By REID TUCKER
Like their counterparts aiming for a seat on the City Council, City Marshal Mark Weeks and challengers Michael Howell and James Hurley answered questions regarding their vision for the future of the city.
The forum took place immediately after the Council candidates’ panel on the evening of Wednesday, April 1 – a week-and-a-half from the April 14 city elections. As in the other forum, police chief candidates responded to a number of audience-supplied questions with members of the DeFuniak Springs Business and Professional Association providing the moderation for the event.
Current City Marshal Mark Weeks got things started by way of an introduction, telling those in attendance of the successes and achievements of the DFSPD since he came on board nine years ago and, more pertinently, since he was elected chief six years ago. In that time, the department was in desperate need of new firearms, equipment and patrol vehicles, but those requirements were taken in stride and nowadays the agency is on its second round of replacements. Weeks said keeping the tools of the trade up-to-date is crucial when it comes to providing the citizens with the best (and most affordable) service possible, and those tools also include training in perishable skills for officers.
“I’m all about training and I’m all about equipment,” Weeks said. “You have to keep up with it and keep moving forward. It’s kind of like the computer at your house. You have to rotate it out from time to time.”
The matter of how to improve the DFSPD level of service while retaining employees and increasing community involvement became the central theme of the forum, and each of the candidates brought their own perspective to bear on the issue.
For Hurley, a nine-year special agent with the Florida Division of Alcoholic Beverages and Tobacco who handles investigations related to gambling, narcotics and prostitution, the solution to combating a precipitous slip in reported crime solvability is to place increased emphasis on investigations procedures. He said the DFSPD needs to start putting officers into closer contact with the communities they serve and then follow through with more thorough investigations including DNA gathering and neighborhood canvassing. He also suggested that the department bring another narcotics investigator on board to help combat the growing drug problem in certain neighborhoods across town.
“I never solved a crime where I didn’t have to talk to somebody,” He said. “We need to start doing old-fashioned, solid investigations in this town to get our crime rate down and our solvability rate up.
“We’ve got to make a change. We’ve got to make a stand. We’ve got to make a difference. We’ve got to get out and connect with our people. We’ve got to reach out to our community from the Lakeyard to the east side to the west side.”
However, Howell, who resigned as captain at the Walton County Sheriff’s Office to run for city marshal, said the real benefit of putting more officers in the field is to increase visibility and prevent crimes in the first place. However, this would involve re-prioritizing funds and undergoing some streamlining at an agency where $1.4 million of its $2 million budget is already being spent on employee salaries and benefits, meaning deeper cuts would likely mean a reduction in force. The problem, he said, is there are too many supervisory positions in the department and not enough patrol officers.
“The number-two mission is to solve crimes when they happen, but our goal is to prevent and deter crime,” Howell said. “I think we need to allocate our resources, put boots on the ground, put them out there on the street, and let them get in the neighborhoods and learn from the citizens.”
Weeks disagreed, saying the four squads of three men each plus a supervisor represents a huge improvement over when he started his tenure as chief. The DFSPD also has a staff of dispatchers working 24 hours and a system in place that all but ensures at least two men from each squad are on patrol at all hours.
“We’ve got more officers on the street now than we’ve ever had in the history of this agency, around the clock,” Weeks said. “That’s a fact. To say we don’t go out in the field is just wrong. When there’s a call we hit the street. I’m backing people up, and it doesn’t matter when.”
Despite those differences in opinion, all three candidates agreed that training and skill development opportunities for officers is of tantamount importance, with Howell saying it’s one of the keys to retaining good employees. What’s more, his campaign prioritizes putting a halt to turnover at the DFSPD, which he said has become in some ways a training ground for other law enforcement agencies.
“If you invest in your employees they will stay,” Howell said. “They will see that you have their best interests at heart. You need to give [officers] the tools they need to be successful and be safe and keep [citizens] safe, but first and foremost we need to invest in them so that they stay with us and continue to be a part of our community.”
The candidates also diverged in opinion with regard to accreditation for the DFSPD. Howell, who worked as the accreditation manager at the sheriff’s office, came out strongly in favor of it whereas Hurley and Weeks weren’t opposed to the accreditation process, while still acknowledging the considerable expenses and time frame (possibly years) of getting such a certification. Hurley said accreditation is worthwhile if used correctly and if it coincides with the city’s needs, and that’s a matter to look at some time in the future.
Weeks had a similar comment, saying there is a definite value in accreditation, but “there’s a time and a place for everything,” with that time being after the construction of the place – a new DFSPD headquarters building. In the meantime, there is nothing stopping the agency from sticking to its extant professional procedures, Weeks said.
“You don’t have to have a sticker on your car to be professional, to follow procedures, to be honest,” he said. “You don’t need a sticker or a patch on your sleeve to have honor, integrity and honesty.”
None of the candidates were in favor of merging the police department with the sheriff’s office, mainly due to the citizens paying for prompt service from their own law enforcement branch. Also, DeFuniak Springs is one of only a few in Florida to have an elected city marshal, and that proud heritage (and the right to vote on the city’s chief of police) is worth holding onto, they all agreed.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to be in this community and to share the love of the community that I know we all have,” Weeks said. “At the end of the day we all want to do what’s right for DeFuniak Springs and for the future of this city.”
