A message from Sheriff Paul Blackman about the George Floyd tragedy

Hi, I’m Sheriff Paul Blackman. Recently, we had our Sheriff’s Community Council and met with me and my administrative staff and we had a frank discussion about recent events that are happening across our nation and in our state.

Specifically, the conversation was about Mr. George Floyd, who was murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. First and foremost, I want our community to understand that our deputies would never treat someone like that, and what happened to Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota was inexcusable. There is no reason why one human being would sit on another man’s neck, or another human being’s neck, for nine minutes. From a person who has been in law enforcement for 28 years, or just as a human being, just as Paul Blackman, that tears my heart apart. There is nothing that can excuse what that man did.

Also in the Sheriff’s Community Council meeting, we discussed policies and what changes we could make within our policies. One particular changed that I discussed with the council was our use of force policy and how it had been expected in the past that if one deputy observes another deputy going too far or using too much use of force or an excessive use of force, it was expected that deputy would notify the supervisor and a supervisor could step in and take action. That policy is now changed and it is now a mandate that if a deputy observes any kind of illegal use of force or an excessive use of force, that deputy is to immediately step in and separate the deputy from the person being detained or arrested and make sure they get away from each other and the person is safely taken into custody. Immediately, that member, that deputy, will notify the supervisor and that will be documented.
Here at the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office, we track data from each use of force form and each Taser deployment form that we have here, and each year that data is collected and compiled and we use that to see if any of our law enforcement members … whether they be a deputy sheriff on the road patrol side or on the detention side, to make sure we don’t have deputies that are excessively using force many times over.

Moving forward, I want our citizens to know that their sheriff’s office is prepared in case something does happen within our county, such as rioting or looting or any type of criminal activity pertaining to that. Here at the sheriff’s office, we are ready to enact a curfew if needed. We do not want to do that at this time simply because businesses are just now getting back going due to the COVID-19 and we do not want to stall any of that growth or any of that activity moving forward. So, we are only going to enact a curfew if we think one is needed.

Also, we are ready and plan to go to an Alpha/Bravo ... Basically, that would triple our manpower that is available for calls for service or handling any type of crowd situation we might have.

Also, we have adequate amounts of OC sprays and chemical agents to address any crowd control issues that we might have. Each deputy has been provided helmets, shields and batons in case we have to respond in a field force or a riot squad-type situation. Even though we are prepared for that situation, we pray every single day that we do not have to respond to that.

We have also created an information gathering unit ... to assist in combing through social media platforms and sites to gather data on possible threats. Once a threat is found, it is vetted and sent to a detective so that can be followed up on. Thus far, even though we see a lot of them out on social media, thus far all the ones we have found have been unfounded. However, I want our citizens to know that if we do find something that is credible, we will alert you as soon as possible. We will get that information out as quickly as we can so that everyone can be prepared.

In closing, we encourage those folks that want to protest and have rallies to do it. It is your first amendment right, and we are here to protect that first amendment right for you. We only encourage you to do it as peaceful as possible.

Recently, when I met with the Sheriff’s Community Council, one of the discussion points was the right to protest. We offered to those individuals in the council that if they wanted to put together a message, we here at the sheriff’s office would film and edit it for them, and allow them to post that message on our social media platforms in an effort to reach as many people as possible and that we would support them in that effort. So if you know one of our Sheriff’s Community Council members, and you have a message that you would like to get out, please contact one of them and have them contact us so we can film a message and get it out for all of our followers to see.

Thank you, stay safe, and know that we here at the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office are prepared to answer whatever the next call may be.

Видео A message from Sheriff Paul Blackman about the George Floyd tragedy канала Highlands County Sheriff's Office