ECSO's new unit takes 'holistic approach' to solving problems plaguing neighborhoods

Escambia County Sheriff's Office Deputy Stephen Housam slowed his green SUV to a crawl one recent day while cruising around Navy Point. He rolled down his window and called out to a couple strolling in a nearby park.

"How are you doing?" he said with a smile. "We're just making sure no one is doing anything that they shouldn't be doing."

The couple smiled back and thanked him for patrolling their neighborhood before Housam drove on.

Housam is one of five deputies who volunteered to form the ECSO's newest unit called the Neighborhood Engagement Team, the agency's latest community relations initiative under Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons.

The team officially launched last month as the enforcement side of the ECSO community engagement program, working in close conjunction with the agency's neighborhood specialists.

"These guys are out there, playing with kids and doing police work," said Cmdr. Andrew Hobbs, who supervises the new team. "They are the law enforcement, engagement and enforcement side of the community policing we're doing here at the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office.

"Just the other day, they arrested two guys and afterward, later in the day, went and delivered pizzas to an elementary school summer camp."

Hobbs said the team is "the next iteration" in the sheriff's long-term plan toward a fully realized community engagement strategy.

One of the first steps was creating two new positions called neighborhood specialists. The specialists work to establish trust by helping improve neighborhoods, whether by calling the right authorities to fix a broken streetlight or listening to residents' concerns about suspected crimes.

But the specialists are not sworn officers and can't handle every concern they might hear. That's where the new unit comes into play.

"The neighborhood specialists can bring the problem to us, and we're going to use our resources to solve it," Housam said. "We do a lot of engagement, too, but the key difference is that we are the enforcement side."

For example, if residents told the neighborhood specialists about too many speeders on their street or suspected drug dealing, the engagement team would assure residents that law enforcement is aware of their concerns by investigating and then issuing citations or making arrests when necessary. 

"This unit allows the deputies who are a part of it the time to get in and get to know the people in individual neighborhoods, follow up on concerns, get to know the people in the community," Hobbs said. "It's a holistic approach to dealing with issues."

New team's first week on the job

In its first week, the Neighborhood Engagement Team had four big assignments, including two in which residents provided credible reports of drugs being repeatedly sold out of two specific houses, according the ECSO. 

"We are not going to go pick on somebody based on their look. If you call and complain and say that you don't like how somebody looks, we'll say, 'Well, that unfortunate. We can’t help you with that,'" Housam said. "Now, if you call and give me good information or evidence that they are involved in criminal activity, then we’re going to go out there."

Members of the Neighborhood Engagement Team performed what law enforcement refers to as "knock and talks" on those two houses in Navy Point and in Warrington.

"We walked up to the houses and told them straight up, that we understood that there was concern in the community that narcotic activity was going on in their residence," explained Neighborhood Engagement Team member Lt. Patrick Frazier.

"We are very upfront. We are blunt about it," Frazier continued. "We say, ‘If you continue doing what you are doing, you are going to see more and more of us, and eventually, you are going to go to jail.'"

Kim Flanagan, president of the Navy Point Neighborhood Watch Group, said she was pleased with the results of the knock and talks on the house in her neighborhood, saying that the house used to be like "an all-night Taco Bell."

But after the deputies knocked on the house's door, she said the number of people she and her neighbors saw going in and out of the home on a nightly basis greatly decreased.

"It's like the drive-thru is getting shut down," she said.

Eric Reed, a resident of the Warrington neighborhood, said he had not seen such quick results.

"They’ve been told about our problems, I’m going to have to wait and see what more they do about it before I say that they’ve successfully fixed the situation," he said.

Shutting down speeders and assisting the homeless

The new unit's other two big assignments involved speeding and investigating neighborhood burglaries. 

On July 21, Neighborhood Specialist Ronnie Rivera got a call from a Myrtle Grove resident about drivers speeding on 72nd Avenue.

"All of our people care, but sometimes, patrol just does not have the time to do certain things," Hobbs said. "Patrol officers may not have the time to sit in an area for more than 30 minutes at a time because they have to respond to one call after the next."

So he sent the new unit to take care of the problem.

The Neighborhood Engagement Team collectively took out radar guns and collectively began to pull over speeding vehicles on 72nd Avenue. But they didn’t write a single ticket.

"They let people know that they needed to slow down, that law enforcement is not always out there to 'get' people but that, yes, there was problem with speeding in the area that the drivers needed to be mindful of," Hobbs said.

The following day, the team followed a trail of trash into a patch of woods adjacent to the Bay Pine Villas neighborhood off U.S. 98 after the ECSO received multiple reports of nearby burglaries. 

The long trail was covered with discarded items including Barbie dolls, rusty lamp shades and hordes of toilet paper rolls and led to a homeless camp. Bay Pine Villas residents told deputies they thought people staying at the camp were behind recent burglaries in their area.

"People said that some stuff has been getting stolen and that they saw homeless people come out of the wood-line into their yards at night, but we don’t have any evidence of that right now," Housam said.

Still wanting to help, the Neighborhood Engagement Team spoke with the people in the camp but did not arrest them nor immediately trespass them off the property. Instead, the team said that they tried to work with the homeless people to find them alternative places to live. 

"This is what this new unit is all about," Hobbs said. "The unit gives these deputies the time to engage with people like those in the homeless camp and work with them toward a long-term solution."

Colin Warren-Hicks can be reached at colinwarrenhicks@pnj.com or 850-435-8680.

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