A.G. Gancarski
“This is a whole different kind of community meeting, designed to build trust.”
These words from State Sen. Audrey Gibson — chair of the Duval County Democrats — kicked off a town hall in Jacksonville Monday evening that included a panel discussion on “community and police relations.”
At times pointed, the questions were respectful — but reflected a widely-perceived gap in police performance among demographic categories in Jacksonville.
The public safety component included various local heavy hitters: 4th Circuit Public Defender Charles Cofer, Undersheriff Pat Ivey, Assistant State Attorney Octavius Holliday were among them.
“It’s going to take us to make the change we seek,” Gibson said, suggesting that the dialogue would make this a “true community meeting.”
Gibson posed a question to the crowd, one she’d solicited guesses on via poster boards outside: how many African-Americans in Jacksonville have been shot by police in the last two years?
The guesses ranged from 30 to 200. The answer was much less: one in 2016 and four in 2017.
Gibson discussed the gap between reality and “what happens when flames are fanned in a different direction,” while noting the big jump numerically year over year.
Gibson also asked Undersheriff Ivey if there were different approaches to arrest based on areas of the city the call it made.
“People go to an area to see a prostitute, go to an area to buy narcotics,” Ivey said, adding that there are arrests throughout the county.
Ivey asked the audience if they’d heard of arrest quotas. In unison, he heard a yes.
“There’s no expectation for police officers to go out and arrest as many people as they can,” Ivey said, stating “reasonable suspicion” as a prerequisite for “probable cause.”
Gibson wanted to know why there was a gap between black and white arrests; Ivey couldn’t speculate, but ruled out “targeted enforcement.”
Gibson wasn’t done.
“The community is going to be here. Law enforcement is going to be here. We need to figure out a way to build better relationships,” Gibson said.
“Every relationship has to be built on trust,” Public Defender Cofer said. “It’s important that we don’t have a community that’s at war with law enforcement.”
Cofer believes Sheriff Mike Williams has worked to build that trust.
Also discussed: the mentally ill — a major component of Duval County’s jail population.
Undersheriff Ivey discussed the pressures of “crisis intervention training,” a mandatory training that allows for law enforcement to deal with community members with all manner of issues, including autism.
“We deal with so many of that pool … you don’t want it to get into crisis,” Ivey said.
Public Defender Cofer noted that a “large number” of his office’s clients have mental challenges, and to that end, psych evals for competence and other mental health issues “play a large part in the outcome of the case.”
Cofer noted that even back when John Rutherford was Sheriff, there were collaborative efforts to identify inmates better suited to mental treatment than incarceration.
“It’s been going on for 20 years,” Cofer said, but even with that effort “the Duval County Jail is our largest mental health facility.”
ASA Holliday noted a collaborative approach on mental health issues with the Public Defender’s office.
As well, Gibson wanted to know if the State Attorney’s Office took it easy on law enforcement members.
“If an officer gets arrested, we’ll treat them the same way as any citizen,” Holliday said.
