CC special meeting Friday February 21 2025 like stand for pledge I pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic stand one nation under God
indivisible with liberty and justice for [Music] all mad clerk I have a role please mayor Johnny AR couver here vice mayor Linda Rodriguez here councilman David Mueller here councilman Robert hubard here
councilwoman Lisa Burke here City attorney Nancy Meyer here city manager Matthew CER here thank you uh first up is comments from the general public I don't have any signups is there any general com comments from public okay so bring it back to comments from the city of manager pass Mr cop comments real
quick we've uh provided on each desk the uh questions and score sheets uh I anticipate that you should get through these questions fairly quickly uh depending obviously on the answers that come back uh will be the the difference in there uh feel free if you have any
follow-up questions during these questions to to ask those at that point in time but there definitely will be some uh time at the end if everything goes as planned uh to ask any other questions that you have and I know Dave has a lot of questions
so that's a different sh but um I got questions definitely has questions uh again up to you whether you want just one person to read the the questions and I think the mayor's already volunteered at least me to read the questions if you want that yeah I can read them all or if we do two and
two do that you can read them all slow down yeah I'll do that do that okay and if there's no other questions on this we're going to uh ship one of the candidates off to meet with the uh PBA
and the other will take the seat in front of us here good good me okay we have a coin to Y it was [Music] scientifically purposes I know it makes it
very this is for you perfect thank you very much you want to I can leave it okay so actually I think we've got PR questions and it's about an hour time frame so can you put five minutes
on the clock for each question and that way kind of gauge where we go for answers okay ready yes sir welcome uh Bill and uh we'll start off with uh there's I said 10 questions there's two questions in each category looks like
like the first category is leadership and ethics 10 points total first question is can you provide an example of a time when you had to make a difficult ethical decision as a leader and then how did you handle it well yes there's been a a few periods
over the last few years that uh we had ethical decisions that we had to make one of them that comes to mind was an offic involved shooting and the office involve shooting let's just say less than it was it had some issues so as the
chief we had to come in you know obviously we have the crime scene and we had to make that determination whether or not we were going to work the case um or we were going to turn it over to the state police and what we did was we turn it over to the state police so that it would take away any kind of bias any kind of any any person to look that say
was done improperly and U the investigation ended up ended up an indictment of the officer who was uh ultimately charged so that always comes to mind is a tough decision because you know I felt confident I could have worked the investigation but rather than
taking on that and giving any bias or anybody to look at it and say we did it in an improper manner we were able to turn it over the state please okay is there any fell I just had a question can before we do that can we just ask him maybe to tell it because there's people
that don't have copies of it would that be wasn't on my sheet out of the question yeah so if you can if you can pause the account this yeah tell us a little about yourself your background and um introduction okay I apologize I I went right on the question no that's fine uh my name is Bill Samson I was uh
born and raised in Massachusetts uh when I was 31 years old we uh you know I should say I'm married we've been married for the last 28 years we have a a one daughter who's uh 27 years old and growing up in Massachusetts I was in law enforcement since the age of 18 years old I started with the sheriff's
office when I was right out of high school uh started in Corrections worked my way into Patrol um and as a patrolman ended up working on a on a city gang unit I worked in a gang unit for a few years got promoted to Sergeant went back on the road and then I think like anyone that grew up in the Northeast we just
had that winter where we had 100 inches of snow and it was that winter and I had a rendition down to Miami we had to go down and pick up a prisoner and bring him back I went down to Miami it was 82 degrees I was fishing uh I went back home I had fourt of snow in my yard zero
and I went online inside a look of a self far police so uh I ended up getting hired by the city of Boon Beach as a as a police officer Boon Beach uh we relocated down to South Florida my daughter was four at the time I figured before she gets into school if we like Florida would stay if
we didn't we we could get back before was in school and we spent 14 years in South Florida um we enjoyed Florida it was a you know it was a a different it was a culture shock from Massachusetts but it was a good culture shock you know
we didn't have snow we didn't have anything like like that I started with the city I was a city police officer and fto then I became a detective I worked in the uh crimes against children and sex crimes unit uh I did that for a few years and then an opportunity came up with the Attorney General's office which
was a Statewide position it was a it was an excellent opportunity uh I was able to get that position and I worked for the Attorney General's office for four years and we worked fraud cases a lot of medical fraud um I worked there for four years in it was a Monday through Friday
8 to 4: no nights no holidays no weekends it was really good however I missed traditional policing I end um applying with the uh pach County Sheriff's Office went to the Sheriff's Office and I worked there uh I started out in Patrol and then I went back to sex crimes and crimes against children as a detective worked there for a few
years and then we kind of you know my my daughter was graduating from high school and we kind of missed home so we started look into positions um up in New England and I was able to I applied for a chief position up in of Vermont uh it was a
national search uh I went up there and fortunately I was able to secure that position my daughter went to University of Central Florida and she wanted to be a teacher so she went to school for um for teaching we expected the expectation was when she graduated from high school
that she would come up and live in New England back with us uh she met a guy in school and they ended up dating serious relationship he went to UCF then he went to the UF law um they ended up getting married
so uh we she didn't move up and we were a very tight night family her and her mama so it's been difficult for for us um I went to I left Vermont after six and a half years I was the chief there I got the chief in Middleton Massachusetts
where I've been for the last four years and that was back in the mass retirement system back home where we were from still hoping eventually my daughter would come to her census and move back and she I said she got married she
bought a house her and her husband and they settled in Wesley Chapel so when we we started looking they said well you should move you know you got to move back be close to your daughter and I said well we we can't do it until you're settled because we didn't want to make that move and then you know you're
trapped here and you want to go back to West pal or wherever uh but now they're settled so it's been a big push to to move back closer to the to them but I always said you know I have it has to be the right position it has to be the right location and then this position
showed up so we kind of had a family chat and it was in Nob brainer that this was definitely a job that we should pursue and um everything's been excellent so far and I'm fortunate to be in front of you folks here today awesome thanks um back to the first question any
follow up on that response good okay um something you guys want take take them off just so we don't get too far along go and make your scores on that are we just doing scores or are we writing things under
it the scores and it there writing writing is accepted as well okay we ready to move on think right okay okay next up um same same category leadership and ethics uh how do you ensure transparency within
your department both with your officers and the community what I've always found to be most important is where there's a system that the police in the public feel that they can voice their complaints or the
concerns and that the complaints will be investigated in a fair and impartial manner so one of the big two things I as as a chief in both departments was to really build from the ground up an internal affairs investigation unit
and get to proper training to those investigators so that when there is a complaint that it's that it's investigated properly and competently and everybody feels that at the end of the day you know there's going to be mistakes people going to make and they're going to have to answer
for those and I think as long as they know it's done fair and it's done competently that at the end of the day it's acceptable um I think that's big when it comes to the community because if they feel they don't get any answers from the police or if they file a
complaint with the police on a legitimate thing that it's not going to go anywhere that they're going to take you know that Thin Blue Line and and and those feelings that they lose trust in the police department you know in the last five years you know I've been doing this 36 years and the last five years
were basically the toughest five years I think we've had and a lot of that came from Ferguson and if you look back at Ferguson they had lost the town or the community had lost faith in them and then when something like that happens you can't go back and get that political Capital it's it's
already been spent and we see what happened and that was ramifications for the whole country so I think if you have an open and fair uh complaint process open and fair Internal Affairs that it does provide transparency for both the community and the police department okay thank you any
followup did you know in light of the fact that a lot of crazy stuff was going on in the United States did did your experience any of that in the community that you're in and how did you if so how did you handle as far as craziness um you know like riots that kind of no
thankfully we did not have that we had when when the the fund of police first came about when I was in Vermont um they did have a group that was going around different parts of Vermont um but I met with them prior to their um meeting when they were going to do their public
display I met with them first spoke about what they were going to do what they expected us and basically went it went seemlessly so you basically headed off in the past so that level set what those expectations were and if they went outside those
boundaries then they knew what was coming down we were prepared to answer any issues if it became problematic if it became criminal uh but a lot of times like I said open communication we actually sit down and explain what you'll looking for what they're trying to accomplish and what we need to have
done we can come to an agreement and it went without like said went flawlessly so great appreciate that thanks those first two questions were both negative toward the officers why is that the first the
second was negative towards the officer but yeah your answers when your answers came out to those two questions they were both negative toward the officers on the first one most police shootings are turned over to another entity rather than your department so I that wasn't
really an Ethics answer because most police shootings are turned over to another entity okay to cover that and then on the second one when you talked about transparency you immediately went to
negativity with the officers and internal investigations and why are you so negative about your officers I don't think the internal affairs U answer was negative to the officers I think it's a positive if we if they know that it's done
competently because we get complaints that are unfounded we get complaints all the time that don't aren't the fault of the officer but rather the fault of the situation so I don't when I said it that way I don't think of that as a negative uh to the officers because that's you
know if you you look at my past I've uh I've been supportive of my offices and the people I've work with my entire career um and I'm very Pro police I'm very I think this is the profession in the world I think it's the most noblest
um I think there is no better person than a good police officer but I also think there's no better worse person a bad police officer so it wasn't meant to be negative towards the police okay you take a second to score then we'll move on I good okay okay next category is
experience and qualifications another 10 points total um first question is what best prati practices in modern policing do you believe are most important for a department of our size you know could you repeat that one more time yeah what best practices in
modern policing do you believe are most important for a department of our size well the biggest thing is to address these situations in the uh the town if whatever the situations whatever the the crime whatever the the problems that the town has is to get the offices the best training
and the best leadership to be able to address those situations so we have accreditation there's different things that um are best practices for policies and those are things that we you work to to make sure that your your policies of procedures are best practice uh and you
do that through numerous policy reviews uh meeting with other departments this size uh I felt in the department I'm in now is the same size of Department as this is is training is is really really important to make sure that they have the training
to be able to do the job properly and having the guidance of getting those being able to guide the offices and putting the right people in place in the right positions to be able to handle any issue that comes up so training and accountability standards holding high
standards and how holding the offic to those I think makes for a professional police department and I think it makes for a better uh policing the community thank you fin yeah this one question you mentioned training which I was going to ask you about um referring to uh plate
training do you have you you've seen our Our Town Bri you some officers do you have any plans or ideas for training well in the the brief interviews I uh time I've spent with the offices um I
traffic is a is a big thing in town so they have a traffic homicide person that does a lot of the traffic homicides um I think that's important they just got a can9 that is going to be doing introdiction so I think that's important
um crime scene I'm not sure of the level of experience they have on crime scenes and protecting crime scenes and preserving crime scenes uh I think that's often lacking in smaller departments because they rely on other agencies to do that uh so I think that would be something that we' be looking
at that make sure that the processing scenes correctly so we can gain all the evidence we can at the scene so that we can make sure that we can uh you know find the people responsible for the crimes um so that would be a big one that I've seen in traffic training again I haven't been here so I don't know more particulars but that's what I've seen in
smaller agencies that I often lack thank you in your response to the relying upon other uh departments outside of our city to work we have to be able to foster a good relationship with the county and possibly Newport
rich as well um so you would include that in your process of best practices to build those bridges to those other organizations so that we do have an effective solution to whatever problem might might arise correct and the last
so the two places I bet a chief the first thing I did when I went to Vermont was to meet with the Vermont State Police their hierarchy the surrounding agencies the Sheriff's Office to initially make those connections because they in this job uh your ability to network is the most one of the most
important things that you have and you have to Foster those relationships uh because you know I always tell the guys you don't want to meet the homicide team for the first time at a homicide scene you want to know him you want to have them you know meet them on on different things sit down with their their Command
Staff and make sure that you're all on the same page of what needs to be done and that way when an incident does happen it's not the first time you're running into them uh but fostering relationship is a big part of this job and that's one of my strong points with the last two agenes another
followup okay you uh are you reset the clock for every I was I was doing the his response so if you want me to change it yes so just um after I read the question set five and that way that five continues clicking as a that we kind even with the sub questions yeah even
that so five minutes for every five minutes total okay thank you we good with scoring okay so next next up is question number four um what specific initiatives have you led that resulted in a measurable Improvement in crime
reduction and Public Safety all right the biggest thing I did for both departments was establish a detective Bureau and investigators in training so that when we do have an issue I mean backbone of any Police Department is Patrol but to get to that next level uh
the biggest thing is you have investigators that can investigate serious crimes or quality of life crimes breaking engines you know C breaks so establishing both of those um has in in both agencies putting the training
picking the right people getting them the resources that they need with other agencies you know Foster those uh working relationships I felt that in the two agencies we had they had Patrol pretty much down but it was that next level of Investigations and when you
have a a department that's competent in investigations and Patrol in the overall full service agency that will reduce crime in both of the places I had that I was the chief I mean I worked in big areas where we had major crime both of these were similar towns like the winds
ofont was a 3200 uh person Town Middleton's 10,000 um those were the crimes we were having are similar to here and we were able to go from having to not just basically being a report report Taker and not solving the crimes
to be of solt crimes okay thank you any follow yeah what about um any reporting requirements do you believe in doing analysis on and tracking crimes tracking uh events and then trying to you know
work with your team to try to find a solution to improve those stats if you will yeah absolutely um and Analysis of crime and crime Trends what I do with those at this point those are my Sant each shift reports on any crime
that they had and we look for any kind of trend if we see a trend if we see certain things then we attack that you you you put your resources towards that so analysis of is a regular thing okay thank you else yeah brief um that's a two-part
question uh basically the same thing um big concern of mine is I'd like to know how you feel or how what you plan on Kirby homelessness and vagrance I know we're limited to what we can do there but what is your stance on drug abuse and mental illness I mean those
are some of the biggest things facing us and there's no real easy answers for those um it comes I was talking to the captain today when he was he was showing me around town and you know the different areas and it's unfortunate that a lot of these homeless issues
mental health issues have fallen on the police and it's really not the best place to put them but it's what you have when you have a problem at 3:00 in the morning you dial 911 there's only one person that's coming up so while you can't arrest your way out of that situation you can't arrest your way out of homelesses that's when you have to
get your other community involved you know you can do Outreach you got the church you have different local agencies that are that are built for that to kind of look into it and get them help um and that's where again we Foster relationships because it's not the police are not the only answer for
mental health um that's where you have to form Partnerships and work with your is to work on those but they they're difficult issues okay anybody got good score okay so next up is uh the third category which is community engagement and relationship
building uh first question in that is how would you Foster stronger relationships between the port uh between the police department and the resident of Port region well used in the past is you know forums like this you know when there's an issue you want to be out in front you want to have you
know want to come to these to be able to address the problems that the people have so that they have an open Forum I've always believed in an open door policy at the PD if somebody has an issue they can call now with email people can call email stop by and I'm very open to to meeting with people um
as far as you know things we've done to kind of get the community together is um one of the things is coffee with a cop is always a popular one where I mean I'm not sure if everybody's heard of coffee with a cop but you basically plan a day and you know you go out there and you talk about the issues people have over a
cup of coffee um we've done Shop with a cop around the holidays around Christmas time when you have loow income people that aren't able to provide for um their children and you uh we get groups together we raise money and then we take
them Christmas shopping uh that was always a nice one for for certain uh you know to make the holidays a little nicer but just being out in the public you know stopping in seeing people stopping in the stores meeting with the owners responding the calls uh and just being
available I like that I like the people need to see their police chief along with officers vice mayor I have a um a quick question can you give us an example I know the the shop with the cop and stuff I saw that on your um your
answers that is wonderful but can you give us any other you worked with a lot of different agencies where you where you stepped into that role and there was maybe a problem with with another agency is is there an example that you have and how did you mend that relationship okay when
I went to Winds of amont it was a um the department was I would say substandard uh at best it was kind of where if you got fired from everywhere else you would end up in wiza so that was one that the state police wouldn't deal with they said we're not we not deal with your
people so what I did was met with the state police um and explained where I was going as an agency where I was trying to take my people and you know change doesn't happen overnight uh cultures don't change overnight uh this
culture here again I haven't been here so I don't know what the culture is or the issues but initially bridging those gaps you know bridging those relationships and then showing through good quality policing and you know a a transparent a good Internal Affairs
program uh where if you have bad cops then there's a way to root them out if you have good cops you can foster their abilities uh and make them better at what they are and that will show other agencies that you're serious that it's it's a it's a department you're going to
want to work with and you know and you show it by doing it so were you able so by doing all that were you able to improve those relationships with this with your State Police you said right when I Vermont we had a great relationship with the state police they started working drug cases with us which they never did that in the past when I
went to Massachusetts um State Police was that's the big agency up there uh I embedded one of my detectives with their homicide unit so when they got called out for homicides of dead bod said they could go with him so they could learn that way uh one of the first it was an attempted murder it wasn't a murder but
um the person lived when the state police showed up uh because in Massachusetts State Police do all the homicides other than the three major cities everyone else to State Police lead agency and he said I had I had gotten my detectives training got them
to work with them so when we had this near homicide when they showed up we had the crime scene contained we had the everything they wanted I remember the captain came up he said it's got a bow on it said well that's what you do when you you know we do compet investigation we're not going to run it but we can
have it prepared correctly for when they get there that they know they can do their job from that point forward very good thank you very much sir okay take second to the score good to move on okay uh next question is how do you
approach communicating with the public during times of Crisis or controversy well social media's come a long way and that's always a good one to get things out there when there's issues um that public has to know right away it's it's nice to get out there you have your media people as well you have your
you know your politicians in town that you can get the um the uh the news out there uh you know you look at when you have a a violent crime and people are nervous that is my neighborhood safe is is is the community safe the ability to
get that out on social media quickly say the person's in custody or there is no danger to the public um you know even when you do search warrants people see people police crashing through doors they get nervous that there's problems so you can immediately get out there that this is contained to this area or
if there is a danger you want to be able to get that out but the media the social our social media the media are always um avenues for that okay thank you than F okay thank second score good to proceed okay next category is
departmental leadership and strategy again 10 points total uh first question how would you support and develop the officers under your command to improve retention and morale well that's one that when you come in you have to have a vision for
the police department and you have to communicate that vision so that would be open Communications you know meetings with the sergeant with the captain on a regular basis of exactly this is what we're looking to do and then you want to identify strengths in your offices to
say find out what people have interest in and then you want to Foster that through training and Leadership so if you find people that have certain skills you can foster those skills um retention is difficult on certain areas if morale
is l so morale morale can be affected on on a lot of different Avenues um but if you provide a culture where the officers are comfortable coming to work that they don't feel harassed that they don't feel
like they're they're being watched or you picked on all the time it builds that and then when they have the the when they confident coming and be able to discuss the issues then open communication is is very very important
because if I don't know what the issues are then we can't address them if they don't feel comfortable talking to me then those issues don't get addressed so you want to keep the open communication you want to put forth a vision of where we're going as an agency and how everybody can contribute to that because
everybody has certain skills and everybody wants most of them want to be heard most of the people want to have a say and if you give them that say and you work with them on addressing the issues that they have that will build morale and if it becomes when it becomes a Department that that people have enjoy
working for that's professional that has opportunities that's how you draw not only keep people but you draw people in and that's the last two agencies I worked for when I was a chief up in winds when I first got there like I said earlier that was the department you went if you got fired from everywhere else when I left that was the popet people
wanted to work for so that's how you build those in in Middleton was the same way uh you know with with working towards excellence in policing which is the goal of it should be the goal of all Poli please yeah okay any follow just to expand a little bit on on
that so and maybe take it a step further you may have heard that recently we had a vote no confidence in the police chief and I think it's even happened before in in the city's history so I think and I again I don't I don't know necessarily the current environment whether it's gotten better worse the same but
obviously there was some division within the department know some people uh happy the way things were others weren't and so there was that that constant contention between individuals within the department so coming into a department that could potentially have some
division uh and again communication key in all things right U if you could maybe expand a little bit how maybe you could draw cohesion together that department and really bring everyone together to accomplish that vision and I think a lot of that was lack of communication and I think a lot of it was feeling that they
weren't being heard and you in this in this profession if you have ideas and they're just constantly told no well that's just not what it is this is how it is you know this is how it's always been we're just not going to change those are top that's not me I'm a person
that's open I everybody into the office my door is always open anytime they have an issue come in and then like I said we want to hear what they have to say because a lot of good ideas are out there and we want to make those and Foster those so that we could be better as an agency now you're going to have
personality conflicts that's just life but if you can minimize those and they don't have something else thing to have a personality conflict with this one but then hating this one then you can kind of get together to hate everybody uh you want to kind of root out that you know you want to root out that and like I said everybody here knows what the
issues are everybody here knows has an idea of how they should be fixed and if you let them talk and you give them that opportunity then eventually that builds a cohesive group yeah good good else okay second score
okay good hungry Dave your microphone okay next question um where do you see the Port Richie Police Department in five years and what steps would you take to achieve that Vision where I see us
as a as an agency is one that is well- trained one that has good leadership one that is professional squared away uh one that has good working relationships with their other agencies and properly police
this city the way the community wants it policed so what I see in five years is the most professional agency in the county okay thank you any follow with that um obviously with with Police Department been around for a long time and um
there's probably again going back to that employee morale thing there's there's probably people that are that resistant to change others probably welcome change um obviously with that Vision um it may take significant amount of change to get
us there again we want more training and all that like you said but um what's your what's your view on past impr proven uh practices that are kind of adopted and you know it's been around for a long time but bring about those necessary changes that may be
uncomfortable at first but can actually help you achieve that Vision just a little bit about that well there's two things police don't like change and when things stay the same yeah so that's basically what you walk into when you walk into any Police Department so how I look at it is you hear what the issues
are you look at what changes you you know I would come in and do an overall view of the police department policies procedures staff training and then what you do is you sit down with the unions you sit down with the people and explain
that this is why this is failing or is it failing because it's a lack of leadership is it failing because it's improper policy is it failing because it's just no training uh so what you do is you you make the evaluation at that point and you sit down and you have that conversation and
when I come in and say this is why we're going to change this I give them a reason why I'm going to change it and we can have a discussion of why we're going to change it as opposed to me coming in and say this point forward we're going to do this that's failure um it's not it's never well received and that's one
thing I've learned in the last 10 years is change doesn't happen overnight it takes a buyin from the department and that's done through for lack of a better term to go uh of meeting with everybody to say hey this is this is where we want to go as an agency and where do you see that
that's improper or where do you see that this could be done better at achieving this and again we do go back to communication because that's 90% 95% of anything uh to get the Buy in and when we do make the changes you're not going to make everybody happy I was a person
I'm a people person I love dealing with people and one of the toughest things I found as a chief was that you just don't make everybody happy as hot as you want to try there's going to be people that just don't agree with certain things so that's when you do have to make those tough decisions but they're also I've explained that decision and that's why
we're going in this direction and I'm not opposed I'm I'm not opposed that at in six months we can revisit it if it didn't work let's go back to the dra board and come up with something else but at the end of the day we want to be more professional we want to be more productive we want to be proactive and we want to make a safer Community to
improve the quality of life and that would be my goal and that's how I would go about trying to yeah so say you're not afraid to change change yeah one of the things that we've had on the agenda is the moving of Dispatch over to
County um that's been met with change big change but we evaluated it here and made it an imperative goal to move forward with that um do you see you embracing
the council's decision on that and Contin doing to make that happen and work with the best uh make it work the best of your ability to transition that effectively with County and get that rolling absolutely in change especially
change like that uh change that the day-to-day operations is going to be met with um yeah it's going to be met with uh disagreement in a lot of its learning curve when you're used to a certain system you're used to a certain radio frequency radio etiquette uh and you've
been doing for a long time and you go to a different system a regional system that's always going to get opposition it it just it is because it's it's a it's a day-to-day change which is difficult a lot of those are learning curve once it
becomes the norm then it becomes a norm it gets to be just how we do it now if there's issues with how the county is dispatching uh that is different from how they were if the office feel unsafe
if they have situations where they feel it's an unsafe situation uh then that's a situation that I would handle from uh an executive officer to the Sheriff's Office the whoever's the head of the communications to have those conversations to say you understand this
is why we're having the guys feel unsafe the girls feel unsafe because of this is there a way we can address that is a way we can make that better uh and those are constantly changing you know constantly fluid uh with with any kind of made change like that we have a regional
Dispatch Center uh that we work under now that was not there five years ago when it first went it was met with all kind of of opposition they didn't want it we got rid of our own dispatch went up to a regional where we don't did not even on our grounds anymore we don't see him anymore and that was a lot of opposition today five or six years later
it's just how it is and it works well and we I'm actually an advocate for other agencies that want to join the regional because I think it worked really really well but it was a learning learning through this path before and the benefits and the impact to the community as
well essentially we're going to have people that are going to be displaced as a result of this and they might be displaced in a reor within your department so essentially that's part of the challenge is how do you use these people effectively maybe they have the
right skill set to integrate with your department maybe they don't but that bridge ultimately would rely I rely upon you to make that decision and move the department ahead for the benefit of the community right correct perfect thank
we're time if there's anything pressing f up on that okay okay take a second [Music] score okay next category and the final category I believe it's yeah uh fit for
the role and challenges in Port Richie another 10 points so the first question I said is what do you see as the biggest policing challenges facing Port Richie and how would you address them well like I said earlier I don't work at Port Richie now
um from the the conversations I had with some of the officers traffic is one of the big issues that they have a problem with um so that's something that like said I I'd have to see the amount of training they have who has specialized training in that is there a way we could be doing it better is there a way that
we could be more successful in addressing those issues overall quality of life is basically I have to get here and and understand what the quality of life issues are and I've been successful in my career to be able to basically
address any issue that's come up um you know I feel now the two departments that I that I ran when somebody walked through the door with a complaint regardless of what it was we could handle it um and handle it successfully and competently and I would bring that same experience here
okay just one quick question you seem um highly experienced for the position and you've got the qualifications and everything but you're coming in you're not familiar with the area new officers officers been here 20 25 years um with
your personal experience in the past what ideas and what plans do you have to earn the respect from the officers in PT Richie and that's an excellent question because it's a difficult question uh and I could say on the the other two agencies that I came from was that exact situation when
people have been there a long time they've been entrenched I came from outside didn't understand uh it wasn't from there so what I had to do was you had a just like a rookie Beat cop you had to earn respect from where you worked I have to do the exact same thing
here I have to get the people to trust me I get to have the people to believe in me uh doesn't happen overnight but what it happen is being truthful honest and transparent uh when I tell them I'm going to do something or this is my plan I follow through with it if I say I'm going to listen to you I'm going to be
listening to you I'm not going to be looking at my watch and just really you've only been here two years you don't know what you're talking about that's how you earned trust that's how you earn because that was the first thing they asked me how are we going to trust you I said time will get you to trust me or time won't get you to trust me but I can assure you it'll get you to
trust me uh because I follow through with what I say if I say I'm going to do something I do it um if I say I'm going to listen to you I'm going to put something into practice we're going to do it if I say we're going to make it a change I'm going to explain why we're going to do that and also going to get the input from you but nobody walks through the door with Instant Respect I
don't care how many years you have I don't care what position you came from you don't walk into anything in this profession and get respect atically it's earned and that's what I work on doing is earning that respect no but I wish some of the side questions could be r
you know yeah but they can't well I I think you can probably consider them no you can't because the this is a specific question and that's what what you rate on but some of the questions deserve to be rated too in the comments you can put that down
okay and I I can tell you just as as I go through it as followup maybe it didn't come out initially but as we follow up on that it helps provide that Clarity to help change the score one way or another that's what I'm
yeah okay so take a second score good okay last question why are you interested in this position and how do you see yourself contributing to the community longterm well that's an excellent
question and I think I kind of touched upon it when I first explained expl why I'm sitting here today um why I want to be here is a big part of it his family um my daughter lives down here she's part of this community um we wanted to
get closer to her uh but under the same token I wasn't going to go and apply just because it was an opening they said there's a lot of Chief's jobs opening up uh the profession has really taken a hit over the last five years uh Massachusetts we have 350 police Chiefs we lost 250 of them in the last three
years we average 3 to five a year that's how many people are leaving the profession um so when I looked at this this was we were looking to be it's the same size agency I work in now uh I've worked in a community of this size for the last 10 years I've basically work in
this kind of environment and when this position came up we had a family meeting and because they wanted me to come down on a couple other Woods I said it's just it's just not where we want to be this fits ideally for what I'm looking for uh going forward so that's personally why I
want to be here um what I can what I'm what I can bring to this community is a lot of experience uh I've done this job for a lot of time for a lot of years um my record is unblemished I've never been written up I've never been disciplined in any way shape or form uh I love this
profession I think it's the most honorable noblest profession there is and like I said earlier there's no better person than a good cop and there's no worse than a bad cop so what I can bring you is an hon honest person with Integrity that brings a lot of experience loves this profession and
will bring my heart and soul into this department to make it the best we can make it thank you you said this position fits ideally goad go you said this position fits you ideally but why why did you not take the other why this one I mean other than location to wle location is a big one to
to be perfectly honest so you said this one ideally fits it so what else made you say that for Richie Police Department was it what well it's the same size so I don't want to go I'm not I like the smaller agencies a smaller Community because it's more of a personal feel and you can
get more accomplished you can you know you could feel at the end of the day uh when I went to winds we had a big heroin problem they weren't doing anything about it because they didn't know how to do anything about it so when I went up there we were able to start working drug investigations and in less than a year
clean up the problem the heroin problem we had in the city are in the town if I was a West when I was in West Palm Beach I could do that all day long and it's never going away so the small community feel is what I like um I have experience with this size Department I know what
resources are how to work kind of more with less um I can bring certain aspects of Investigations that most small towns don't have and I can en enrich that in this department uh and I think we can do better cases than we did before and
because of the size and where it's at those are what make it ideal Police Department is a police departments to be perfectly honest the the problems I'm hearing here are not unique they're not different than most other ones uh know everybody thinks that this is but it's really not uh so I think I can I can do a lot of good here and like I said we'll
be back where we would want to be back in this is a state retirement you has Florida State retirement I have 10 years in State retirement now so if this was a city that had its own retirement that wouldn't have been as attractive because I would have had to put aside that 10 years so I can get right back into that 10 years start from there so those those
are a lot of the positives you're right small Department you going to do you going to do it all absolutely no you do part of it and then you pass it over to somebody else and you never know what happen and I actually like that you know I like resp call you can see all the steps and and you can see the solution because you don't get that on a big department one I have one more question
though you said you you had never been disciplined you'd never been complained on no I said never been complained on never been disciplined okay well because I was getting SED then you did nothing exactly if you never get complained on then you did nothing correct you just didn't get out of your car correct
that's why I wanted to point that out disciplined in complaints are two different things if you work I worked in a gangu in in the city I worked at Street crimes in IND City if you don't get complaints you're not doing your job you're right you didn't get out of your car you just sat there you ate Donuts absolutely absolutely because if you're not if youve went through a career and
never got a complaint you should have a whole bucket of those yes and those like I said even as a chief I get complaints but what you don't get is sustained complaints like you did something wrong you were failure you made a not that you didn't make a mistake because everybody makes mistakes but you didn't do anything corrupt you know you you
weren't stealing money you weren't beating people those are the things that would be sustained I was just worried you did nothing but that's trueir I couldn't have faked it for this long that's true yeah follow I have a different question
regarding is it open question or not I'm gonna open a question soon any follow up yeah um a big I'm a big advocate of lead by example and to my knowledge in the past
we've never been able to fulfill this police chief from within and I'm an advocate that people that are here ought to be trained and aspired to reaching and replacing you at at some point in
time um would you be aggressive in ensuring that people have that ability and want that ability to move forward into uh a police chief in this capacity or even another agency
at some future point in time succession plans are important especially in smaller agencies because without them you eventually always have to go outside and that's not the ideal situation you really want to be able to PE bring people from within uh so yeah succession is a big thing and you got to get the
people trained you got to put the right people in the right positions so that they can advance and you know I give them I try to give them the the training and the leadership for them to be successful whether they take that and be successful is on them but you're trying to give them the tools and the uh the training to be able to be successful not
everybody's going to be but at at least they can't look at you and say well you just failed me good thank other follow okay if not take a second score we got five more minutes actually have
15 oh because you started yeah okay so we got 15 minutes we can do some general questions if you want um I got a list I think I just have one if that's okay you first um I see in your resume that you when you were with the Florida attorney
general one as a detective Sergeant you worked racketeering here in Fort Richie or in Pasco you have been growing these gambling not supposed to be gambling but whatever storefronts um in the previous Chief was
working with the gaming commission I don't know where that's that was a couple months ago I was wondering if you what kind of experience you had with that and because really our residents are not really liking that so much it's
bringing in a lot of people from outside of for Richie sure um nonresident so I was wondering your experience with that and and we were you able to shut some down or what what was your experience with that retan is uh that's one of the strongest tools we have for organized
crime we had when I was working a case um it was a health care case where they were defrauding Medicare and Medicaid for millions of dollars with shell corporations um the you know the predicate crime was Medicaid fraud and then you need other crimes to go with it
to make the racket Teran case it was a two-year investigation it was the largest uh retan case that we the attorney generals had had we end up with 13 arrests shut down a lot of bad places um the gaming commission is somewhat new um I know that I don't know how far
they've gotten into in what their capabilities are but I know it's relatively new so I'd have to kind of sit down with them and see what they what they have possibilities for because anytime you have a gambling situation you know organized crime it it's been
decimated over the last few decades but it still exist and they're very difficult cases I mean they're one of the toughest ones that's why waps uh you know uh one one of the only ways you could get through to those but waps are very difficult to run you have to do them 24 hours a day you know
a small Department like this you couldn't run a WAP you need to rely on FDLE FDLE is one when they first they were organized to be an organized crime unit that's where FDLE started so I don't know if the gaming commission is the best way or or or F the El would be the the people you would want to work
with if it was a it was a true racketeering thing I would have to like kind of look into that but no I've done them thank you than lenda you took my uh Thunder a
little bit there on on gaming I'm sorry and no that's thank you that's okay but I appreciate your response to that because we have been engaged with the fle and I don't know where it stands it's one of those things that um they're working in the back room right so I
don't want to elaborate on that but it sounds like you have experience with that and that's an important aspect here uh also you elaborated on we have um on homeless problem where you're at we have a homeless problem here as well and I'm
glad to see that you've got some experience in that area uh and do you believe it was effectively addressed positive or negative how did the outcome or is it it's it's a touchy subject I get that most of the uh the policing
when it comes to homeless is just to move them to someplace else uh and that's been kind of the the role like you know we can't cure homelessness but we can cure homelessness in P Richie and that's almost been kind of the the philosophy and you just move to another
Community there is no I don't think the government has a long-term strategy for homelesses you know they really don't and again we can't arrest our way out of homeless because it just doesn't work mental health issues drug substance abuse issues are larger than the police
and that's where I said it comes back to community groups that work together and collaborate to kind of work on these problems but they're not easy and they're not like most of them aren't police issues unless they're breaking into houses trespass things like that those are our issues but again we get called on all of them so we need to
reach out to our Community Partners to kind of work together on that yeah we we typically get the coconut Telegraph and people talk and you need to go there right um and there again i' next question is
I've always embraced lead by example and my expectation is that we have a working Chief so the chief uh everybody wears hat many hats in a small town just like a small business right um would you and
all your officers be willing to do shifts in the community and lead by example and better embrace our community as as M Burke had pointed out um you know why do I like a smaller Community is because I can still do police work you get a big as you get up
in those sheriff's office or whatever you get up you're not doing police work anymore it's just basically administrator and as you get a chief in a bigger Department it's just an administrator these departments I can still respond to calls I can still go out and meet with people that's what I like about it they said that's that's
the small community is why I'm here as opposed to waiting for a bigger agency to come come around is because of that role and that you still have the ability to still be a c so it gives you basically a dual function the feel of being on the street connected as and
being able to be at the top steering the ship and that's what I like to be able to you know give people the the tools they need I like to be able to shape the way agencies go uh that's what I like about being a chief but I'm still a cop hot gotcha thank you um
we have a boat in our community and my expectation is that ought to be we actually have two actually we have more than two if we count all the fire but we have a boat on a lift that doesn't need to be on a lift it needs to be actively run
predominately weekends in other words Focus time when the issues are most apparent and right now I think uh what experience do you have with running a Marine Patrol and ours is joint with
fire so being able to work well with fire and put a fire guy and a police guy on on the boat and be able to work that do you have any experience with we had a Marine Patrol when I was in pom County I was never a marine person I owned a pontoon boat that's the best I am as a
boat captain I'm sure a boat captain would say that you're not really a captain but um experience as far is working together right um yes I I had this conversation at an earlier one of our meetings uh that I did earlier was it was with the fire department is it's
a fire in police boat but that doesn't have to be separate fire and police boat we both have um jobs to do on the water clearly if you have a fire and police boat there's no reason you can't do joint operations there's no reason to both of us AR out there working the boat
uh you know boats are like other niceties if you don't have the resources if you can't cover the shifts then those things go down you know you can't do all these extra things if you can't cover shifts and and that's why that's a that's a big issue uh if it came to a
point where the police were no longer um able to use the boat then we concentrate more on fire um but we should be definitely working those things together if we have a resource like that an asset like that then you should absolutely be working it and if it's both then we could both be working together and it
builds caderie between the two agencies too um and you mentioned out there about doing foot patrols I'd like to see walking in the community and meeting residents and you're an advocate of that as well I think it's one of the for gone
things of police work is foot patrols and I think that's been a breakdown in Community Support over the years is the lack of the the cops getting out of their cars in in walking the beat and meeting people I think it's very effective but obviously you can't do a foot patrol on a main highway but there
are areas that it can be utilized uh if you have problems I mean walking around they don't see you coming I mean there are some tactical aspects of it as well as much as well as the community aspect because like you said when you're going by and it's warm and you got your
you know your windows up and your air conditioner on or your Boston you get your windows up and heat on you're not meeting the public you're not interacting with the they don't feel like they can wave you over unless it's a problem if you're walking they can just say hey and we should be saying hey how you doing how's things are that was
the old concept of policing back in the day when the cruises came and things like that of course it was before my time but that was that was Community Police that its best and there are certain areas that we could still use it we used to have an officer we used to have an officer and
she would come through the neighborhood and when she saw any Resident outside she would literally stop get out and say hi talk to the kids if I was walking your dog she had a cookie for the I mean so that was only one officer but she used to do that a lot and and it did
Foster a very positive I was going to say show the community left it they did they did um what's your thoughts on combining um code enforcement and observations of your Patrol officers being able to
address code control or code enforcement code enforcement working with us or um or working under you I mean this is a big picture yeah yeah maybe because they're in another department now maybe it's correctly placed under you maybe it's not or maybe your officers can
enter code complaints uh into our automated system and and you know that how effectively do you think that might work and I've seen it both ways I've seen uh agencies that code enforcement falls under the police and I've seen it where they're autonomous with their own agencies the biggest thing is that they're
collaborating together on the issues right there's no reason if there's a there a code violation that code enforcement sees and brings to our attention that we can't be up on you know if they say hey this is going on I mean we're out at 3:00 in the morning code enforcement isn't uh we can be looking for issues as well so that's communication and they said corbly in um
working together with our with our pness um based on your short time here six seven hours what opportunities um or issues come to light
does anything obvious and gar you know what um than anywhere else honestly it's I i' I've heard some of the complaints I've heard some of the concerns and they're not different from what you see otherwhere so there's nothing that I've
C here spoke to the captain and go yeah I'm leaving after lunch nothing that I've seen so far has has has said anything like that so I don't think there's anything here that over time with communication and working together uh couldn't be addressed okay and over your interview
process you had an opportunity to kind of watch some of the history and the council meetings and and review some of the police reports s and kind of get an idea of what's going on in the town okay I have and then um I'm sure you're well vers with budgets and trying to hold the
budgets and look for opportunities to improve save money uh do things better faster cheaper right do more with less more with less exactly and here's my final question what's your favorite
donut don't put up with that I got to say bosson cream yeah that's one of mine that was a good answer that was very good all right got five star that was an excellent has to be my favorite as well
BOS question you something else okay any other don't you have one I do but we'll make sure you guys yeah we're good okay we got five minutes right sure okay no what if no we have five minutes what if we called one of your officers right now what would they tell us they did not
like about you or the maybe not you specifically but they did not like about the way the department is run there I'm sure you've had your fair share of words from your officers oh absolutely um but something that's not working at your
department one of the things that we have conflicted on is the way time off was granted when I first got to Middleton um we have a 17 person Department 16 I
mean 15 of them are on over get overtime two are salar the way time off was granted and the way overtime was given you could have the entire day shift the entire evening shift the entire night shift take the day off then they all just shift one shift and now 24 hours of
everybody's on overtime and there was nothing we could do about it you couldn't say you can't have time off so my thing was how do you how do you run an agency with any kind of continuity where people don't work their shifts and
we have say 3200 shifts a year with what we had in April they had taking 900 shifts off i' had never seen anything like it in my life and I was basically that's how we do it here if you stayed one minute past the shift you got an
hour of overtime I said okay is that contractual it wasn't just long story short and we had State Police in Massachusetts had a a big investigation the FBI did and they were stealing all time it basically what it was they were
working out they were putting hours they weren't working they were making hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraud so they came up with a statute that said if you put in the time that you did not work it's not only a crime but it's triple damages which means you
got to pay back triple um when I got there and found that you know it was you catch these things like you said I wasn't there but you catch somebody on alarm call at 20 minutes to the end of their shift they're on the way to the alarm the alarm gets cancelled and they
say basically I'm going to continue just to make sure everything's okay and then they call out at the station at 801 and put in for an over an hour of overtime I said that's a crime if it's not in the contract so the union came and said no it is in the contract we're hourly
employees I said well there's three type of employees you got hourly salary and prum hourly does not mean if you work one minute you get an hour of overtime um in the contract when we found it in the contract said you'll get paid an hour or the fraction thereof that you worked and that's typical they were
doing that all the time so I said it's going to stop today and basically Union said you can't stop it I said it's a crime I explain it to him yeah but it's past practice you can't change it so I said well here's what's going to happen the first one's going to get written up the second one's getting arrested so yes
we did have our uh conflicts on certain things like that but those were Integrity things those were criminal things uh when a union president tells me even if it's a legal Chief you can't change it but what did they not like about you because I did that because I cut down on the over you enforced it I
enfor because you enforced it I I actually sat down with the UN we try to come up and there thing which you cannot deny time off so I don't know what the overtime budget is here for for 17 people but the overtime budget there is $340,000 and we were going over
wow so to when when I cracked down on that uh when I cracked down on you know you you couldn't have five people in the same room that look the same with uniforms someone would wear this we made it uniformed uh there were people who really like that because they wanted to be squared away there were people that didn't like that so again when we go
back to you're not going to make everybody happy but is the agency better as a result of these things yes you could run into people that you talk to that would say he came in he changed all this and um again I have to I have to sleep at night you know and some
decisions are tough thank you so I I'll close with my my comment because we're running out of time but um and maybe that's much a question but just to to bring awareness that if you are selected um there's as the mayor everybody calls me with
complaints um you know they if they know a councilman or councilwoman they may reach out to them but if if there's not a relationship built there they reach out to the mayor and off our government structure um I don't interface with staff there would never be a case where I would call the police chief up and say
hey I've got this issue it all comes to city manager and so what what I find is is that I'm constantly having to take those complaints in funnel them down and roast down hill what I want to impress upon whoever is in in just staff in
general that if you're a department head in this case the chief of police that um please know that uh if if communication is not handled effectively somebody reaches out to the chief because they had a problem with an officer or whatever um even if that email request
because you're going to get some sure you're seeing your your your career um some stuff you don't want to answer you just want to ignore just crazy emails whatever um I'm a big fail I answer every phone call answer every text every email um and even if it's it's not something really that warrants you know
I always try to acknowledge that they that I receive the email I just ghost people um and I I try to bring a resolution so I would impress upon obviously if you are selected for the position that as the chief of police that as complaints roll up through your department that uh that the mayor never
has to get a call from somebody who who left U they sent a message to the Chief and that it didn't get responded to or whatever so I don't have to roll that back down that way so you talk a lot about communication I assume that that probably would be a problem going forward that you know anything comes up
to the police department that you would handle and it it probably would never get to me and you know it's my job to handle those things right so your job now you're going to get the people that aren't going to like what I say andig you're going to go to you and those are fine those those are like real life um and those are going to happen but no I try to address everything because I
don't think that you folks should have to address problems Police Department that's why you hire a chief that's why we have command staffs because that's our job to handle those um and if you just blow them off they're going to get to you uh eventually and then you're going to come to me uh so I have to answer for that so I have to have a good answer so that's why we try to take care
of everything in house that we and I love nothing more for when that comes back I can tell that Resident or or the complaint that um you know it was this was handled and this was a story and you know you this was the answer I support to answer and that's you know
probably eight times out of 10 that's the case um but uh if if if you have a motto I try to impress upon uh Matt to kind of have staff in different departments n is going to get an answer that they like when they when they deal
with these these issues with the city but if they could adopt a model that everybody leaves my department um uh feeling like that they were heard and that they had provided great service to that goes a long way they may not like the answer they may like the outcome but
at least the the the person they dealing with empathetic listen to them and gave them appropriate information I think that goes a long way even if the answer is not what they want to hear it does and it's fair and it's what should happen yeah so great and we time so
we'll do the uh the Shuff thank you thank you so much nice meeting we got a little break here take recess five minutes sure thank you
question I like back behind we're ging five minutes got old man SK that's the nurse coming out you you sh did you get I they were tougher than they are now
now the skin gets thinner hold up I got one right here actually I'm dry kind of so I just let air dry anything [Music] sign well I can tell you auth around here this is just put the administr on
the PNC credit card so I shouldn't read it oh read you me yeah you don't [Music] mind e e e e
e e [Music] [Music] welome thank you [Music] welcome thankks for coming and apply for position Frank um before we start Linda had a something she wanted to acknowledge yes hi hi Frank I just want
to let everyone knows that um Mr aerio bomb and I worked together about 35 years ago in Riverside now uh birthday so um I don't know him at all but I just wanted to make sure everybody was aware that I don't know him but I did work
with his mom many years ago so thank you thanks that so starting off so we've got some prepared questions there's 10 of them um but what I'm going to do first is allow you to kind of introduce yourself kind of tell us a little bit about yourself your background and then after you finish with that um if there's no followup then we'll go right to the
questions there's five sections of questions I I'll give you the um the category and then the two questions in that category and then we'll take some time for scoring on each one of those okay so without even FL thank you sir my name is Frank rerio I live in currently in Newport Richie Florida I moved to
Florida when I was 13 years old from upstate New York um ever since then I've lived in Newport Richie which is 1983 uh graduated golf High School U married my high school sweetheart we have one child and one grandchild another grandchild on the way and pretty
much maintain residency in Newport Richie the whole entire time I've ever been in Florida um I started my career with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office in correction inside the jail we helped them open up the Lander Lakes jail which is a pretty big undertaking compared to moving from Dade City and Newport Richie
over to there I left there in 1995 to become a patrol officer because they would not put us on the street at the time I came here to Port Richie um at the time Chief DS was in a sergeant and Carmine Macedonia was the the chief um I worked here for five years I was able to
obtain the rank of Corporal field training officer lead instructor went to many classes as I became a the hom traffic homicide investigator um which was near and dear to my heart um because when I first got married to my wife her mom was actually killed in a car crash
off of um Congress Street and Florida Highway Patrol to me did not do a proper investigation on it so I always made sure that if I was able to get the opportunity to do those types of Investigations and work with people's families I would um and make sure that people got prosecuted the correct way um
so that was my drive behind there and I had that opportunity to do that when I came came here uh my last big fatal crash here if any of you guys were around in 2000 was at 19 in Ridge Road where we had a quadruple homicide and we were able to successfully um prosecute
the person that killed that family um and it was right at the Christmas holidays right before the Christmas holidays they were underway to buy Christmas present so that was near and dear to me I had left employment and went to Tarpon but I still was actively Prosecuting that case with Pasco State Attorney's office um and Tarpon actually
gave me the approval to do that so I was grateful for them to allow me rather than turn the case over to somebody else um I went to Tarpon Springs basically for more money and better opportunity this was a very small Department I was probably the youngest guy here at the time and a lot of um people didn't
really want to do a lot of stuff except right traffic tickets um I wanted to be able to investigate real crimes and do different things like that I was able to solve a string of burglar we had at a used car dealership next to the Battery Place off of between Grand and 19 there by going out there and doing my own
personal surveillance I tracked the guy down I did a field interview on him I got his name um went started running him through pawn shops and was able to get a successful prosecution and charged him with over 20 burglaries that he was going through the neighborhoods and doing that and then bringing it to the pawn shops and pawning the people's material so we were able to get most of
that back so those are the kinds of things I was looking for in Tarpon and when I went to Tarpon um I was very fortunate I've been able to do a lot of things there almost every Department I've worked in I was in um patrol for a while became a patrol supervisor for a very long time I became the traffic
homicide supervisor shortly after I was there I continued my education in that area till this day um because that's what's really near and dear to me is to prevent people from dying in traffic crashes and um then I went to the code enforcement unit I was in charge of code enforcement for two years I hired a new
officer um rebuilt the whole entire department and then turned it back over to a different supervisor um I was able to work in training accreditation and traffic for a couple years while I was there and that's all we did then I moved on to the school resource officer unit um one of our school resource officer supervisors
unfortunately did something he wasn't supposed to be doing and was fired and we looked really bad at as a department so the chief asked me if I'd be willing to go to the schools and try to rebuild that reputation um my first year there we kind of really did rebuild the reputation where everybody really liked
us and we started doing programs in the high school in my second year there we were able to win the best new crime prevention unit in the State of Florida through our SRO unit for stuff that we started at the high school to teach kids how to patrol their own campus and how to use the radio and how to become
police officers how to drive a golf cart and I kind of ran it almost like we did a police academy um and it worked out very well after that I got promoted out of the unit and I became in charge of accreditation and I was doing accreditation up to this day I'm still very involved with accreditation
throughout the whole entire State of Florida I'm a team leader for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in Tallahassee and uh I've had an opportunity to exess over 180 different agencies throughout the state so I've seen The Good the Bad and the Ugly um from very small Departments of six men
to very large departments the largest one I've did to this date is Broward County Sheriff's Office Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission so I've had a a great opportunity great time to do training met a lot of people um I have support for a lot of different sheriffs
throughout the state um that know me personally know how I've done their Department know how I've done assessments on the department to figure out what broken what needs to be fixed and what's related to accreditation standards for them to maintain their accreditation um I've got promoted from Sergeant I I became the administrative
major in Tarpon Rings Police Department um was doing that I entered the drop I I thought I was ready to retire when I was 55 that was my goal ever since I started when I was 19 and all of a sudden uh got promoted a couple more times after that now I'm the assistant chief down there
and I look back and I really love my job and I know I got got a lot more in the tank and I wish I never would have entered the drop or you know we think we got our things situated and we want to retire at a certain date in time and I'm not ready to retire yet I'm ready to start and uh having an opportunity to come before you guys to come back to
this wonderful City that I worked at um back in the day and seeing how it was is a privilege for me to hopefully I get this opportunity because I I really understand some of the Dynamics that go on in this city very different city than Tarpon Springs there's no way anybody's going to say hey you're going to do the
same thing you did in Tarpon up in in Port Richie that's impossible this is a unique City in itself um and you know after that if I get this job that'd be fantastic if I don't I'll be retiring at the end of the year and I'm sure I'll probably go back to work somewhere I
still have the heart to do this job and I really my stronghold is is helping people and community policing and and this community to me is the perfect opportunity to get out there meet people let them meet our police officers understand what it is but I from what
I'm understanding the police officers need a lot more leadership and training in that area and um the guy that can help them out I've had several different schools in that um as you've seen in my resume I've been to so many instructor schools I've taught at the police academy for over 25 years a lot of your
officers that work here I taught in the police academy um and they also know me for my reputation and Tarpon and all my guys down there atast talking to each other great thank any quick follow up on that before we jump questions with regard to
your with regard to your drop program is that a requirement once you enter that you have to retire in five years or something yes sir our ours is a private pension system in in in Tarpon I entered it in November of 2020 and in November 2025 regardless whether I want to leave
or not I have to okay and now the city could always hire me at a private contract um if they choose to but that's usually a drop de okay that's what I thought it wasting one question you said we're unique describe so your your city is um you're
kind of like broken up a little bit you have as you guys all know you live here certain areas out um by you know Sand Pebble that are different people live there compared to the different needs of people that live on limit drive and those areas over there compared to the
people that live on Queener and then today when I got to do a city tour a lot of new buildings that weren't here 25 years ago uh apartment complexes or condos that seem like really nice places but every one of those people that live in those areas need something different from the police department they're all
not the same people um some people have economic problems some people have neighbor problems some people whatever the problem is there everybody in the city is not the same um and that's what I was trying to mean by that you know and we have to treat everybody as an individual and give them the opportunity
to talk to us and if they're able to tell us what the problems are that's how we solve the problems with them we can't solve the problems by ourselves they can't solve the problems with themselves so we have to work together as a team and if we can't do that then we're really not going to get anything
accomplished thank you anything else okay let's jump right into the questions um so what uh about five minutes on the clock so West question take up to five minutes to answer that um and if there's time left within that five minutes we
can have followup within there and then um we we move through it so the first category is leadership and ethics it's good for 10 points there's two questions first question is can you provide an example of a time when you had to make a difficult difficult ethical decision as a leader and then how did you handle
it so I would say that throughout the years of being in a city police department there are several opportunities that this unfortunately come along um and I had had an issue when I've had somebody from a city come to me that was on the city commission
and want us to do certain things that is not right and I refused to do them they went to the police chief and complained and the Chief came to me as an officer and said you know kid he's a commissioner and I said well you know Chief that's against Florida Statutes also and I'm not going to jail for any
commissioner because they have a personal business and a personal Vendetta uh for whatever they want to do and I don't want to name names um because this is a public forum here and you know they may still be alive I don't know um so we talked it out out and he
wanted me to go site somebody for something and I went over to the place I was told to ordered to um and I didn't site the person for any violations it was actually a code enforcement violation we were police officers at the time we had our own code enforcement so I knew it was a setup from the get-go so
I went to him I refused to do it and the chief was a little upset with me at the time and said what's going on why don't you follow an order and I said I'm sorry sir but that's an order I can't follow if you want to write me up FR subordination I'll sign the paperwork today and I'll take whatever punishment you give me but I'm not doing that illegally um thank God I was smart
enough at that young age not to do it because the next person I talked to a couple months after that was a grand jury indictment um and that was the first time I'd ever deal with a grand jury um in my career so I realized how important it is to do the right things at the right times regardless of who
tells you or who gives you an order if it's illegal you should not be following it um and at the time I didn't know who to report it to um so I never went above the chief and went to the city manager because I didn't know that was an option um I kind of just kept my nose in the dirt and made sure that I didn't do anything illegal and didn't let anybody
else in my area do something illegal but under my leadership I've never asked anybody to do anything unethical that I wouldn't do myself and anytime anybody's ever questioned me I would explain to them what I exactly I'm telling them to do or asking them to do um so they would
understand it because sometimes people misunderstand your or misinterpret your instructions and they think you're asking them to do something illegal um but once you explain it to them they understand it's not illegal it's something that's quite you know legal to do and and you don't have issues with
that thank you any follow I'd like to he answered the question he answered it you gave an example and answered it I I like that yeah yeah else okay moving right
along uh SEC oh than time score everybody score okay next question how do you ensure transparency within your department both with your officers and community so with our department currently um I have an open door policy
and a lot of people say they have open door policies but it's not an open door policy if you don't listen to what they're asking um so my people in our department know they can come to my office at any given time and talk about anything they need to whether it's personal or business related um and so
they know that if we're going to make a decision we're going to make a decision Department wide and we explain to every single person why we're making that decision and the decision's not because I said on the chief that's why we're doing it the reason why we're doing it and we give them the reason and we they
understand more of the buyin of the reasoning of the situation because not everybody's going to like it especially we have a lot more people in Tarpon than here but still here even with the 16 or 17 officers not everybody's going to agree with the decisions but you got to keep that transparency between the officers and you have to go go out there
and be part of the community if you're not part of the community to where the community knows what's going on in the department I heard some comments during our lunch today about a boat and people like why do we buy this boat why we buy that boat from citizens that live in the city and to me that shows that there
might not have been transparency if they didn't know why um so these open forms that you guys have in City commission meetings are fantastic but they should also have the opportunity to talk to us as the police department or the fire department or any other department anytime they want to to address their
opinions on stuff that that's going on if somebody comes to me and says hey we have a problem at such and such address then we need to look into that and take care of that problem there might be a problem there there might not be a problem there but if we go out there and at least look into it I can come back to the citizens and say Hey listen what
they're doing is technically not against the law and there's not much I can do about it but we will go talk to them and see if we can get them to stop doing whatever it is at that given time um so a lot of it is just trying to get the citizens to feel comfortable talking to us as police officers with everything
that's going on in the news nowadays it seems like a lot of people I don't want to say hate the police officers because they don't they really love is in Tarpon for sure and I think they do here too but sometimes they might not be so open to come talk to you because they're afraid of the consequences and I talked
to a citizen that way at lunch today too and he told me that he had a little bit of a disturbing contact with the police officer um at a certain time in the middle of the night and I kind of explained to him well you really don't know I'm not sticking up for the officer because I don't know the situation but
that officer might have just came from dealing with a dead baby or a car crash with the family and if he didn't treat you with the utmost dignity there might be something that was in his mind that he was thinking about not thinking about you um so if they understand that we're
human just like they are by talking to them and expressing feelings with them and having good conversations and listening to what they have to say and then responding to what they say I I think that goes a long way with the transparency in the community thank you
follow yeah uh did a lot of work in Tarpon Springs a little bit of time here but there's been police officers have been a long time it's a small community I just wonder what ideas or plans if any do you have to earn a respect from your fellow officers here in Port Richie
being your starting in as their boss so I would do the same thing I've done in Tarpon and and come to work and outwork them and it has a tendency to go along way I I usually am the first person at work and the last person to leave every single day and my people understand that
they respect it um I don't expect them to work as hard as I do they have unions they have rules they have different types of jobs they're out there possibly getting shot at doing traffic stops I'm doing something different I'm dealing with budgeting Internal Affairs investigations things like that but they
understand that once they start seeing you or me in that position of doing the right things for the right reasons they're going to want to up their game a little bit we talked a little bit about morale this morning and uh some people said morale is about money and I don't believe morale is about money because there's rich people that are very
unhappy in this world I think morale is about the people that work for you know that you care about them and if they know that you care about them they'll be willing to work harder for you and if they work harder for you they'll be seeing what you do and how hard you work and they'll want to keep up with you and
make you proud to be an employee with you in your department um and sometimes little tiny reward go a long way whether it's a certificate or just a thank you or hey let me buy you lunch today because you did such a fantastic job this week um and I don't see that a lot when I go travel throughout the state to
these other departments it's it's US versus them mentality with the admin versus the officers and I don't believe it can be that way in any Department to work efficiently and uh we need to have them on our sides they need to know that they're the backbone of the police department the patrol guys without them
we cannot run a police department we can have 100 Chiefs but without an officer jobs do not get done all we have to do is manage them and lead them and make them do the right things by what we do and their perception of us and what type of people we are thank
[Music] you I was looking for the beep right didn't I felt like it five minutes couldn't have been any closer okay okay take a second score good
okay next category is experience and qualifications it's as well for 10 points uh first question in ad grouping is what best practices in modern policing do you believe are most important for a department of our size community policing 100% a lot of place
people say community policing but they don't actually know what it means um some people get community policing and Community engagement mixed up you do need to engage your community and those are things like coffee with a cop you're engaging them you're talking to them but you're really not doing much for them except giving them an ear and maybe
taking care of a problem here or there true community policing is getting into your neighborhood to where they know who you are and you know who they are and you're improving the quality of life that they have in their community and that's what's so unique about this this city when we go back to the beginning question is there is different pockets
in the city where different people have different needs and one there's no one fit for everybody it's not going to solve everybody's problem but when you know what the problems are in those different parts of each part of the city that's how you can work on those plans I'm a big strategic planning guy and I
love to plan plan plan plan plan and if we don't use those plans that's fine but at least it's there in case something happens and that's the big thing about community policing is going out there and getting the people involved in their own neighborhoods and letting them tell us what they need from us and what we
can do to make their lives better um and sometimes it might not be a police issue maybe it's a code enforcement and that's what's important for us to work with each other in our department Department to say hey code enforcement can you come out here with the police department and do this or maybe it's a fire inspection we get a fire person out there to do an
inspection but that's where it comes from and it all starts with some of these new communities that we have going on in the city right now where is if they need to know that they can come to our department and we can do a crime prevention through environmental design with them and that's a survey of hey this is a great looking Bush but you
might want to cut it down a little bit because it's a great place for a burglar to hide or you got your your spotlight and I noticed last night my midnight shift guy told me that one's pointing this way and the other one's out so it's really not even on your car so maybe we could fix stuff like that but those are the types of things that we need to do
in police work and and this the police department especially to make sure that a community this size knows how valuable its police officers really truly are rather than just saying hey I seen them at waas they're the nicest people they wave to me all the time but what do we actually doing for them to make their
quality of life better and and that's my goal for community policing thank [Music] Follow by no bye okay take a few seconds to
score okay guys ready y okay next question what specific specific initiatives have you led that resulted in a measurable Improvement in crime reduction and Public Safety that would go back to what we
just talked about with our crime prevention through environmental design where we actually do um we have a crime prevention unit in Tarpon and that's what we do we go out there and we help everybody out every new business that we have we actually go out to the businesses ahead of time and we talk to
them about fraud counterfeit bills things like that and then we also do an environmental walk around on their building to make sure that everything not only is legit but there's no hiding spots or bad spots for criminals or criminal activity to have um so there
there's things like that that it's very hard to measure the crime because a crime rate seems around here is based on population based on times of year so certain times of year you're definitely going to have higher crime rates than others because more people are living
here um same thing in Tarpon we have festivals such as the epiphany Festival where we have sometimes up to 50,000 people in there at one given time naturally there's a bigger chance for crimes to occur during those time frames or during the summertime when people are playing sporting events at parks and
they leave their purses or their phones inside their car and people break into those cars because they understand the opportunities there so trying to prevent the opportunity is what's going to prevent the crime rate but as far as saying hey we need to cut down on how many sexual batteries we have those are
so far and few between that it's very hard to decide when we have a Serial rap rapist around that doesn't really happen knock on wood in these areas of Florida same thing with homicides homicides are usually crimes of passion and when one happens we usually know why it happened
and who did it um very rarely do you find one who was like hey we have no idea who killed this person or who would want to kill this person with a little bit of Investigation you find that the burglaries on the other hand can go up and down and we have an influx of that in this area in Tarpon we we work with
other departments tremendously well um we all share information with each other we're like hey we had this rash of a car came through in the middle of the night we got our ring cameras it's a silver Acura but we have no tag on it and it went through every single car in the whole entire neighborhood that was unlocked um and they stole everything
they possibly could we pass that on to Clearwater or Dade City or zepher Hills or Newport Richie Say Hey just make sure you keep an eye on this and then we all go out there and we start these initiatives hey lock your doors when you see those signs out there it says Hey lock your door it's too late they've already stolen what they're going to
steal because people don't lock their doors it's initiatives like that that have to go on all the time to make sure the crime rate stays lower and we don't have these criminals the opportunity to commit these crimes a lot of it too is visibility if they see officers out there and they know officers are in the
neighborhood they're less likely to commit a crime in that neighborhood they'll just move to the next neighborhood where they don't see an officer so as far as measurable definitions that's a very hard thing to do we all get our annual reports and we we're hoping that it's lower than last year um sometimes it is sometimes it's
not but unfortunately to me it's it's a very hard thing to gauge but it starts with the community policing aspect if we know it's going to happen or we know our friends or our neighbors next door are having the same issue that we're on the lookout for things like that and a lot of its Communications between different
departments thank you he follow yes I notic that you were advocate for your for a lot of training seems like you jump on every opportunity that comes up like myself I guess you feel like there you never know too much always willing to learn something different so wondering how you could
pass or have some initiatives uh on to your fellow police officers here in Port Richie maybe encourage them to do the same thing to me I mean that's part of my leadership style is you can never stop learning and I understand there might be
some money restraints or money issu to where you can't send people for training but as I was talking earlier with my meeting with the city manager when I send somebody to training or if I go to training I'm not the only one that gets that training I bring it back to my department and I give that training to every person that's in that department
and that's what we expect from our people also we send them out to a training and you might not be a police instructor or anything like that but that doesn't mean you can't come back and instill your knowledge on us of what you just learned for the last week and you get more bang for your buck that way plus we like to do a lot of In-House
training where where we have a lot of knowledge inh house everybody's got different knowledge you might be a gun guy you might be a boat guy or I might just switch that back and forth you're the boat guy and he's the gun guy right and uh I'm a boat and aun okay bring
that to us and teach us about boats where I don't have to send somebody to Jacksonville for three weeks to know how to use a boat now you might need that certificate for liability at a certain time before they can do certain parts of training especially with Firearms but there's other types of training you really don't need to do I teach
currently for the Florida Public Safety Institute out of Tallahassee and I teach basic traffic homicide investigations all over the State of Florida um and that's one of the things I really like to do is because I'm sick and tired traffic crashes brutalities involved and
nothing happens to the person that did it and where they possibly were drunk but the person wasn't trained to see the the signs of intoxication or people weren't wearing seat belts or they want to blame everything on the dead person CU they can't complain about it and to me that's just not right and I think we
have a really good um process going there with that I can tell you when I turn on the news and I turned it on last week where Sarasota had a hit and run with a couple of kids got killed and I saw those guys there I knew I taught those guys because I remember them in my class and it made me feel good and I was
like come on guys do what you were told to do and sure enough within a couple days they found the bad guy and they arrested him and that makes me feel really proud about what we do yeah one quick one quick homeless problem in this County um how are you guys dealing with
homelessness down in taret Springs inis we're not fortunately um that's a problem throughout the whole entire State and now with the new state law that passed in July about people can't camp out um that helps out a little bit but the one thing I think we all figured
out at the same time is you can't arrest homelessness it just does not work days like today people will be begging to go to jail because it's warm there and they get a nice hot meal um but they're going to come right back to our city so the biggest thing is how do you know they're homeless and most of the time you know they're homeless because they have every
belonging that they've ever had with them if I think the main part about it is we can find a place for them to store their belongings and maybe take a shower here and there they you wouldn't be noticing them as much as you do notice them um and the same thing with the shopping carts it's technically illegal
for them to possess those shopping carts but we don't do anything about it because it's only a misdemeanor um and I understand some people are down on their luck and they need help there's resources out there that we get those people and they get off the streets but there's other people that goes back to the morale and money they're happy being
homeless they have no cares in the world they don't want to bother doing anything and then there's other people that want to do nothing but harass other people and expect you to give me money every time you come to the WWA or something like that and you just worked hard for your money why are you giving it to me
where you know as as a police department it's a very very tough situation to get to and you got to get involved with you know there used to be soup kitchens in this city back in the day when I worked there and I don't think they're here anymore but once you start feeding them and you can get them other services and we just have to talk to the right people
and said hey instead of just giving them meals how about a place to store their stuff how about a place to sleep at night how about a place to take a shower and when you can get that involved then you're going to become a millionaire because you got the greatest solution to the biggest problem I think anywhere is in the State of Florida um but but the
big part about it is just trying to get help for certain people it's unfortunate when you see families out there with kids um but usually when you get to them they want help if you give it to them um and you just have to work hard sometimes it's not within the city limits or the city's jurisdiction sometimes you have
to go out sometimes you have to go to Hudson or Dade City or maybe even Hernando County to help these people get the services that are out there for them that they don't know about or they can't get to so you know I think that's a start for the problem but unfortunately there are people that truly like being
homeless and living on the land time on that was anything pressing you follow on that take second score ready okay next category is community engagement and relationship building first question that category how would you Foster stronger relationships between the police
department and the residents of P Richie I I think we covered that pretty well but it starts with Community engagement they need to be out there there and see is and I know people say coffee with a cop and you see the same three people at Dunkin Donuts talking to the same cops really doesn't do much for
the community but as we talked earlier some people in the community work during the day and seems like that's when admin from the police department work so it doesn't really work for us to go out there and try engage the community when they're working and how about on weekends well I don't want to work a weekend that's my weekend off well
that's too bad that's part of our job we work 24/7 and if we have to come in here on weekends as admin to go out there and engage our community when they're actually home and working and available for us to engage with them that's what they need to do and a lot of times if we do it on their Turf you get a lot more
accomplished if I stop people all the time when they're out front playing basketball with their kids or mowing their lawn or washing their car and start talking to them just seeing how things are engaging them I like to interview people they don't realize I'm interviewing them because they think it's just a conversation but I'm not
making notes in my mind knowing everything that they're telling me that possibly we can fix things or maybe we can't fix things or why we can't fix things um and then we start talking to them and start having that together the other solution to that is when we start getting with these communities if we don't already have crime watches get
crime watches set up in these communities and everybody has somebody in their Community or the area they live in that wants to be the vocal person and we can bring those people in here and any other citizen if we do it once or twice a year and say hey we want to have a Citizens Academy and show them this is
what the police department does on on a daily basis this is how we do our investigations people like stuff like that everybody wants to watch the cop shows all day long that's all my wife wants to do isy to solve crimes and I always tell her who's who did it before she gets a chance to start watching it she gets mad at me but when they start
seeing what we actually do on a daily basis and that we're human beings just like them and they can talk to us and interact with us and we're not just there to take people to jail or write people tickets they'll start behaving differently and telling us more that what's going on in the community and then we can move that on and say hey
this is what the fire department does this is what code enforcement does this is what the water department does and then they get a better understanding of what the city does and and we started that a couple years back in Tarpon and now most of the people that are on the city commission have gone through that Citizens Academy and they understand how
every Department in the city actually works and why we do the things that we do rather than just going in there with a bunch of questions and saying what's going on with this and why is that happen they know why it happens because they've been there behind the scenes and we've shown them everything we have and
I think that's the most important thing about Community engagement and going back to the transparency that you were talking about earlier is is making people feel comfortable talking with us and interacting with us and spilling like you want to say spill the beans but tell me I want to know you have an autistic kid I'd love to know I'd love
to hear about it you know it'll help me deal with another autistic kid somewhere else if I don't know then I come across another autistic kid I might not have had that training and I might not know how to deal with them but you deal with it every single day so talk to me about it and maybe we can get you in here to do some training with our officers on how to deal with autistic kids those are
the types of things that you get out of proper Community engagement and community [Music] policing yes um I'm a strong advocate of lead by example um would you be willing to uh
have all of your staff be able to run tours of Duty in the including yourself I mean do you still Embrace doing a patrol for examp I'm sorry I couldn't hear the center part of it because I'm a strong advocate of lead by example meaning that we're a
small City everybody's got to wear multiple hats and my expectation would be you as Chief should still be able to run a patrol yourself and be able to engage the community like you said with with u Community engagement would you be
be uh amable to that uh as well or honestly I can tell you that's why I'm here I I want to be involved in that stuff I want to do things like that and that's what we do now down south of here is we are engaged as a Command Staff everybody in the Command Staff is
engaging and we seen that to where we would tell officers to go do it and we might be busy doing something else and nothing comes about it not because the officers aren't doing what's right because they don't understand what we're trying to get them to do and when we go out there and we're at every Touch of truck and we're explaining to them where
we got the money to pay for that touch a truck people like oh you spent how much money on this truck I was like well it came from Penny from pelis just like you have penny for Pasco some people don't understand that like why do you need so many trucks why do you need this truck why do you need that boat and you kind of explain that to them it goes a long
way but I I live for community policing I was a community policing instructor back when I was on patrol and I really look forward to that and that's what's still in my heart that's why I'm here I'm not ready to retire I'm ready to be a cop be a street cop tomorrow but I I think that have a little bit more
training and more knowledge to expand on people and training to give them to where when they're starting off their careers they know how to do it the right way and that that means a lot to me to be able to do stuff like that and the opportunity to do that thank you anything else want move on I got a off question sure so
you said you you travel a lot to teach at different places how would that affect your job here that will be stopping um unfortunately not totally um I still think I need to be involved in things that are going to benefit us as a
city and uh I like I when I teach traffic homicide we could possibly teach it here we teach it in Tarpon all the time um and we have people from all around the state come to Tarpon and we teach it right there and I don't even have to leave um and me and my partner when we tag team it he teaches for four
hours I teach for four hours so I can still do my job on the other four hours when I'm working that day and then he doesn't have to use as much vacation either um so there's different types of training um I have another company coming into our department in next month and they're going to be teaching all of our field training officers how to be
Advanced field training officers and how to properly document the daily evaluations that they have to do and things like that I have a lot of places like that throughout the state that I like to bring them here rather than traveling outside to do when I was younger yeah I had no problems going to Pensacola and teaching a 3-day class
well it takes three days to get up there sometimes um but it's it's one of those things where traveling now as old as I am and running the department I do I can't travel as much so I try to bring that inhouse and offer that here and usually if I can do enough
advertising to our fellow neighboring departments we get free slots so then we don't even have to pay for the training well I'm glad because I don't want you to give up teaching I want you to be the time but I don't want you to give up teaching you got all that knowledge why would you not share it anymore so having an answer to
that here good follow up to that question if you're going to be teaching here is that a revenue opportunity for the city would we be able to generate any revenue from you teaching those classes and bringing people in probably
not because the outside agencies are the ones that collect the fees we try not to get into the business of doing that because then when say another neighboring agency doesn't pay their bill then we're into a bill collecting issue and we don't want to create problems like that um a lot of the
training is actually trust funded through the the Florida Department of Transportation and when I do a traffic homicide class that class is $1,000 a student and the Florida Department of Transportation if we have 25 people in there they flip the bill for $25,000 and that goes to the Florida
Public Safety Institute and then they pay our instructor fees but they also pay for hotels for the officers to come from all over the state and stay in Tarpon so it will open up opportunities for people to come and enjoy P Richie but as far as making money off the actual teaching I would say probably not
yeah I just didn't know if tarpan was in that capacity no bringing in any Revenue relative to your teaching skills we do a lot of it too is for marketing purposes so we tend not to have a problem recruiting officers because now officers all over the state understand wow this
this is Tarpon Springs this is a nice place we take them on tours we let them do some ride alongs at night time rather than sitting in a hotel being bored and then all sudden say you know what I think I want to relocate the tarpet and it works great as a recruiting tool for us and even if it doesn't they understand what Tarpon Springs is all about and we can put Port Richie on the
map the same exact way and people understand what Port Richie is about throughout this whole entire State it's was like hey I remember going to a class in Port Richie they had some great waterfront property over there or a great restaurant or this that and the other thing and then sometimes they might bring their family back here on vacation
thank you okay moving on make sure we get done in time so um second question that group is how do you approach communicating with the public during times of Crisis or controversy he said that is upfront and honesty you know is you have to be as
upfront as you possibly can sometimes we can't certain crisises during the investigation we can't release certain information because it will jeopardize the investigation but we try to release everything we possibly can and be upfront and honest with them um have a very good working relationship with all
the news Medias I I've been the Pio for Tarpon for years and I always talked to him beforehand I was like this is what I can tell you and this is what I can tell you he said don't bother asking me this question trying to make me look bad because if you do I'm not going to give you any more interviews I'll give your competitor the interviews and it seems to work very well with them and I have
no issues with any of them except for one and we don't do interviews with that news media anymore and quite frankly nobody watches it anyway so it doesn't matter but it's one of those things where if they want to know and we can tell them we need to tell them you know and there's no reason not to be honest with them because if you're not honest
with them they're going to find out the truth sooner or later and then they're going to use that against you and if we're supposed to be the police department we the highest Integrity there is we can take people's lives we can take people's freedom why should we not be honest with them on the news when we know the news is going to find out the truth anyway so that's to me is the
easiest thing to do is just be upfront and honest thank okay take time score ready okay next uh um category is departmental leadership and strategy first question how would you support and develop the officers under your command
to improve the tension and morale the morale is the big thing if we can improve the morale we'll improve the retention and I know some people think it's all about money and we already discussed that it's it's not all about money sometimes it's about money but if if people generally care about the
person they come to work with and they feel like they're needed and wanted they will come to work with a better attitude every day but the way things work through things with the leadership style is as we discussed this earlier with city manager is everybody has to be
prepared for the next step before they take the next step we shouldn't be promoting sergeants to sergeants and then trans sending them to school afterwards they should already been to school to know how to run a shift and be a supervisor and then when they get promoted they already know how to do that when they're a sergeant they should
already have the schools to know how to become a middle management at the Captain's level and otherwise we're going to create a captain here when One retires or leaves for whatever reasons and they're not ready for the position and I can't send you to school after you're already doing a position and expect you to learn it's very hard to do
that there is some stuff learning on the job but the majority of it is preparing people before they get into those positions we we send people to the police academy before we let them be cops why do we not send them to supervision school before we let them be supervisors and or same thing as a detective we're not going to let somebody be a a homicide detective
without sending them to homicide investigation school it just doesn't make sense but it seems like that's what a lot of departments do because of money issues and here this department is small enough that every officer should be a leader and whether they think they are or they don't think they are they are um
and some of them may be ready for it some of them may not be ready for it some of them just love working Patrol every day of their life and that's a great job other people's like I don't want to work Patrol I want something different I want to be the boss someday and when we ask them why do you want to be the boss they don't know what to tell us because I'm tired of taking orders
from somebody else that's not really being a boss that's not what being a boss is about you're delegating because you have other uh issues to deal with and other parts of the department that you have to deal with and develop but to me we can never give our officers enough training and always prepare them for the next step so
when they get to that next step they're totally prepared for 100% and talking to the officers this morning I've heard a little bit about that about they don't get the training that they want or the training that's necessary some people go to schools just to get a certificate I don't believe in getting going to schools to get a certificate I I believe
in going to schools to make yourself and your department better any follow bring a similar followup I had with the other candidate um you obviously heard in the past we had uh a vot of no confidence against the existing Chief so there was a division within the department you know some were
satisfied with the leadership others were not and so and again I don't know where we're at today um because I'm not that intimately involved with that but um what I want to ask you is knowing that coming in that there may be some division within the department what what things can you do immediately to kind of
bring cohesion with that group is so that we are united Police Department that everybody's functioning as a team and and good morale going forward and you don't have any outliers basically that are um on the other side if you will the the biggest thing to do is
don't come in looking to change everything you have to come in here and do an assessment on everything and see where everybody stands and what the problems really are some people may have problems that they perceive to be problems but they're really not problems um others may actually have legitimate concerns and when you start talking to
all the officers that's the first thing I would do sit down and talk with every single officer individually and I want to find out who they are what they are and how they do business and what they're looking for in the future and I try to make all my officers currently tell me what's your 5-year plan and what's your 10-year plan and when they
tell me they don't have a 5-year or 10-year plan I say well you have no Direction you're just coming to work to work and make money that's fine that's the way some people are as long as you're doing your job as Patrol but you never want to move up in the ladder you never want to go to training you never want to do anything different or how do you solve the
problems if you have a problem that you just told me about tell me some solutions I'm not here to solve all your problems I can't do that give me some ideas about how you think we should solve this problem problem and not every problem can be solved the the at the end of the day it's it's a bad analogy but I
don't like to let the inmates run the Asylum but they have to understand that there's a leadership involved here and if we can't do something then they understand why we can't do something not just because I'm the boss and I said so so I think once we explain that to them and they give us ideas some of the ideas
I've already heard are very quick simple just being involved I think a lot of them just want somebody here that they can see and I see some of a division that we talked about earlier is when you have admin on that side of the building and cops on this side of the building there's a dividing in between them we should all be together and I know we
have building restraints here but um we do the same thing in Tarpon our admin's upstairs but our stairwell is open to everybody and they know they can come into my office any single time they want and talk to me and I'm going to listen to them and I'm going to give them an option and usually we solve their
problems with their Solutions and they just don't know it because somebody's never talked to them and talked them through their problems thank you thank follow okay take second score good okay uh next question where do you
see the Port Richie Police Department in five years and what steps would you take to achieve that Vision I'd love to see it as a professional Department being led by me um but I I can't honestly say that it will be professional hopefully it'll be led by me but I have to do an assessment
to see where we are I don't want to make promises that I can't keep but as soon as I get an assessment done the first thing we need to do is set up a 5year strategic plan and figure out where we're going to be in five years and how we're going to get those five years if it's money issues equipment issues
training issues Personnel issues how are we going to get there you have the police Union to deal with when you're talking about salaries and recruiting and retaining um but as a leader we have to put it down on paper and strategically plan on where we want to be and where we see ourselves and then how we're going to bridge that Gap from
today and five years from now and without sitting there with everybody and having everybody as a stakeholder involved in this from all the officers the city manager the council the department heads the Departments of the rest of the city it can't be done so it it has to be kind of like a family
atmosphere we all have to be involved in this and you guys play as big a role as this department as we do um and and unfortunately you have to go through elections every 3 years we should be here until we do something bad or we decide to retire um and unfortunately when we have 5-year strategic plans I
see those goals in sight and when I do Assessments in departments all over the country or all over the state I'm sorry I see that as a lacking thing and I'll be like where's your fiveyear strategic plan and they don't have one and then when you talk to everybody you understand why everybody's just coming to work and working when nobody has a
goal and where they want to be in 5 years um and my biggest thing was if I get get this opportunity would make sure all my people are trained the proper way and have the proper equipment to go out there and do the job the right way in a professional manner to where this community loves us loves interacting
with us loves seeing us and is part of our department just as much as we are thank you any follow yeah with regard to the boat I mean that's kind of what we saw we have a vote in the budget they bought it sat
there the point is is if we are to buy equipment and move forward with a plan and I like the fact that you're thinking about planning because if you don't have a plan your plan is to fail simple as that and the
fact that this community a large part of its waterfront and a lot goes on the waterfront I'd like to get that into the some kind of strategic plan and how would you address the Waterfront in your scenario
I can tell you the the biggest thing about a boat is the Personnel um so if you don't have the Personnel to work Patrol on the streets you're not going to be able to do it on the waterways unfortunately the waterways are a lot more dangerous than the streets so you have to have two people on a boat if
you're going to do it safely one person going out there by them themselves is a setup for disaster because one if they call for backup nobody's going to be backing them up because nobody's jumping in the water to swim to them and two there's nobody knows what's on their boats people care car guns on their boats people are smuggling drugs on
their boats you could be coming up on a regular safety boating inspection and not know that it's a drug Runner he's got 6 kilos of cocaine he's working for a cartel and now your officer is going to get himself killed because he's out there by himself and nobody can get to him by the time we get to him the person we back in Mexico so the water thing it
is a big thing in the city and it does need to be addressed um but when you're short Manpower or you don't have the manpower to do it some people say hey we can bring them in on overtime well when the guys get their three-day week again they kind of need their downtime to stay mentally in the game because if they're not mentally in the game then they're
not going to be good during the week when they're working on patrol uh so it is something that needs to be addressed and you have that big Waterfront area that's getting ready to be developed down there a lot of houses along the Waterfront when I worked here last time that's kind of how we accomplished Marine Patrol is we had two guys on a
boat on weekends and only weekends um and and we really depended on FWC a lot for their resources they used to help us out tremendously we would help them out tremendously and we used to actually have a a room in our PD where the old fire station is now that they could come and do their paperwork so we can keep
them around and then we ever had a problem we were all blue Lightning certified we could pick up the phone and we talk to customs because we were Customs certified and deal with things like that and you know over the years I don't know if that's gone away or not um but that was a big thing when I think back in the day we were seizon a lot of
stuff on the water with Marine Patrol and Customs would come up here and do all the paperwork for us and give us the attorneys to do it and then we would split things three ways between customs FWC and us and it worked out really well but we would never send anybody out there by themselves and if we didn't have somebody called out sick
unfortunately can't Patrol the waterways that that day um it's just too dangerous and a lot of people don't understand that they think boating is a pleasure and most pleasure boers are pleasure boers but people go out there they get intoxicated and now you have one officer
stopping a boat full of six drunk people and that's not a safe environment either because if somebody's intoxicated and they go in water we got to go in after and we can't let them drown and now we got five other intoxicated people on the boat that we're also dealing with so it's a very dangerous situation that a lot of people don't understand with
Marine Patrol anything else just that real quick um out out of fair I did ask the same questions that BR can so obviously apartment's been around a long time and um there's there's probably uh ways that things have been done in the past always
been done that's just the way it has been done um what's important to me is that as you create a vision and you talk about the Strategic 5 year plan that may require significant change within organization and so how are you a proponent of change reluctant to change balanced if you
could just talk a little bit about how you see change and its its role in in achieving those Visions very easy if there's a need to be changed we can change it if there's no need to change it then that's fine there's no reason to change things just to change them um but when you get your Buy in from your people it's a little bit easier to
change things for the better and then sometimes they don't understand it's for the betterment of them they just think it's hey us making decisions for them but when they see the change such as a new report writing system or a new CAD system and they understand why we changed or why we upgraded there's some growing pains because they don't know
how to use it but if we train them the right way and they figure out how to use it then they're big proponents of it and then all a sudden seven years later we change it again and like oh I love the program now I was like well seven years ago you hated it so a lot of it is that you know and cops are cops we all we don't like change and we don't like the
way things are um but if we can change it for the better we'll change it for the better if we don't need to change it I don't care we've been doing it since 1900 let's just keep doing it if it works for us it works for us unless it's a more efficient way to do things and saves us some money that's like the
motto in the city isn't it yeah City yeah just just the funny thing why we kind of chuckled obiously is I had heard at at a conference I was at that two things people hate the most are change and the way things are last C said it you said it so it's uh things like I was uh I think they teach down to police
place but you know I love the say um okay move right along so next take time to score real [Music] quick okay ready okay final category fit for the
role and challenges in Port Richie question number one what do you see as the biggest policing challenges facing Port Richie and how would you address them again being here 25 years ago oh that was quick five minutes
up go go go well see in all transparency ashle leaves at four so she's she don't like [Laughter] stay but uh you know goes back to assessment you know not only with the
officers but with the community you know and we we can sit here as a police department and think we know what the policing needs are of the city but if we don't talk to the citizens and we really don't know what it is I could sit here and just a second guess myself and say it's Walmart and wwas um but that's maybe not fair to blame those two businesses they do bring a lot of
business and a lot of visitors into the city but I know what happened with our city when Walmart came along but we teamed up with Walmart and Walmart actually gives us money and gives us grants to pay for certain things and does certain things with us like stuff a truck shop of the cop and things like that at the Christmas time so we work
very well with them their lost prevention officer actually went to the police academy she's she catches at least three people a day and it's very taxing on our officers but it's one of those things where we understand what it is and how it needs to be done um and as the laws change you could steal up to
$1,000 now and it's still a misdemeanor and you're walking out of the store with an 855 in TV is only $995 it's a mem meter you know so it's one of those things where how do you combat that good question but teaming up with Walmart if that's if that is our biggest
crime area or helping waas out with a homeless people or anything else that's going on out there business doesn't really do much for our citizens and our citizens are wondering why we're not driving through the neighborhood and why they don't see us because we're at Walmart all day long arresting people that are stealing stuff so it's one of
those things where once you do an assessment not only within the department but also starting doing that Community engagement and that community policing you'll understand what the actual policing issues are within the city I hear there's game rooms going on around here is there issues with that to
where people are getting robbed or murdered or anything else that's going on with those things the state has changed the law over the years years and for some reason everybody just wants to look the other way you know and that's not necessarily the best option to do either there are different um organizations throughout the state that
deal with that stuff they might not know it's operating here but if we get with the state gaming people and work with them in State Attorney's office and see what they want to do go in there and arrest them right now and when you arrest one I don't know how many you have in the city I would imagine a couple probably then you're stuck with
150 to 300 slot machines or whatever they're using and you got to pay somebody to store those things because you don't have the room for it and it's considered evidence and if the state attorney's office isn't on board with the prosecution of these cases now all a sudden you're seizing it it's costing you money to store it and at the end of the day they're going to no file and you
got to give everything back to them so it's going to cost the city money to do nothing but hit the reset button and then they're going to go back and open back up and be like we told you we're not going to do anything to us um so it's one of those things where it has to be a multi-prong approach with different organizations to get them involved to
get them out all together not just out of the city at had a business um but I've seen them all up and down 19 and we're fortunate in tar and we don't have any you know and uh possibly create ordinances to prevent future ones to come in here and do things like that but
there there are ways to to do it it just has to be done the right way otherwise you're just going to cause a bigger mess for the city what's your biggest problem in ter or what's your biggest problem the officers have with you inter I'd be loving to sit here and say my officers don't have any problems
and I'd be willing to give you our phone number bank and you can call any one of them and ask them the one thing that they're going to tell you is I'm Fair firm and consistent they know if they had a problem I'm going to help them with their problem they know if they mess something up they're going to have to suffer the consequences we hold everybody accountable um but they must
be professional to our people and most of our guys have no problems at all they love me they know I'll fight for them they'll know I'll do anything I can for them they know if they have a problem whether it's personal or professionally they can come to me and I will work through it with them and our big is I started a mental health wellness program
about four years ago there and we get a pretty hefty bill every year but it's worth it and uh sometimes me and the chief have a little disagreement about why we're spending this money and I was like I will spend any dime any day of the week rather than have to say you at one of my officers funerals it's just not worth it you can't put a price tag
on [Music] that okay okay last last question I'll take time score am I good okay last question why are you interested in this position and how do
you see yourself contributing to the community long term I uh I don't want to say there's a coolness to it but I I would love to actually end and retire my career where I started my career in law enforcement and I'm talking about Patrol not
Corrections um when I was working in the city back in the day I remember when I was the Young Gun and throughout the whole time of my career I became the old fart and I didn't realize it and I always talk about hey the and then I'm like wow I'm that guy that I used to talk about and complain about now so
it's one of those things where to me it would be an honor to be able to come back here and I really the city is unique um and sometimes it gets a bad rap because crazy things happen around here um but it's not really like that I I truly believe there's a lot of great citizens in this city um and community
and I'd love to be able to have the opportunity to get out there meet with them rekindle some things I know people's family members that have worked here um over the years as I did my city tour this morning I remember certain people living in certain houses and I made me wonder how they're doing and
what they've done over the last 25 years so I I would really love to have that opportunity to rekindle some of those relationships and serve this city and and and give them the service that I know they deserve and they need after um what what I've been hearing
a quick question here uh in your experience with law enforcement over the years and dealing with uh mental illness and drug addiction uh what have you learned as far as dealing with people like that and um resolving
situation and um like I said with drug addiction and mental illness there's a couple things a lot of it has to do with training and the other part is deescalation um deescalation has kind of became the law recently um but the training on how to deal with there's so
many different mental illnesses around the State of Florida where it used to be a lot smaller for some reason 25 years ago now you have autism you have people with diminished capabilities you have Iraq War veterans coming back with PTSD
and everybody is so unique that there's a lot of training involved in them and a lot of it has to do with the officers just giving the person the time but they need to understand where we're going for them what the difference between somebody with dementia and somebody with autism if they treat them the same way
you're not going to get the same response out of them so you have to have that training on how to deal with all those different people a lot of departments have been able to just say hey we're going to pay a bunch of money and have mental health counselors come and work with and ride with our cops rather than train our cops I don't think
our Department's that big I don't think you have that much money I think we can train the cops here and get them to these classes so they know how to deal with those different mental illnesses especially if it's PTSD and all a sudden you have a trigger going off now if you have a military veteran they might rather talk to somebody that's been in
the military on patrol rather than a 22y old kid that's has never had any military experience and that that's one of the programs we actually started in Tarpon is where we understand and we found who our veterans are in our departments and we try to send them to those types of calls so I can relate to you more if I've been in Iraq or I've
been in Vietnam and I kind of understand understand what you're going through with PTSD rather than somebody that has no training with it at all and we end up with a bad situation on our hands will that be on the agenda [Music] absolutely any followup that okay we've
got five minutes you little less five minutes um and uh so we open up for for just any questions outside that dve you got something yeah I always have okay less than five
minutes but good thing we covered a lot of these on the way in so good luck to you we spoke a little bit about the boat our boat is a joint fire and police so could you operate that with a police
person and a fire uh emergency Tech uh as two people on the boat both qualified around right absolutely that that's like The Best of Both Worlds right there cuz if something happens you can treat them on the medical side and if something happens the officer has backup or somebody that can call and help them out
and hey there's no reason why we can't take some of our firefighters and teach them some of our defensive tactics to be able to restrain somebody until the rest of the troops get there but that that's a fantastic idea okay um we know the dispatch has already been um slight to
move to County are you guys internal with dispatch where you're at or are you doing that through your county or that we have ours internally right now we're one of the few agencies panel that still have it internally but we have um such a unique I believe need for them um it
does cost a little bit more but when we pick up the phone or we click on our radio we know who that person is on the other side of the radio not some stranger and sometimes when I've seen in my career when cops get hurt and they're in very bad distress sometimes it's
reaffirming for them to hear a voice that they know on the other side of that radio rather than some stranger telling them the troops are on away just stand by um and yeah but there's always a cost involved with it but I don't think you could actually even if you get ready your Dispatch Center they can dispatch
911 all day long but you're still going to need a personalized service here for people to run warrant checks do your vacation house checks um check your cameras around here or whatever other type of equipment you have to actually be involved so I know there is a state
law that's out there that's running through the house in the Senate right now to try and make every County do that um and be one Center in every single County um but I'm not a big fan of that to tell you the truth but if it's something where you have to save I know
panel's park I think just saved $300,000 a year and they were able to put two more cops on patrol if that's what you need then sometimes unfortunately the way the business is running nowadays you only have so many dollars and you have to spend them to the best advice of your citizens and whatever serves your
citizens the best the way you spend the money is unfortunately what you have to do okay thank you um I would like to see walking through our community and possibly meeting the residents and maybe even bike patrols uh is that some is
that or foot and foot patrols is that something that you would advocate for and trying to embrace this community engagement yes we we have a very large presence on foot patrol in Tarpin but we do that mostly in the business district so if you do foot Patrols in certain
neighborhoods you really can't get very far and then if something happens try to get back to your car in a timely manner doesn't work so we find bike Patrol works better for that um bike patrols work fantastic at night time when nobody knows you're coming and can't hear you coming compared to driving down the street with a car um but for Community
engagement purposes yeah if you have somebody that's that's all they're going to do that day is foot patrol that's fine but if they're supposed to do foot patrol and answer calls and they're six blocks away from their car cuz they're trying to walk in a big circle and then we have an emergency to where another officer needs needs them and they can't
get to their car in time and sometimes it's 150° outside with their vest on it hinders their ability and they can overheat very quickly too so it's we kind of try to be very cautious about that um foot Patrols in the summertime work much better at night time than they
do during the day but bike patrols work better all the time whether it's just a parade a a showing we bring bikes to touch a truck you know because most people say hey it's got to be a truck no it doesn't police bikes are pretty cool you know and we helped out with the Republican um convention several years
back when it was in Tampa and be because we helped them they gave us a bunch of bikes you know so we have thousand bikes but bikes are not cheap it's not like you can just go to Walmart and get a $100 bike off the rack they they have to be specially made bikes otherwise they don't last and then you have to give them other types of equipment such as
first aid kits in case they come across somebody and tourniquets and things like that they carry with them but they're all good options you also me C cat be quick last time go ahead uh you
indicated um you combined code enforcement and the police department did you find that that worked well I know that we got these in separate departments now what's your thoughts on just it works based on the people
working in those departments they could be separate they could be together but they have to work together regardless who they report to the police department and code enforcement that's two a kind when it comes to community policing without the code enforcement working with the police department the police department working with code enforcement you're just kind of butting heads
together but they don't necessarily have to be in the same Department um but we all need to work together to get the same mission accomplished okay and based on your short time here you know six seven hours have you uh watched any of our
Council reports or uh meetings and kind of I get an understanding of some the problems going on in our city I was here the other night for your last Commission meeting and um kind of understand you know when you're uh changing impact fees on police
and fire with that's a good thing for us I know you got some Waterfront development going on where Hooters used to be in gild dogs and all that um and the Centennial Celebration is fantastic I love all the different events you're having for that that are planned between your your run and your your Crafts
Festival and things like that that's a prime Place to Start Community Poli releasing um but yeah those about the things that go on necessarily the the nitty-gritty things no I don't know but what everything that was discussed the other night yes I do know perfect and the bonus question what's your favorite
donut it's got to be chocolate Honey dead right all right okay anything else soose same way I did leg and this is not really a question more of just an awareness obviously being the mayor I'm like complaint Central so unless there's a relationship with one of the council
members Community reaches out to me when they have problems with the city staff as an expectation as a department head police chief um any things that come through the police department um communication is key I want to impress upon all department heads that to have the model that when when folks come in
that they get the best service they feel like they get the best service that they also um they feel heard and that they're giv accurate information at the end of day when they leave they may not like the answer they've received but they felt like they've been heard and that they've they've received good service and so hopefully that minim is what comes back that's to roll back down
because you know obviously with our situation government I can't reach out to you police chief and say Hey you know resident X reach out to me had this problem whatever I have to roll down through Matt Matt's very busy running the city and the the mo the more that the department heads can do uh to to kind of quell that the better off so I
hopefully you um which I believe you are is a good communicator and as things roll up with uh within your department that you can handle that yeah and that's kind of the way we work now it's we kind of just let the city man manager know if he's going to get blindsided with something that something we did if he's
not getting blindsided he doesn't need to know we we run daily business over there and but we make sure we protect him and protect the commission too and make sure everybody knows if something's going to happen or something did happen so they don't look at on the news you you're going to hear from the city manager first because he's goingon to
hear from us first good okay thank you for time appreciate your your interest and uh good luck to you thank you for your opportunity I appr appreciate you all you could just um finish filling things out before you leave leaving with
Ashley make sure you put your name on them I'll shake the attorney you better she's important the most important I'm just here to make his life back here watching you did man he's good to you
we have to yes motion to adjourn second okay I have a motion second all in favor simp by saying I I the adjourn losing yes