By Scott Travis
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. — Broward school campuses would be protected by a school district-run police force starting next year, under a proposal the School Board will soon consider.
By 2026, a 400-member police force would fully replace the 260 school resource officers now provided by the Broward Sheriff’s Office and city police departments, according to the plan, scheduled to be discussed Jan. 9. Broward’s neighboring districts, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties, already have their own police forces.
Superintendent Peter Licata, who was a longtime Palm Beach County administrator, hired Jim Kelly, former Palm Beach County school police chief, to help develop the proposal. Licata told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he was impressed with Palm Beach County’s department, which he said focuses more on helping kids than arresting them.
“I’ve seen the interaction. I’ve seen the benefits of it. I’ve also seen the cohesiveness of it as well as the well orchestrated uniformed application or policies, practices and procedures,” he said. “The ability to train our force as one and not worry about different perspectives from other municipalities.”
Although district officials have warned in recent months of serious financial challenges due to declining student enrollment, Licata said the plan should be cost effective. He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel the district can provide officers cheaper than the $103,000 per officer that the district now pays local cities for school police.
To help pay for the program, the district may phase out its guardian program, which provides armed security guards, and replace them with sworn police officers, Licata said. The district now has about 120 guardians.
The district also has a small police force of about 37 sworn officers called the Special Investigative Unit. Their main job is to conduct employee investigations, few of which are actually criminal in nature. The district would likely move those detectives to more traditional police duties and create a professional standards department under the human resources department to handle personnel investigations, Licata said.
The district’s police officers also provide security at School Board meetings and district events but faced criticism over its handling of an Oct. 17 meeting.
Debbie Espinoza, a longtime school district volunteer with no history of problems, bumped into a police officer and was charged with a felony battery charge, according to a district-commissioned report. That report blasted the district’s handling of the meeting, saying the arrest was avoidable and that police officers failed to de-escalate tensions. The State Attorney’s Office declined to press charges.
Licata insists police would receive greatly improved training under the proposal.
“A lot of training on what it’s like to de-escalate adults and children,” he said. “We do have angry parents that come in and our intent is to not have them get in trouble with the law.”
The new police force would have a new name, such as the Broward County Schools Police Department, Licata said.
“We want to rebrand it,” Licata said. “We want to not legitimize our police department but make it into a place where it’s relied upon heavily for law enforcement.”
The proposals involves a request of $5 million from the state Legislature to provide 66 school police officers with uniforms, gear and vehicles as well as to conduct a consultant study that focuses on “recruitment, screening, processing, training and project management,” according to a legislative budget request.
The School Board plans to discuss the proposal at a special Jan. 9 School Board meeting. If the School Board agrees, the district would lobby the Legislature for the startup funds. Two Democratic legislators from Broward, Sen. Lauren Book and Rep. Dan Daley, have sponsored the appropriations requests.
Daley said he made the budget request prior to the School Board voting on it, due to a filing deadline for appropriations request.
Licata discussed the plan Dec. 21 with the Broward Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents the district’s police officers.
“Overall we’re in support of it,” union President Rod Skirvin said. “We’re always in support of people being in charge of their own people. We look forward to representing them as the unit grows.”
But he said there could be some challenges related to recruitment.
“It’s very hard to get police officers anywhere right now,” he said. “The salary and benefits are going to have to be competitive.”
It’s unclear how much support the proposal will get from the Legislature, School Board and public.
The district says in a house appropriations form it has support from “community partners and elected officials. Public hearings have resulted in positive feedback from the community.” However, the School Board has had no public meetings on this topic since the School Board first asked Licata in July to study the idea.
While Broward School Board members say they are happy with the service provided by the 200 school resource officers provided by outside agencies, they have been concerned about skyrocketing costs. which have risen from $46,252 per officer in 2017 to $61,200 in 2021 to $103,000 this past school year.
The city of Hollywood asked the School Board this year to increase reimbursement to $166,959 per officer as well as pay for two supervisors at a cost of $208,261 each. That request prompted Lori Alhadeff and some other board members to ask Licata to pursue an internal police force.
“I support a full police department,” Alhadeff told the Sun Sentinel. “Adequate training is crucial to ensure officers handle diverse situations effectively. We need help in funding the start-up costs.”
But Board member Allen Zeman said he thinks the plan is being rushed and also worries school police wouldn’t be equipped to handle major events. Right now, if a crisis happens at a Fort Lauderdale or Coral Springs school, for example, the city police would respond and get back up from a Broward Sheriff’s Office SWAT team. He said having a third agency involved could result in a less-effective response.
Zeman said his concerns about having a district police department escalated after Espinoza’s arrest, where he said no one was held accountable.
Despite a district-hired consultant saying the district police department handled the situation poorly, Licata placed most of the blame on the meeting attendees in a recent interview with the Sun Sentinel. He pledged to improve training but said he didn’t expect to discipline anyone.
Zeman said the district police failed by not being prepared for a meeting about sex education, a topic that was certain to generate strong emotions.
“The most interesting thing to me is not that police office made a mistake, but that the police force of Broward schools was not prepared to handle the most predictable event,” Zeman said. “I rely on these people for my safety, and they dropped the ball.”
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