ORLANDO, Fla. — Channel 9′s Daralene Jones spoke to the new police chief ahead of Wednesday’s change-of-command ceremony.
Eric Smith is replacing Orlando Rolon, who announced his decision to leave the police department earlier this year.
Smith spoke about the big task ahead of him, which is reducing crime, and trying to shift the narrative that the city isn’t safe.
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He’s worked with almost every unit within the department, including the bike unit in Parramore. The department provided Channel 9 with hundreds of photos and videos showing Smith engaging residents all over the city. Most recently, he attended three neighborhood meetings.
“I always want their input, and that’s why I go to so many different communities,” Smith told Channel 9. “I’m from Lake Nona, up to Rosemont, out to Carver Shores, Richmond Heights, Downtown. I want to hear from everybody. Everybody has something to say, and I want to listen to them.”
Addressing gun violence
Jones asked Smith about a lot of violence in Orlando associated with guns, and his plans to tackle that.
“You can’t sit back and just respond to shootings — ‘Oh, somebody got shot over here. OK, the officers are on the way and they’ll deal with it after that,’” Smith said. “You have to look at the intelligence. You need to focus on those people that are doing the crimes and the areas that the crimes were happening in, and be there for that and be very proactive in the area.”
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Crime is happening everywhere. In his first week on the job, Smith responded with officers to a triple murder-suicide in Lake Nona. Then, seven people were shot as bars were closing on a Sunday morning in the middle of Orlando.
“It changed my whole week, because they’re like, ‘Oh, we got a meeting on this, meeting on that.’ We need to talk about these kind of things, so it sort of changed it quick, realizing that I’m the guy.”
Rape, as well as aggravated and simple assaults, are up the last two years, anywhere from 2% to 32%, data shows.
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A majority of those crimes are being committed with a significantly increasing number of guns, knives and other weapons.
“I’m looking at some of the different units we have and saying, ‘Are they effective? Do we need to go in a different direction?’” Smith said. “Our main issue is to reduce violent crime and then increase our ties with the community.”
Officer shortage
OPD has 80 vacancies, with 18 current recruits, which will leave 62 openings.
The department also has three retirement letters in hand and 93 officers eligible for retirement.
The officer shortage comes as the city’s population is growing fast, and the officers who are patrolling the streets are overworked.
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OPD is among the highest-paying agencies in the state. But now, it has competition with cities like Tampa, which just gave its officers a historic 18.5% raise.
Smith is becoming police chief at a time when officers don’t want to be officers anymore because of the tension across the country, and some communities who said they feel they are overpoliced.
“I think with the officers, I combat that by being there with them and listening to them,” Smith said. “We can go out there and fight crime hard, take people off the streets and do what we have to do to people who are committing those crimes, but you also have to engage the community. You can’t alienate the community while you’re doing it.”
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The authorized strength for OPD is 878 officers. While Smith said he could use more, first he has to fill existing vacancies, of which there are 80 — 10% of the staff, in addition to the retirement letters and 93 officers eligible to walk away with a moment’s notice.
“It’s something we have to really focus on and get ahead of,” Smith said. “And I think retention is big because some officer, if they’re happy, will stay longer, so it’s got to be structured in a way to make people want to stay. They have to have a good working environment where they feel happy to come to work, show people that you care.”
It’s not unusual for Smith to respond to major calls with the officers, or pop up on an overnight patrol shift.
Smith was the high-risk incident commander during the summer of 2020, when protestors attacked officers trying to keep crowds under control. Smith said he didn’t stand by and give commands from a control room.
“I chose to be out there every day,” he said. “I’m out there standing in line with them when they took rocks and bottles and my officer got his nose broken at City Hall. I’m the one who gave the order to basically make the arrest and keep our officers safe.”
As for what he wants his legacy to be, Smith said he wants the community and police officers “to say that I cared about them.”
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“It’s tough when you’re trying to please different factions,” Smith said. “I’ve always heard in every training class I’ve always went to, when you talk about chiefs of police, you got to keep City Hall happy, you got to keep (the) community happy and you got to keep the officers happy. If you lose two, you’re done.”
The chief is not actively involved in the collective bargaining process, but the union is asking for a 15% raise, a portion of that the city has factored into the proposed budget.
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