INSIDE the Lakeland Police Department

School Resource Officers Online Resource Center

The School Resource Officers in Polk County have created a new blog and resource website called PCASO.net for students, parents, school personnel, and other SROs. A quick visit to the site will provide you with announcements of upcoming events, blog posts related to current issues affecting our students, and links to numerous resources.

You will also find a complete listing of SROs across Polk County. Every SRO from the various police departments and sheriff's office are listed there and the schools they serve.

The SROs just completed a public safety video reminding students of the requirement to buckle up every time they get into a vehicle, either as a driver or passenger. You may call it a "Click It or Ticket" reminder. Check it out!

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

The Budget Process

The City Commission conducted a preliminary budget workshop this past Monday evening to offer a preview of fiscal budget (Fiscal Year 2010 or FY10). The workshop's presentation slides are available in PDF format here well as the City's home page.

The Police Department was originally asked to cut our FY10 budget by approximately 2%. After weekly project meetings over the summer to look at how cuts of that magnitude could be make without affecting services (particularly after 5% was cut last year), we forwarded our recommendations to the City Manager for presentation to the City Commission.

Among our recommended cuts include reductions in overtime expenses for ongoing investigations and special projects, elimination of the Aviation Unit, and the elimination of several part-time positions. None of these cuts were easy to recommend, but given the challenging budget times we face today, they were necessary. We are grateful we could reduce our budget without eliminating any patrol officers, detectives, or public safety aides.

Formal public hearings on the FY10 budget are scheduled for September 9th and the 21st at City Hall, beginning at 6:00 PM in the City Commission Chambers. Final adoption of the new budget ordinance occurs at the last hearing.

As public awareness of the FY10 budget grows, I am sure there will be a great deal of public discussion about our recommendations (pro and con). We look forward to your comments and the ensuing dialog.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

School Starts Next Monday

In case you drove past the Lakeland Police station yesterday or today and wondered why there were so many police cars from other Polk County law enforcement agencies in our parking lot, the answer is related to the title of this post - we are getting ready for school to start next Monday.

The LakelandPD School Resource Unit hosts a two-day in-service training session for the School Resource Officers (SROs) from around the county every year just before school starts. The training agenda includes things like legal updates, reviews of changes to school board policy, current information on gangs and other problems the officers are likely to see in their schools this year, and plenty of time for networking with other SROs.

Schools are holding their orientation sessions today/tonight across the county in preparation for opening day on Monday. Our SROs are ready to work with faculty, staff, parents, and students to ensure a safe school year for everyone.

Now go enjoy the last weekend (safely, of course) before it's time to hit the books once again.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

The Process of Moderating Comments

One of the quickest ways to generate comments to a blog is to post something related to a topic that has controversy attached to it, say for example red light cameras. With the receipt of those comments comes a responsibility for us to moderate them before they are published. So what gets published and what gets ignored?

Comments that are critical of something I say here or the basic message being delivered will be accepted as long as they are not obscene, profane, slanderous, threatening, or generally offensive to the community's morals and values. That is a broad range of no-nos, but it can be summed up by saying anything that is respectful to different opinions or perspectives of others will most often be accepted and published. Comments that advertise a commercial business will also be ignored.

Anything else that argues against a point being made in a post will get accepted and published, regardless of the degree of inaccuracy or erroneous content in the comment. Our role is not to correct point by point or counter-argue predictions of what will come in the future. I don't mind entering some spirited debate on issues, but my other duties preclude me from being a fact-checker for the content of every comment we receive. Readers need to understand this when digesting the comments of someone and not assume everything contained in comments is accurate or factual.

So please keep the comments coming our way. We will continue to moderate them and willingly publish those that my be contrary to our position on a topic but yet are beneficial to the public discussion we hope to generate here.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read our blog and offer commentary along the way.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

How Fast is Stopped?

The City's new red light cameras are certainly garnering a lot of attention in the media and in conversations around town lately. I was asked an interesting question the other day that is worthy of sharing here.

"How far do I have to slow down not to get a red light ticket?"

Of course the immediate technical answer is to reply the statute calls for a driver to stop, not just slow down. The reality of the situation is we find police officers will not cite a violator if they come to a crawl before turning on red - a numeric measurement of 2 MPH is often added to the conversation, but I will bet you officers are more tolerant than that. However, I want to add another dimension to this public discussion and give you something else to consider.

How far would you slow down if a police officer was standing there on the corner to enforce the statute as you cruised through the red light?

Reviews of thousands of videos capturingthese violations show vehicles failing to stop or even slow down to a reasonable crawl. They go through the intersection at speeds we would not likely see if an officer was standing on the corner and visibly engaged in enforcement activities.

We are going to use sound judgment when reviewing these videos to determine if a violation occurred. We ask drivers to imagine a police officer is standing on the corner and thus use the same sound, reasonable judgment when you decide how fast you are going to travel and call it a stop. That's how fast stopped is.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Hearings Today for Red Light Camera Violations

The first set of hearings for drivers wanting to contest their red light camera violations will occur this morning at City Hall beginning at 9:00 AM. A lot of dialog is underway in the midst of these hearings as debate focuses on the number of violations being issued for failing to stop on red when making a right turn. There are a few key points to remember here.

In checking with our Traffic officers who reviewed these cases, the violations were incidents where the driver did not appreciably slow down before making the right turn. What do we mean by that?

The Traffic officers noted that drivers who slow down to such a speed that is almost but not quite a stop benefited from officer discretion and did not get a violation notice. It was those drivers who barely slowed down who ended up receiving a notice. While both examples are technically violations, common sense and reasonable judgment as to what constitutes good or improper driving behavior is in order here.

One reviewing officer told me the cases that are borderline get the benefit of the doubt while those who received a violation notice would have received a traffic citation if officers had been at the intersection. The bad driving and decision to run the red light, albeit during a right turn on red, were that blatant.

So what happens if the hearing officer decides in favor of the drivers today and dismisses the right turn on red violations?

Well, it won't be the first time we lost a case in some type of court proceeding and it certainly won't be the last. The difference here, though, is graphic video evidence of a violation occurring rather than only having officer testimony. We stand by the evidence showing drivers failing to stop before turning right on red and the reasonable decisions by our Traffic officers to issue notices of violation for these incidents caught on camera.

We also understand the concept of due process and a driver's right to contest the charges. It's the system that works in our nation everyday.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Red Light Camera Notice of Violation

I am running a tad behind on reading some of the blogs we monitor everyday, so pardon the delay in this one, but Metroi4News had a post by Darby Critendon that showed what a RLC Notice of Violation looks like.

Thought it was a great idea to show a notice of violation and wanted to share the link to Darby's post - and thanks Darby for putting this on the blog!

- Asst Chief Bill LePere