Jax Sheriff discusses stressed officers making bad decisions
Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams fingered “activist” Gary Snow as a catalyst for the near-riot at Hemming Park last week.

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Jacksonville Sheriff’s Officers have been under a media microscope of late, with a number of adverse stories about them in the local press.

From DUI arrests to groping incidents in local bars and civil suits for shots in the line of duty, the news cycles have been brutal of late.

And even in the JSO budget hearing Thursday, conversation kept coming back to officer comportment and public perception of the embattled police department.

Multiple Council members wondered why Tyler Landreville was back on patrol, just months after killing Vernell Bing.

Meanwhile, Williams discussed the pressures faced by law enforcement, which wreck the lives of some officers: alcoholism, divorce, and other signals of stress are all-too-frequent companions of law enforcement.

With Williams seeking 100 new police officers, we asked him if the shortfall in officers on the street exacerbated that stress. And we asked him also about why Landreville is back on the beat — even though he’s in a different zone now than he was when he shot Bing.

“As the case unfolds initially, if there are some big factors that warrant us moving the [officer] off the street, we do that immediately,” Williams said.

“The decision about prosecution is always made by the State Attorney’s Office. If there’s no initial concern, then that individual is left on the street,” Williams added.

“This case is a little bit different obviously. You’ve got concern from the community,” Williams continued. “Our process has always been and for the current time will be that as you get cleared to come back to work, get your fit for duty, psych eval, as those things happen, pending the State Attorney’s review, you can come back to work.”

If the State Attorney were to press charges, Williams said, the JSO would remove that officer from the street, putting him in a “duty capacity that doesn’t have contact with the public.”

Williams discussed the mental and behavioral issues that cops experience in the context of a well-documented shortfall in staffing, one that creates pressures for those in the field.

“I think — universally, I won’t say yes, but could that be part of those issues? It sure can. We’re driving these guys to do the things that need to get done, we’re driving overtime. A lot of these guys are working extra assignments. So there is an overwork component to that,” Williams said.

While an overworked workforce is a potential contributing factor to what Williams has called officer “misconduct,” he doesn’t believe that they are the sole factor, and he stresses that people should look at how the JSO responds to them.

“When it happens, we have to respond. And we’re kind of put in the position to do that. We’ll always respond this way There’s no quarter for that. You’re not going to be able to do that and work for this organization,” Williams said.

“The relationship we have with the community and the trust we’ve built in this community is too important. We’ve made some great strides there, but you can lose it like that. The best way to lose it is to let people cut corners, and we’re not going to do that.”

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. He writes for the New York Post and National Review also, with previous work in the American Conservative and Washington Times and a 15+ year run as a columnist in Folio Weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski


One comment

  • Ray Roberts

    August 11, 2017 at 12:40 pm

    It is obvious that JSO has zero management controls on their personnel. This isn’t the local convenience store where progressive discipline can be used to correct errant behavior. These personnel failings indicate a lack of behavioral control that is unacceptable for someone that carries a gun and makes life and death decisions everyday.

    JSO needs to get serious about revising their personnel management system ASAP, train on de-escalation, train on citizens rights and freedoms, and train all officers on cultural diversity and then TEST them on the training. In addition the JSO supervisory personnel need to be evaluated for management skills versus policing skills.

    It appears that promotion into management at JSO isn’t based on management capability but only good old boy policing skills.

    Any personnel that exhibit behavioral issues need to be placed under full time direct supervision until their behavior can be verified and their responses to street stress observed.

    There is no way that any responsible elected official should grant JSO more people until they get a handle on their current personnel issues. Now it may be that JSO needs more officers but with the lack of management information and capability, how would one know at this point.

Comments are closed.


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