INSIDE the Lakeland Police Department

Lakeland PAL Runners Qualify for National AAU Meet

Catching up on some bits of news from around LPD and wanted to share the good news from our PAL program. Four of our young runners from the PAL track team qualified for the AAU Junior Olympics next month in Iowa!

You can read the online article from The Ledger here.

PAL's vision is to fill playgrounds rather than prisons by providing athletic and educational opportunities for youth to enjoy. The staff of PAL, including a large number of volunteers from the community, are responsible for the program's success by ensuring our youth have a diverse array of sports programs and educational tutoring to help them succeed in life. We are grateful for the many volunteer hours provided by the community.

Congratulations to the runners and good luck with your upcoming track meet.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

School Resource Unit Annual Golf Classic

We would like to take this opportunity to invite you participate in the Lakeland Police Department's annual School Resource Unit Golf Classic. The event will be held at Grasslands Golf & Country Club on Friday, August 7, 2009. Registration is from 7:30 - 8:15 AM, with a shotgun start at 8:30 AM.

A buffet luncheon will be served following play. Awards for first place gross, first, second, and third net teams, closest to the pin and longest drive will be awarded.

Funds raised from this golf event go directly to help support our "Do The Right Thing" program, which is designed to honor children in our community who distinguish themselves through their accomplishments, attitude, or outstanding efforts.

Sponsorships are also still available should your company or organization want to make a donation in that manner. More information regarding sponsorships can be found in the attached golf brochure.

To register or for more information, contact by phone or e-mail:

Officer Wayne Skinner at 863-397-4377

Officer Jimmy Mock at 863-221-7331

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Managing Emergencies

One of the many things that public safety and really all government agencies in Polk County (and Florida for that matter) do fairly well is work together during emergencies. The collaboration and cooperation during hurricanes, wildfires, floods, or other disasters is a source of pride for us.

Having said that, I participated in today's 2009 Polk County Municipal Liaison meeting hosted by the Polk County Emergency Management Division. Pete McNally and his staff from PCEMD and Jim Bell from the County's Public Safety Department gave presentations on disaster mitigation and preparation efforts currently underway.

It is always good to renew business relationships with peers across the county at these meetings. These get togethers provide us with the opportunity to once again see folks we worked closely with during the storms of 2004 and more recent events.

Government today uses an approach of all-hazards planning and preparation rather than just hurricane planning because public safety and other departments need to be ready to respond to any type of emergency. This change in our approach is the result of lessons learned from past hurricanes and the extensive ICS and NIMS training that followed the attacks of 9-11. We now have an integrated system of federal, state, county, and municipal agencies that are ready to work together regardless of the emergency through a coordinated and well defined incident management system.

It is, of course, our hope that we are never called upon to use this training, but we stand ready nonetheless.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Buddy Bears

Residents at the Azalea Park retirement community recently donated approximately 100 teddy bears to the Lakeland Police Department under the Buddy Bears program. These bears are a wonderful aid whenever police officers or victim advocates are dealing with children who have experienced some sort of traumatic event. The bears have an amazing calming effect on children.

Pictured below are our PIO Mr. Jack Gillen and Lt. John Thomason receiving the bears at Azalea Park.

We are always grateful whenever a community organization takes the time to collect bears for us. A big Thank You to the residents at Azalea Park for your community spirit!

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Red Light Camera Citations

The headline of an article in The Ledger this morning reported red light cameras yet to yield any citations. To the casual reader, one might interpret this to mean the cameras have failed to catch anyone running red lights. That is certainly not the case.

We previously posted that citations would be delayed as we send our officers through training to learn how to work the software to review events and determine if a violation occurred. That training was conducted this past Wednesday.

A verbal report at our daily staff meeting this morning indicated almost 1,500 "events" were captured by the red light cameras and forwarded to LPD for review since the cameras went live June 1 at five different locations around the city. An "event" is any incident that might be a "violation" of the red light ordinance. There may be numerous reasons why an event is captured by a camera. It then becomes the responsibility for a police officer to review each event and determine if a "violation" occurred.

There is a specific process that occurs when a recorded event is processed by the company before being sent to LPD for review. That might take a week or so to complete. Once LPD processes the event and determines a violation occurred, the company still has additional work to do before a citation is mailed to the owner of the violation vehicle. It might take up to 30 days to get a citation in the mail from the date of the original event - all told, a reasonable period of time for the work involved in processing events and violations.

Not all events will end up being violations, but talking to some officers who began processing events this week suggests the vast majority of events are found to be a violation and warrant a citation.

To those who were caught running red lights by one of our cameras but think you got away with a violation because you have not yet received a citation, all I can say is stand by - your citation will be arriving at your mailbox soon.

Just be patient with us - these things take time to complete.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

An Honest Crime Victim

While reviewing crime reports this morning from the previous 24 hours, I noticed an incident summary that really caught my eye. It seems two young men were walking through Washington Park the other morning around 2:30 AM after their car became disabled when they were reportedly robbed at gun point by two subjects.

One of the victims told investigating officers the robbery suspects made off with a quantity of money and a nickel bag of marijuana.

Yep - you read that correctly. Our victim told officers the robbers made of with his money and marijuana.

No further commentary is necessary on my part here, though I will add officers circulating the area after we got the call failed to locate anyone matching the suspects' description. This case remains an open investigation.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

April 2009 UCR Data Released

The UCR data for Apr 2009 has been released, which shows overall crime for the first four months of this year is virtually unchanged from the same period last year. Violent crime is up a bit (10%) and property crime is down (0.5%).

Leading the increase in violent crime is Forcible Sex offenses. Robberies are down this year compared to last. April was a busy month for burglaries as these crimes seemed to explode in our community. Several key arrests since then are expected to lower this number when May's data is tallied.

The department continues our weekly crime meetings to review emerging crime trends and develop strategies to address hot spot areas. We are aggressively putting resources where we see problems developing just as fast as possible. Given the challenges of our current economy and any impact that might have on criminal activity, the numbers are not as bad as we feared they could be.

Our best defense against crime is the continued diligence of the community to report suspicious activity to us immediately. Anyone seeing something out of the ordinary or what you deem to be suspicious should call the Lakeland Police Department immediately at 863-834-6900. You can remain anonymous when reporting suspicious activity.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Click It or Ticket

Lakeland Police officers from our Traffic Section conducted enhanced enforcement activity on Memorial Day yesterday as part of the nationwide "Click It or Ticket" campaign. The following results speak for themselves.

• 72 - Seatbelt violations
• 45 - Speeding violations
•  7 - Moving violations
•  6 - Criminal citations
•  4 - Moving violations

We continue to urge drivers and passengers to buckle up, slow down, and quite possibly safe a life.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Red Light Camera Update

Our most recent update on the installation of red light cameras in Lakeland listed locations and direction of travel for these cameras. Installation work continues as does our educational efforts via local broadcast outlets to remind drivers these cameras are just around the corner.

Having said that, please don't call us on June 2 and ask how many drivers "we caught" the day before. The cameras are set to go live on June 1 and will begin recording suspected violations for us to review. However, the camera system vendor wants to collect about a week's worth of data before our initial training sessions where our officers will learn how to process the violations. The vendor wants to use actual violations in our community to conduct the training. That training is scheduled for June 10.

If you run one of the red lights at the intersections being recorded by these cameras, you can expect to receive your violation notice in the mail shortly after that date.

Want to avoid receiving such a violation notice? Stop on red cameras ahead.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

2009 Polk County Law Enforcement Memorial

Law enforcement officers from around Polk County, including city, county, state, and federal officers, gathered at Veterans Memorial Park in Lakeland this morning to honor our fallen heroes as part of National Police Memorial Week.

This was the 22nd annual memorial service sponsored by the  Polk County Fraternal Order of Police Lodge #46 and the Polk County Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, Inc.

The memorial contains the names of 28 fallen heroes dating back to May 15, 1886, when W. S. Campbell, the Bartow Town Marshall, was killed in the line of duty and became the first name to be placed on the memorial.

Honoring our fallen brothers and sisters is a somber experience for any law enforcement officer. The sacrifice these officers made to make our community a safer place to live can never be forgotten.

And so we pause once a year to remember their lives, the service they gave to Polk County, and to let their surviving families know we still remember their heroes.

We encourage everyone to thank the next law enforcement officer you encounter and let them know, if just during Police Memorial Week, how much you appreciate what they do for us.

Trust me - you will make their day something special.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

You can download the 2009 Polk County Law Enforcement Memorial slide show here.

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