Concerns Mount as Fla. Town Braces for Life Without a Police Department

The Broward Sheriff’s Office turned down a last-minute request for additional help Friday from the town of Pembroke Park to provide law enforcement — citing the town’s plea as proof of the “recklessness of this decision that will have a detrimental impact on the Town’s residents.”

The Sheriff’s Office has said it’ll perform “its statutory obligations to respond to emergency calls” in the town until its new police department starts operating. Still, concerns are mounting that, starting Oct. 1, there might not be any full-time cops patrolling the streets in this tiny town.

The town commission recently voted 2-1 to end its contract with the Sheriff’s Office after a 42-year partnership next Friday. The decision comes as the town nears the start-up date for its own police department, which isn’t expected until February.

And that leaves the town with a gap of coverage, potentially for weeks if not longer. If the town is able to expedite starting its police force, that could happen sooner than the new police department’s original schedule of starting in February.

Government experts say that while the Sheriff’s Office will respond to emergency calls, they might not do proactive enforcement, such as road patrol, which can also be a deterrent to crime. And if deputies are busy in cities that pay them, they might be slower to respond to a crisis in Pembroke Park.

With the clock ticking and no deal with a surrounding city to help out, Pembroke Park’s police chief sent an email to Sheriff Gregory Tony early Thursday morning asking to hire two off-duty deputies to fill in the gap.

“At the end of the day, Public Safety is our primary function,” Chief David Howard wrote.

The rejection came Friday afternoon from Sheriff’s Col. Nichole Anderson, who wrote that special detail deputies for patrolling a town “is not a realistic solution” since the special assignments are voluntary and might not always be staffed, and “two deputies patrolling the town without supervision and available back-up is a serious safety concern.”

She blasted the town’s leadership for being “completely unprepared to provide police services to its residents on October 1, 2022.”

“At the last commission meeting, the Mayor assured the Town’s residents that he had a plan in place to cover the gap in police services should the contract not be renewed,” Anderson wrote. “This last-minute request to hire special detail deputies to provide patrol services for the Town makes it readily apparent that the Mayor had no such plan in place, highlighting the recklessness of this decision that will have a detrimental impact on the Town’s residents.”

Howard fired back later in the day that it was “poor management” if the Sheriff’s office wasn’t supervising deputies who routinely do off-duty detail assignments, and “regardless of what the politicians did, or are going to do, it is clear to me that Tony’s Sheriff’s Office has no regard for public safety.”

Howard told the South Florida Sun Sentinel they were still working on ideas for coverage but declined specifics. “We’re still talking so it would be premature to discuss.”

He also can’t give a date exactly when the town’s new police department will open. The chief still has a handful of officers to hire, the radios still have to be programmed to the 911 system, and each new officer must be trained and fitted for their bulletproof vests before they can hit the road.

Florida law requires local Sheriff’s Offices to “be conservators of the peace in their counties.” That means Pembroke Park won’t be open to looters, and 911 calls will get answered.

But service won’t be the same.

“While BSO will continue to perform its statutory obligations to respond to emergency calls within the Town until their police department becomes operational, this is not a substitute for proactive law enforcement patrols,” Tony said in a prepared statement earlier this week. “The Town has been warned that response times to these emergency calls will significantly increase. The men and women of BSO who have provided outstanding police service to the Town of Pembroke Park will be reassigned beginning Oct. 1, 2022.”

Anderson’s response was more specific, saying the Sheriff’s Office would respond to “forcible felonies” when immediate response is necessary to prevent death or “substantial property loss” or search for fugitives or missing people “and other spontaneous incidents.”

“To the extent that the Town requests mutual aid from BSO that falls into these categories and resources are available to respond, BSO will provide such aid which may include units assigned to West Park,” she wrote.

Gene Steinfeld, the former city attorney for Margate for 38 years and government expert, said everyone in the county is entitled to the Sheriff’s services: “All county taxes go to pay for the Sheriff’s Office to a degree.”

But while the office is “not going to ignore crime, they may not be able to respond immediately,” he said. “The issue becomes what is the level of service. The level of service obviously would be less.”

Ellen Roach, a 51-year Pembroke Park resident, said she is “frustrated” that the town “left us with nobody.”

“I’m not scared, but I’m scared for the other people in case something happens, they’ll have to wait” for service, she said.

Her husband, David Roach, said he is worried for businesses and people who don’t live in gated communities. “It’s an unsafe issue, and people could get hurt.”

The town set out to create its own police department to beat the sheriff’s costs, and provide better service. In the end, the costs will be about the same, at about $3.4 million a year, the town says.

Commissioner Bill Hodgkins was the only one who voted against dropping the Sheriff’s contract without a temporary renewal. “That was just idiotic, you cut your own throat. ... Hopefully we don’t bleed to death,” he said of the commission decision.

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