SANFORD, Fla. – Sanford Police Chief Cecil Smith said his department and his city have healed since the unrest that divided Sanford after the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in 2012.
“I feel that we have made great strides,” Smith said.
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Smith took over the tension in 2013 and immediately went to work, applying what would later become the six main pillars of policing from the 2015 Final Report of the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, prepared by the Federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services:
- Building trust & legitimacy
- Policy & oversight
- Technology & social media
- Community policing & crime reduction
- Training & education
- Officer wellness & safety
“I realized when I took this job over in 2013 there was a lot of mistrust in a community,” Smith said. “And part of getting back that trust meant that we needed to facilitate getting back into the community, being part of the community.”
Smith and nine other law enforcement leaders from across Florida spent the last year tweaking the six pillars. The group was part of the Florida Police Chief’s Association Subcommittee on Accountability and Societal Change, “established in the wake of the George Floyd murder to develop proposals that could be implemented at the local and state level to enhance trust, ensure transparency and accountability, and strengthen relationships between the police and the communities they serve.” The Subcommittee’s updated report can be found here.
While on the Subcommittee, Smith focused his efforts on building trust. He said law enforcement can do better by having straightforward conversations with people. He does that regularly in churches, as a partner with the African American Pastor’s Alliance, at monthly community meetings with city department heads, and at restaurants, having breakfasts and dinners with people who want to meet with him.
“Actually on November 30th, I’m having something that’s called Breaking Bread with the Chief,” Smith said. “I’m sitting down and having dinner at a local restaurant with people in the community to talk about what’s affecting them.”
Smith ordered his officers to do “walk & talks,” getting out of their patrol cars at least once per shift, walking the neighborhood and talking to the people they serve.
Smith and his officers also show up wherever kids are with a trailer full of sports equipment and video games.
“For me it reconnects us to the community, and lets the community know that we care,” Smith said. “That allows the community to see we’re here for them. That we want to be part of what’s taking place with them.”
Another focus of Smith’s was technology and social media. Smith believes all departments need body cameras; he said Sanford was the first department in Florida to get them for everyone in 2013. Now, all Sanford police staff, even the chief, wear body cameras.
“Having the body cams not only protects the police department and the city, but also protect the community in the event that an officer does something inappropriate,” Smith said. “It gives us that opportunity to see if there’s something we need to retrain our officers on, the opportunity to see if there are early warning signals that there may be some issues and concerns with officers.”
Smith uses Facebook to push out as much information to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.
What did Smith learn from his time on the Subcommittee?
“I could tell you one of them was looking at fitness and wellness for our officers,” Smith said. “It was important for us to make sure we had peer support. 99% of the people in the community don’t understand what an officer goes through so it was important for us to put a fitness & wellness program into place, so when our officers are feeling that stress, when they’re starting to feel a little of that PTSD, that there are agencies that are available out there for them to go get that help.”
Smith also started a Cadet program to recruit officers from the Sanford community.
“Bring the people in from the community that live in the community, that understand the community, that speaks the community’s language,” Smith said. “So for us it was important for us to look at starting a cadet program. So we started a cadet program where we hire just the average person who goes through the process, we bring them on at $15 an hour, we pay for you to go to school.”
Smith said he’s seeing the results.
“If you look at our downtown area, people feel safe about living and being in our entertainment center downtown,” Smith said. “The amount of growth in Sanford is huge. We just had a commission meeting where we talked about bringing in some 1,200 new apartments and rooftops here in the community. So we have seen tremendous growth in our community, safety in our community, our conversations in the community and our connections with the community have all grown for the positive. And crime? Crime is down.”