My last post asked a series of questions related to the murder of Mario Acosta and LPD’s handling of crime in the Lake Morton area — and specifically Johnson Avenue in the last year. This includes a shoot out in August of last year; a mysterious and heavily-armored drug raid in May; and of course, Friday night’s terrible stabbing.
Chief Larry Giddens is out-of-town on vacation, in Alaska, I think. But Lakeland city spokesman Kevin Cook and Asst. LPD Chief Vic White sat down with me Wednesday — both to answer my questions and to just chat generally.
I was pleased with the session. I had never really met White before. Everybody was pretty frank; and I thought it was productive. Here are the answers that came out in the discussion.
1) What is the status of the shooting investigation? Closed, inactive? What are your categories of status?
Did not get a formal answer to this, although every indication is that investigation has ceased.
2) How many hours did Det. Tammy Hathcock, who was assigned to this case, spend investigating? Do you have a standard expectation of effort? A framework for priority? How does it work?
Did not get an answer to this.
3) What is the classification of this crime in your records? attempted murder, criminal mischief, what?
Didn’t get the official classification. Internally, LPD considers it a shooting. But, as I suspected, for the purpose of FBI crime statistics, this shooting did not happen. “We didn’t have a victim,” Asst. Chief White said.
That’s simply not correct. Someone shot at someone else. The person shot at was a victim. We don’t know victim’s identity; but the victim existed. Moreover, bullets slammed into a home. Not sure the actual charge for that, but the homeowner/residents were victims.
Do not trust any annual FBI crime rate stat reported in the newspaper except homicide.
4) Why do you not have a publicly accessible link to a Google spreadsheet that contains the location, status, and lead detective contact information for every homicide? I think a PIO could maintain a much larger spreadsheet for many more crimes; but I’m just asking for baby steps for the handful of homicides we have each year. If you email me the information at bitown1@gmail.com, I’ll even build it for you for free. It will take me 15 minutes.
Didn’t address this. Kevin Cook, city spokesman, does want to establish a text notification program and has enlisted me to help. I will gladly do so. More to come.
5) A month after the shooting, a white Dodge Challenger that looked identical to the car involved in the shooting pulled into exactly the same spot. The owner seemed innocent. He appeared to be looking at the empty house next door to me that was for sale. But as I told Det. Hathcock, as I immediately sent her photos of the license tag, maybe he has a kid. Did she run this tag? Did she speak to the car’s owner? I never heard back from her any findings.
She did speak to the car’s owner and saw nothing suspicious. Appears to be a coincidence.
6) Did you know the May 3 DEA raid happened?
White does not know if Giddens knew; but White knew. He oversees special operations, under which these types of raids fall. He said he would like to provide further detail, but can’t. He did say that the raid was mostly an LPD operation, with minimal DEA participation.
7) How do you decide when the tank is deployed? Does every low level meth dealer/suspect get the tank/Gladiator treatment? Or was this humble handyman actually Walter White?
White said the tank is not deployed enough in his estimation. But I did not get a criteria for what goes into deploying it.
8) What was the name of the suspect? Do you even know? As far as I know, he just disappeared into the national drug enforcement industrial complex without a hint of context related to his time as my neighbor. Is there anything I should know about him.
This fell under content White could not tell me; or else I just didn’t push enough.
9) I believe the shooting predated his presence on Johnson Avenue. But I don’t know that. Is there any relationship between this raid and the shooting that happened in literally the same spot all the Praetorians milled around.
White said he has no evidence to suggest the shooting and the activities that spurred the raid were linked. But LPD can’t rule it out.
10) What did this raid cost taxpayers: local, state, and federal? Who actually paid it? I’m guessing these guys all got paid at least $100/hour on overtime. Say 20 guys at three hours of work. That’s what, $6,000? Before even amortizing the capital costs of the tank and retractable arm. That’s like a month’s salary for uniformed patrol officer.
White did not have a number. He said most of the officers deployed generally work at night; so this was not an overtime situation. Also, this operation was sanctioned and funded, as I understood it, through a federal anti-drug task force in which LPD participates.
11) I believe my neighborhood would get more policing bang for our $6,000 if we sat one uniformed cop all day in the parking lot of the Palmetto laundromat. I will donate the folding chair he or she can sit in. Call it surplus equipment. I would much prefer Officer Friendly chatting up kids and transients alike in the Palmetto parking lot than that gang of frat boys with guns deploying their retractable penises without warning, context, or communication. I guess that’s not really a question. Sorry. Here’s my question:
12) Matthew Bell was accused of plunging a blade repeatedly and savagely into the heart of Mario Acosta, who bled out where a driveway meets and Johnson Avenue sidewalk. If two uniformed officers were sufficient to collect Matthew Bell in daylight just after a charity softball game without incident at the Palmetto laundromat within feet of children, why the hell did you need a fucking Delta Force dress up unit to seize an anonymous smalltime meth-head houseguest two houses away from me in the middle of the night?
This is a larger, national policy question of resource deployment. I continue to believe strongly that the enormous investigative and state power resources detailed to pursue a raid at this house — and our drug policies generally — would be much better spent transferred into neighborhood patrols with a focus on maintaining order and protecting people and property, rather than targeting illegal commerce. Whatever was going on in that house was not particularly disorderly, especially if the shooting was unrelated.
Moreover, there is a fascinating kind of game theory at work in police militarization. Because the police know when and where they will a target a drug house — and they “know” drugs are bad and drug dealers are violent — they feel the need to up-armor in advance to overwhelm even the most vanishing threat
As White said, “I want to go home at the end of the night.”
But this police militarization — this fear of all threats — has dire community consequences. It kills people; it kills police relationships with communities. And it’s an issue we’ll only solve by ending prohibition. Absent the end of prohibition, it’s very hard for me to argue with Vic White about him wanting to go home at night.
Meanwhile, the uniformed officers who arrested Matthew Bell took a great personal bodily risk in approaching him without a tank. Yet, we just expect that as part of the job. I’m not sure why we don’t expect that from drug warriors.
And I can’t get the DEA agent’s words out of my head. The tank didn’t make him feel safe; it made him feel “cool.” Cop gear should not make cops feel cool.
13) A friend of mine who was in the heart of the search area said she was shocked with how quickly the search for Bell seemed to end. I don’t know what to make of that. So let me ask: At what Friday night/Saturday morning time did officers, canine and otherwise, cease physcially searching for Matthew Bell?
White and Cook said Bell fled from the scene to the north. Bell claims he hid in bushes at the library for some time. White says that can’t be true. Bell eventually discarded his bloody clothes near the First United Methodist Church complex on Lake Morton, where police found them. Dogs tracked Bell’s scent to Barnett Park, where they lost it. And that’s where any official certainly about Bell’s whereabouts ends. White said dogs lost the scent about 1 a.m., give or take.
Bell later told police that the made his way to Eaton Park — not clear if on foot, or by getting a ride. Apparently he slept there for some period of time and then made his way back to the Lake Morton Neighborhood and laundromat. He was drinking a beer there when a person who is part of the laundromat community reported him to police.
That person, who is homeless, as I understand it, took a great risk in reporting Bell. His neighbors owe him a debt of gratitude.
This man called 9-1-1 at 6:51 p.m. Saturday night. An officer was dispatched at 6:56. The officers arrived at 6:58. Bell was in custody at 6:59. Those are the official records that Kevin Cook provided me.
14) Where do Matthew Bell spend the time between when you stopped physically searching and when you collected him at 7 p.m. the next day. Did he hide in a vacant Lake Morton-area house? If so, what was the address? Who is the owner? I want a name. Because I am going to publicly shame that person with every ounce of energy I have. If you don’t know the answer to these questions, I want to know that, too.
We do not know if Bell hid in a vacant house at any point.
15) Is it true, as I have heard, that the detective in charge of this case played in the softball game Saturday afternoon while Matthew Bell hung out at the laundromat two houses away from where my son’s good friend lives? If so, what should my reaction to that be?
No one has disputed this. White, Cook, and I did not directly discuss it. But I think you can assume that yes, the detective did play in the game.
White noted that there were actually multiple detectives assigned to the case on Friday night and early Saturday. They worked through the night, waking a judge to secure a warrant for Bell’s arrest.
The question that remains — and is probably impossible to answer for anyone not paid to report on the city — is to what degree the resources committed to the softball game hampered the ability to search for Bell. It did not hamper the ability to collect him; but I don’t know if the search for him looks any different on any other Saturday than it did on softball Saturday.
16) Is there anything else, conceivable, that I personally or my neighborhood generally, can or could do to help that we are not doing — other than bleating mindlessly that “I support LPD.”
As I said, Kevin Cook has asked for my help in establishing a texting system. I’ll do whatever I can to help.
Overall, it’s instructive to note that White told me that from the PD’s point-of-view, this is a very successful investigation: identified a suspect, secured a warrant, and made an arrest in less than 24 hours.
I understand that point-of-view. But one of the great, ongoing problems with LPD specifically, and Lakeland government generally, is its seeming inability to imagine any other point-of-view, particularly the point-of-view of citizens.
I told White and Cook to think about the last time they went to a restaurant and no one acknowledged them — or their food was slow to come out and no one communicated. How did that make them feel?
That was the equivalent of what happened in this neighborhood during this episode. But we can’t walk out and take our business elsewhere. So ultimately, the quality of the food isn’t all that matters. Customer service matters too.
This isn’t that hard of a mindset to develop. I mentioned the Polk Sheriff’s Office and its almost obsessive public communication.
White said, “Well they have an army.”
No, they have a mindset, enforced from the top. LPD had a small army of de facto public information officers just waiting to help on Friday night. We got nothing to work with. Because neither LPD nor Lakeland city government really has a customer service mindset enforced from the top.
Now that City Manager Doug Thomas is leaving to pursue his “entrepreneurial” side, I urge city commissioners to make customer service mentality one of their key hiring criteria in replacing him. I’m optimistic that change is coming. I think White and Cook and Gary Gross all want to close the distance between LPD and the public. White swears that Chief Giddens does.
Now it’s time for action.