How do you celebrate a negative? Flagler County’s low crime rate is tangible. You can graph it, analyze numbers and blare it in headlines. But there’s one achievement the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office (and both city police agencies in the county) should be celebrated for at least as much, considering the contrast with many police agencies beyond Flagler, considering the alternative: we are going into the eighth year in Flagler without a single officer-initiated killing or shooting of a civilian.
At a time when between 900 and 1,000 civilians are shot and killed by police every year in the United States, including an average of about 60 a year in Florida (57 this year), Flagler’s is a singular, even heroic, achievement, and it stands out for several reasons.
Deputies in Flagler haven’t lacked for potentially deadly situations when they’ve come face to face with individuals wielding guns or knives, pointing guns at them, threatening to shoot them or themselves. There’s been close to a dozen situations like that since 2012. Most of the officer-initiated killings across the country are considered justified, and in many of the situations deputies experienced in Flagler, a shooting would have been justified. But it didn’t happen: a combination of control, patience, de-escalation and good sense, and the occasional use of non-lethal weapons like a Taser, worked every time.
A little over a year ago a man in Bunnell greeted deputies at his door in the middle of the night by pointing a gun at them before calming down. Any law enforcement officer who’d shot him would have been justified. “Those deputies used great restraint, and what could have been a very tragic situation, was not,” the sheriff’s Mark Strobridge said at the time. “I’m sleeping between 2 and 4 a.m. and I’m not expecting anybody to show up at my house between 2 and 4 a.m. I think there’s a significant difference in the amount of awareness in the individual’s head.”
Three weeks earlier a man who’d been pulled over on a routine traffic stop in Bunnell decided for whatever inexplicable reason to reach for a gun as he’s stepping out of his car. Any one of a number of deputies could have shot him. They didn’t. Deputy Jonathon Duenas, who’d controlled a confrontation with a knife-wielding man a year before, brought that situation under control, too. (He left the force soon after that to run his own business.)
There was the case of the man at the county courthouse parking lot in 2017, right below the windows to actual courtrooms. He was seeking suicide-by-cop. It was actually a toy gun, but deputies didn’t know that at the time, and for several minutes the situation could have ended tragically. No one fired a shot. Jeffrey Puritis, a sheriff’s deputy and a bailiff at the courthouse, had recognized the man with the gun, kept his cool, spoke to him, and resolved the confrontation peacefully after the man threw the gun out his car window and surrendered. (He was Baker Acted.)
Similarly, a woman at her home in 2015 dared three deputies to shoot her as she pointed a gun at them–a BB gun, though they didn’t know that’s what it was at the time. The now-retired Sgt. Mike Van Buren defused that one. (A year later, the woman killed herself when no one was at home.)
The list goes on. None of those situations draw the sort of headlines or inquiries that officer-initiated shootings do, though they’re just as consequential, if in reverse: in each of these situations, deputies saved a life they could have taken.
The last time that happened in Flagler goes back to December 12, 2012, on Brownstone Lane in Palm Coast, when two deputies shot and killed a man–32-year-old Troy Gordon–after a family member had called 911, possibly to Baker Act him. He’d been walking up and down the street with a machete and a bible, talking to himself, and had swung his machete at deputies who tried to control him in his garage.
That was just before the beginning of Jim Manfre’s tenure as sheriff. No one has been shot since, with three of those years on the watch of Sheriff Rick Staly (who knows what it’s like to be shot: he survived multiple wounds from an assailant early in his career).
Here’s how unusual things are in Flagler. In those seven years, upwards of 6,000 civilians have been shot and killed by police elsewhere, some 400 in Florida. So far this year across the country 897 people have been killed by police. Many more have been shot and survived. Those shot are disproportionately black and Hispanic. No other western country comes remotely close to the carnage of officer-initiated shootings as we do in the United States. Our rate of officer-initiated killings is in league with the more barbaric police and paramilitary forces of African and Central American nations, where violence is endemic, and nations like Iran and Iraq. The Guardian reported a few years ago that there’d been 55 fatal, officer-initiated shootings in England and Wales in the previous 24 years, while there’d been 59 fatal shootings in the first 25 days of 2015 in the United States. Somehow, I don’t think Americans are more criminally minded than other westerners. But they’re three, five, 10, 20 times more likely to be shot by their own police.
We have a problem with officer-initiated shootings in this country–a serious problem of disproportionately trigger-happy law enforcement, even in situations where the shootings are justified: just because a shooting can be justified doesn’t make it absolutely necessary, as Flagler’s deputies have shown in example after example. We may not be surrounded by sheriffs who love to shoot and kill people, as I crudely put it in yesterday’s year-end recap on the radio–and quickly corrected myself. But we are unquestionably surrounded by police jurisdictions where the killings of civilians are at crisis levels, and by a denialism that still absolves too much of that violence as inevitable while making blind cheerleading for law enforcement the only permissible reaction, whatever the price. A corrective is in order–has been in order for years, but remains gagged and bullied off most possibilities of debate by blowhards and demagogues who’d rather spit out bland and chest-thumping slogans like “stand by law enforcement” and look the other way.
I prefer cops who look down the barrel of a gun and manage with supreme courage and control to keep everyone alive. So I’m all cheers for law enforcement agencies like our own that live up to words like “serve and protect,” neither word having less value than the other, and I hope that heroic streak continues. But what a shame that other law enforcement agencies aren’t visiting Flagler, studying those peacefully resolved standoffs and taking pointers from policing you can be proud of. Clearly, they prefer looking the other way.
Pierre Tristam is FlaglerLive’s editor. Reach him by email here or follow him @PierreTristam.
Mary Fusco says
How many law enforcement officers have looked down the barrel of a gun and wound up 6 feet under leaving families? My son in law was an NYPD narcotics detective for 25 years. My daughter did not know when he went to work if he was coming home again. I guess it is all well and good if you are not the one staring down the barrel of a gun.
Greg Jolley says
Pierre,
Thank you for shining a well-deserved light on all the fine officers and their bravery and proefessionalism.
Trailer Bob says
Lots of people put down our current Sheriff, Staly, because of his calling the jail the “Green roof inn” and other spicy c omments. But the truth is in the pudding and I totally respect our sheriff and all those under him.
So he is a little bit of a cowboy at times with his terminology…no big deal.
Keep up the good work men and women. Most of us appreciate what you do and how you do it.
Happy New Year to you all.
Concerned Citizen says
Hi Pierre,
As one who spent 6 years as a Deputy Sheriff before switching to Fire Rescue and retiring. I applaud our Sheriff’s Department. In my time (late 90’s to early 2000’s) we did not have the level of training to peacefully negotiate. You lived with the possibility of having to use deadly force everytime you rolled out on a shift. We were trained of course to learn how to escalate/deescalate but options were few. Thankfully it is something I never experienced but I had coworkers who had and it’s a life changing experience for everyone involved.
One thing I would like to point out. Sometimes there isn’t a recourse. If a perp comes out shooting then you may not have a chance to show restraint. A law enforcement officer has to protect the public and himself. And those decisions are made in split seconds. In all cases locally threats were made and time was given to react. What is an officer supposed to do when someone steps out of a vehicle and opens fire?
Now I’m not justifying that all use of deadly force has been justified. I am perfectly aware that sadly there are officers who don’t deserve to wear the badge. And if deadly force is unjustifiably used then there should be investigations and proper sentencing carried out.
It’s a fine line that a law enforcement officer walks. They are under scrutiny everytime they work. I have the utmost respect for those who are able to ethically carry out their duties and retire honorably. And I won’t forget those who have died in the line of duty.
I that makes me a “blowhard” as stated above then so be it.
Mike Cocchiola says
I have to applaud the Flagler County Sheriff’s Department. A great example of constraint, common sense and good policing.
palmcoaster says
I sure recognize the great service and compassion executed by our fine officers under Sheriff Rick Staly. Moves me to smile and cordially wave to our law enforcement or keep a watchful eye for their safety if I see them in any traffic stop addressing an issue while walking by. They conduct themselves with the utmost professional manner in our county and cities while risking their lives to protect ours day in and day out.
Right now I am in Arizona visiting my children and I am amazed at the neat look allover given the absence of litter in these roads and right of ways and also in comparison to Flagler County ( only 110,510 residents) , the absence of bully driving in Chandler and surrounding cities of this Maricopa County AZ with 4,307 million residents and no litter in comparison and just “occasional sights” of speeders, red light, stop signs, double yellow line or rear bumper violators aggressive drivers here in AZ.
The only reason I see for the positive difference in litter and traffic here is the heavy fines given to violators and those very many road speed humps in residential heavy traffic roads everywhere around here, that keep the vehicles at a much lower speeds avoiding accident, injuries and deaths. I feel safe walking dogs or just exercising without concern of being run over by speeders bully drivers that in Palm Coast even gas up or blow their horns just to harass pedestrians while driving by. All heavy traveled residential roads, whether “designated collector roads” or not like FPD, Club House Drive, Bird Of Paradise and other residential roads should have speed bumps to avoid speeders killing or seriously hurting our students waiting for the school buses, elderly walking their dogs or exercising and also killing cyclist. Lets have our county starting the leadership in traffic safety and banning litter in Florida as well. Yes there is always an inconvenience in paying violators costly fines or driving slower thru speed humps but if saves one life is totally justifiable. Lets press our Flagler County and it cities government for proper enforcement of traffic laws, installation of speed traffic calming humps in residential roads and anti litter enforcement thru heavy fines etc. The only language violators understand is when it hits their pockets, so do it to preserve our safety and quality of life. I just want to relate an incident while driving back from o wonderful country Christmas family gathering in a ranch in western Flagler County at dark around 8 PM 12/25: I was driving back to Rte 1 with family and pets in my SUV and as soon as I came from 302 into 305 after a full stop and proceeding at the speed limit of 50 and 55 the distant traffic approached also going east and the one vehicle stuck to my rear bumper so close and blinking the high lights to me all the way the +- 3,5 miles to Rte 1. A really aggressive driver had me concerned about any potential wildlife encounter crossing the road being so close. I was driving so could not call 911 on this bully and didn’t want to ask an almost 83 year old in the dark to call 911 for me. So I endured the danger driving at the safe speed limit all the way to the ramp over Rte 1 at which end he turned south when we headed north to Palm Coast. I just wished that a sheriff cruiser posted in or near 305 would have stopped and ticketed this criminal that is only an accident causing risk to anyone around with his bully driving in a one lane narrow road with double yellow lines trying to force us off the road. That was a driver in a silver large family van….only thing I could hint in the dark. When I related this incident to the ranch owners told me that bully driving like that is a common practice by some as no state troopers or sheriff units seeing around…too bad.