- May 2, 2024
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Local law enforcement agencies are considering a set of police reform suggestions proposed by the local branch of the NAACP.
"Some of these competitive agencies, they pay higher and they give cash bonuses," Foster said. "Law enforcement in general — we get fewer and fewer applicants."
— TOM FOSTER, Bunnell Police chief, on the difficulty of recruiting new officers
The 26-point proposal (view it HERE) contains suggestions on measures as varied as de-escalation, the use of mental health professionals, and the uniforms worn by prisoners on inmate work crews at the county jail, which is overseen by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Rick Staly said he met with NAACP representatives last week.
“I explained to them that most of the reforms in their document had already been addressed in agency training, hiring or by policy long before the murder of George Floyd,” Staly said in an email to the Palm Coast Observer. “I also provided them copies of the applicable policies. The police reform document mostly centered on concerns that are occurring in some, mostly large, police agencies across America and are not reflective of the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office. FCSO is a 4-Diamond accredited agency using proven model policies and training. ... Most of the ‘police accountability demands’ were already in place at FCSO. As for hiring to reflect the demographics, we are close, but this is a continuing challenge.”
Staly added that he’d asked the NAACP in a May 2019 letter to help recruit qualified applicants.
“The murder of Mr. Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer and the excessive force against anyone, regardless of race, is wrong and should not be tolerated by any police administrator," he wrote. "It is my hope that this discussion, locally and nationally, will not only improve policing but also lead to a discussion on how together we can curtail black on black crime locally and across America.”
The Flagler County Sheriff’s already meets or exceeds the “Eight Can’t Wait” policy recommendations that have been discussed around the country for reducing police use of force incidents, according to a document Staly attached to his email. Those include, among others, standards on de-escalation, bans on chokeholds and neck restraints, and a duty for officers to intervene if they witness another officer use excessive force (view the full document HERE.)
“Use of force events have dropped by 46% from 28 incidents in 2016 under the former Sheriff to 15 cases in 2019 while at the same time arrests have increased by 38%,” Staly said in the document. “Based on the number of arrests per year, FCSO’s statistics show that an arrestee has a 0.04% chance of having force used by an FCSO deputy during an arrest. The use of deadly force in this agency is extremely low.”
Since Staly took office, he said, the FSCO has hired 13 black employees and 15 Hispanic employees.
“Continued progress can be seen through our applications and new hires,” he said. “These recruiting efforts have resulted in more applicants representing a better cross-section of the community – for example, seven of 19 applicants for our September 2020 New Hire Academy are female or minorities.”
Flagler Beach Police Chief Matt Doughney said he'd met with NAACP representatives the morning of July 7.
“Everything went well and I’ll look over their suggestions, and yes, some seem very reasonable,” he wrote in an email to the Palm Coast Observer.
Bunnell Police Chief Tom Foster said his agency’s current policies already address some of the NAACP’s concerns, including a ban on neck restraints, a duty for officers who witness other officers using a barred hold to intervene, the reporting of misconduct incidents, a use of force matrix and de-escalation training, the use of body-worn cameras, and a ban on no-knock searches and stop-and-frisk tactics.
“I don’t think they’ve asked for anything out of the norm,” Foster said. “All of these things I found reasonable, and I think professionalizing our agency is the direction we need to go. I’ve been doing that since 2014, and I come from a nationally accredited agency. ... I’ve brought those qualities and training requirements here to the city of Bunnell.”
The NAACP recommends the use of social workers and other mental health professionals for certain situations. The Bunnell Police Department has agreements with the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office that allow it access to the FCSO’s mental health professionals, Foster said.
The NAACP’s suggestion that agencies work to hire more black community members, Foster said, is difficult for financial reasons.
“The lack of funding and staffing make our department less attractive than other agencies paying higher salaries and cash bonuses,” he said.
Foster goes out to law enforcement academy classes to recruit potential officers, he said. At the last class he’d attended, there was only one African American student, a woman, and she’d already been hired by another agency.
“It’s difficult to get any young man or woman, regardless of race, to become police officers,” he said.
To help, he said, the department is proposing to sponsor candidates to attend law enforcement academy.
“They’d still have to meet all the qualifications, they’d still have to be selected to go, but it creates an opportunity for a young man or woman who is not able to afford the tuition,” he said.
Foster has requested that funding for that initiative be added to the city's budget, he said.
