FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. – The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office is fighting back with firepower – $355,000 against the hate directed at Jewish people here in Central Florida.
Antisemitism is at an all-time high across the U.S., but also here in the Sunshine State.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 2023 was the worst year on record for hateful incidents against the Jewish community – a 140% jump to 8,873 incidents nationwide. That includes vandalism, assault and harassment.
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In Florida, the ADL tracked 463 incidents of Jewish hate, almost double the 269 from the previous year.
Flagler County has had among the fewest hate crimes but incident have increased there exponentially in the past couple of years.
That compelled the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office to apply for a federal grant totaling $355,000 to prevent future hate crimes. The grant was approved and the money delivered earlier this year.
Commander Joe Barile, director of the Sheriff’s Office Real-Time Crime Center, worries about escalation – how a minor incident may be the beginning of hateful violence.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office used to track hate crime incidents and suspects manually but is now using software paid for by the grant.
“It makes it uniformed on how we can track and request any kind of work-ups and then going forward keep an eye on monitoring any individuals of concern or any possible hate crimes,” Barile said.
The software continues to track cases automatically after any deputy enters the information.
“They’ll go ahead and fill out these fields and it will then get routed to our lead analyst, the supervisor of the Crime Center,” Barile said. “And then our Intelligence Unit.”
Sheriff Rick Staly directed his staff to seek the federal grant.
“Our county has a checkered history in the past being the last county in Florida to desegregate the schools,” Staly said. “We’ve had hate crimes here if you look at the history of Flagler County. Since I’ve been sheriff we’ve had four hate crimes, one in 2018 and three and 2022. We’ve been escalating.”
Flagler County, like most counties in Central Florida, has a growing Jewish community.
“We have a 50-year-old Jewish community in this county and it’s very active,” Staly said. “And these crimes just really are undermining that community and putting fear in them and we don’t want that in our community.”
Barile said before the automated software, “it was either a phone call to our Intelligence Unit or an email to look into somebody.”
Now, all sheriff’s office units are alerted.
Barile said that automation will prevent escalation of hate crime.
Besides the new tracking software, the sheriff’s office is also spending the grant money on overtime for threat assessments of religious organizations and surveillance and security when requested, which Staly said is occurring more frequently.