Dec. 20--MEXICO BEACH -- Chief Brad Hall has prepared a plan to improve the Mexico Beach Police Department, which has been criticized by some and supported by others in recent months as city leaders mulled the possibility of disbanding the department and contracting with the sheriff for law enforcement services.
Chief Hall's plan, called the "Get Well Plan 2011/12," directly addresses the concerns brought up in an evaluation by the Bay County Sheriff's Office. It offers possible solutions and a timeline for implementing them.
According to the report, a few of the concerns already have been addressed, such as removing the tint from patrol car windows to remove barriers between officers and the community, which the BCSO report recommended as a starting point, and several solutions are in progress.
"Some things were addressed, but a lot of this was started after the report," Hall said. "There are things in [the report] that I wholeheartedly agree with."
The BCSO report, delivered to Hall and city officials Sept. 7, noted the department had begun to address some off the issues mentioned. Sheriff Frank McKeithen noted in the report that many of the agency's shortcomings were not uncommon for an agency the size of the Mexico Beach Police Department, which Hall also emphasized.
"There's no department around here that doesn't have an issue with funding," Hall said. "You have to deal with what you've got."
Hall takes issue with some of the BCSO findings, especially the notion that crimes go unpunished because of lack of manpower, training or experience. He notes in the report that among the six officers in the department, half are trained in crime scene processing and evidence collection and storage.
"We have a great amount of experience and talent amongst the officers. ... There are always areas that may be too intense for an officer to completely investigate, but if that occurs we still have the Sheriff's Office and [the Florida Department of Law Enforcement] to assist us," Hall wrote.
Hall said the assessment of his officers caught him off guard. The BCSO evaluation suggested Mexico Beach officers were dissatisfied with the profession because many had worked for multiple agencies, had disciplinary problems or left police work for a time. That fact just as easily could be attributed to the individual agencies his officers left before finding a better fit with his department, Hall said.
Other tasks, such as establishing better processes for dealing with citizen complaints, are in the planning stage and it will be months before they are implemented. And others still, policy revisions for instance, are ongoing and never ending, said Hall, who noted keeping policies up to date has not been as high a priority as it should have been.
"That was a good finding because it reminded me that this has to be done," Hall said.
And some still are at this point unrealistic because of budgetary constraints, such as interior renovations to the police station. One of the more common suggestions in Hall's plan was greater cooperation and enhanced communication between the police and city government.
McKeithen recommended the city find a way to keep the police when he presented the report to Mayor Al Cathey; if that wasn't the option city officials chose, McKeithen said he would draft a detailed proposal. That never happened. The City Council on Tuesday reached a consensus to keep the police, and the issue never came to a vote.
Maj. Tommy Ford with the BCSO said Hall's response was the positive outcome the evaluation was designed to create.
"It was meant in a constructive manner," Ford said last week. "It was direct and to the point, but it was meant to be constructive."
Copyright 2011 - The News Herald, Panama City, Fla.
