of Gulf Coast Kid’s House) had mentioned to me how high the incidence rate was in the county. Is that a prevalence issue or a reporting issue? A: Any crime of secrecy, child abuse most especially of a sexual nature, is very hard to find out because of the child and psychological abuse that occurs and the overwhelming threats that are communicated to the child and all those evil things that will happen. probably at one time, when I was younger, we knew rape was terrifically under-reported, especially in the academic world, on college campuses, etc. And we still believe with child abuse its still terrifically under-reported, esp. with sexual abuse. Q: Do you think there are factors in our community, the demographic or the poverty that contribute to that rate being so high? A: It can be economic and cultural unfortunately. That’s a good question. The problem with a poverty, it’s directly tied to the exorbitant illegitimacy rate, which is 71 percent in the black community, 47 percent in the Hispanic community and in the white community it is in the 40s now too. So when you have babies having babies and they drop out of school and the cycle of poverty begins…. A lot of the programs, if you can get the intervention so that they stay in school or into good GED programs and training programs, it would certainly help. I’ll give you an example from law enforcement. A law enforcement officer’s with a two-year degree in college or higher, there is a dramatic drop in citizen complaints, (and incidents of) officer involved abuse, dramatically begin to drop off because the officer is integrating into the community outside the law enforcement family, plus they are given so many more tools of communication. So they’re not so quick to resort to heavy-handed justice. They tend to talk their way through a problem rather than using force. When you have a large segment of society where the unemployment rate is so high and the education level is so low, that breeds crime. Q: There was something that was making the rounds on the internet, a story calling Escambia County “the most violent county in Florida.” A: That came from the (Roy) Middleton shooting and the Travis Nicolas incident. There were several of these things that came back to back and Atlantic Quarterly, I think it’s called, started that. After a story gets retold two or three times, the facts begin to fade away and that’s the danger of a lot of blogs today is we perpetuate myths about certain things. We were labeled “the most racist cops in the South.” And as I tell folks, we spent four and half years under investigation by the U.S Department of Justice. They looked at all the allegations of racial profiling we had. We had 24 cases of reported racial profiling, all unfounded. We did have two in Escambia County that were founded, one involving a man of Asian descent and an African-American that was involving civilians (who used racial epithets at each other). Our homicide rate is in flux. In 2010, we had 31, but understand something, I get credit for everybody. When the Uniform Crime Report’s turned in, I get credit for PPD’s murder rate, for UWF, PSC, (Florida) Highway Patrol, I get credit for all for those into the UCR unless someone’s willing to sit down and pare them out to see. But I’ll tell you, we’ve traditionally, I’ve been here 21 years, we’ve always had the third highest rate of incarceration in the state of Florida, we stay around 8-10 for crime rates. It’s traditionally been that for Escambia County. That’s why we were so excited to see that 9 percent drop in violent crime. But I’ll never be able to, well I tell people if you’ve got the key to reducing the homicide rate, please share it with me and the world cause we will all implement it. So you just kind of live with those. but knock wood so far this year, we have not had a homicide yet. Q: It is a very real thing the culture of not snitching to cops? How do you deal with that? A: That gentlemen who was shot over here at Sam’s Soul City. (Keith Julian Rudolphs, 22, was shot at Ray’s Soul City on Sept. 28 and died on Dec. 26, 2013.) Literally, one half of that building is in the city and half of it is in the county. They had an altercation occur inside the bar. They followed him outside, it escalated, a weapon was drawn, he fled and he was shot three times, I believe. Now, he knows who shot him. He was conscious in the hospital.... He took that name to his grave. He refused to talk to us. How do you describe that? How do you fight that? It’s even as bad or worse with young people. It’s not any particular culture by the way. It goes across ethnic lines. You can’t say it is a black community problem; it’s everybody’s problem. The white kids won’t talk to us either. It’s learned behavior from movies, TV etc. It’s not cool to talk to law enforcement. As you know when your young, being part of these groups is the most important thing. All we can do is try. We push the anonymity side. By law we cannot talk to you, as a matter of fact, it’s a felony if we try to breach that with CrimeStoppers. … Q: Have you gotten response from the Rodney Jones PSAs? A: No. Well, not much. It’s still not that old and we’re not going to stop. We’re going to continue to push those. If you’ll remember, it took decades to get where we are, it may take us decades to come out of it. We’ve got some other techniques we’re going to try to kick off. I have not gotten a great response from civil rights organizations. We’ve had town hall meetings, but they’ve been unable to produce anything either. The key is through the churches... all ministers can have powerful influence regardless of what community they’re in and they’re starting to slowly come on board with us. Q: Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons had mentioned gun crimes task forces as a successful partnership, he said you all had talked and were going to continue it. A: We started that about two years ago in response to the uptick in our shootings and we partnered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, they pick up the OT for us. When we have a crime involving a weapon, everyone shows up. ATF will run the gun. Like when we had the storefront operation (Operation Anything for a Buck), we had a gun that was used in a 1983 robbery in Los Angeles. ATF has phenomenal records. Q: And Chief Simmons said that wasn’t really accessible to him before the Task Force. A: I haven’t had that problem. I sat down with all federal agencies right after I was elected, and said everyone’s got a part to play. When we do a joint operation, we won’t do a press conference or a press release without our partners, because what you have sometimes is the turf issues. It’s all of our cases. We write a joint press release, we make sure anyone who had a part to play in it gets credit….It used to be that we’d seize a gun and it would go to FDLE and sometimes it would be years before we would hear back. Q: Are there criteria that you look for when you think about what kind of thing to insitute? A: I look at proven past performance, because rarely have you come up with a brilliant new plan. Most likely someone’s come up with the idea before you and most likely its been tried. We look at major areas in the state, and then you expand your search outside the state. Our Clean Sweep program started in New York. Back in the 1990s a group of citizens got together to clean up one of the worst parts of the Bronx. They said we’re going to take a block at time, and they expanded it out until they got about a nine square block area and they just took it back. It was so successful in New York and Chicago that the police department got involved, so I decided to implement that here. Now if you wanted a Clean Sweep in your neighborhood it would take 14 months. We’ve got them scheduled out that far. Neighborhood watch buy-in (has been important). We had 13 in Escambia County when I took office. We now have 118. So we’re seeing a lot more community buy-in for things that we’re doing. Neighborhood Watch is one of the best things you can do for crime in your community. Q: Chief Simmons said they wanted to focus on two areas they wanted to have a direct impact, residential burglaries and gun/drug crimes. Do you have a similar strategy? A: I agree with the chief, we’re going to continue to focus on those, too. We’re going to have a huge outreach this year in the black community. We’re wanting to start a program, where in the last two years of high school, we’re going to hire students to work at the Sheriff’s Office (in administrative positions because of their age) We’re going to sign contracts with them and their parents and they agree to stay crime-free for two years, we’ll hire them here to work at the Sheriff’s Office. We will then give them a scholarship to Pensacola State College with the goal to get them to the ripe old age of 21 and then through their first two years, we will send them out to the police academy and we’ll pay for George Stone with the understanding that they will have a job at the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office at the end. (Funding for that program has not yet been determined.) That’s one of our big goals. We’re also trying to heavily recruit college students and veterans of course. That’s not focused on crime itself, but it will have a lasting benefit if we can get recruitment out of it. When we still had the jail, my numbers were good, be women and minorities across the board tended to focus on corrections as opposed to street level law enforcement. And military retirees too tended to gravitate to corrections too as opposed to the street. So we’re going to try to crack that code. Burglaries, we’re trying to track that, this last year we were successful in cracking three sizable burglary rings, including one with ties from South Florida and that’s part of that. Q: Vehicle thefts were another thing that were up. A: We’re going to go after that in the area of public service announcements more than anything else. Our vehicle thefts are not from smashing windows or carjackings… It’s people leaving their keys in the car and the cars are unlocked. That’s almost all of them. You’ll see people leave their car running when they are pumping gas and they’ll go inside to pay and someone will drive off with their car. I’ll be honest with you, I’m envious of the chief’s position. Here’s how the numbers shake out. The Chief’s got 2.7 officer per 100,000 in a city of 51,000 in a confined geographic space. He can put two officers on the scene in 3-5 minutes. That’s pretty impressive. My community is 260,000. I’ve got 1.3 officer per 100,000. And I cover a very large geographic area. In some areas of the county, I’m lucky if I can get an officer on the scene in 45 minutes. And so his ability to focus and direct is much greater than mine because of the number of officers he has per 100,000. He can strategically do some things that I can’t do. I just don’t have the manpower. City Council’s much more astute than the commission about public safety. Q: Chief Simmons mentioned guns being stolen when people leave their loaded gun in their unlocked car. A: It’s not that long ago that you wouldn’t see a pickup truck in a parking lot that didn’t have a .30-.30 Marlin in the gun rack in the back window, and you didn’t see the trucks being smashed and the gun being stolen. But that’s the different society we live in today. We took guns to school when I grew up. I grew up in a county school and it was a rite of passage for a young man, you’d get your first single-shot .22 or single shot .410 shotgun and we took them to school. Mr. Reynolds was the principal, and you couldn’t have your gun loaded at school. You had to to take the gun and the ammunition to the principal’s office and at recess you could go get your gun and pass it around (to your friends). You’d hunt on the way home because everybody walked to school. You’ve had a tremendous change of culture. I had just taken office and one of my lieutenants had his service weapon stolen from his police car in the front of his house. Q: Is it too easy to get your hands on a firearm? A: Yes, and it’s whatever the market will bear. It’s good street barter. Pretty much whatever you want, you can get it for a firear

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