SANFORD, Fla. — At a promotion ceremony Monday for two officers under his command — one white, one black — Chief Cecil Smith reiterated what has become a mantra for him: Sanford can and should have the finest police force in Florida. And any officer who doen’t care to help make it so, should find the door.
Smith, who is black, is leading a force in a city where the leadership has become conspicuously diverse. During that ceremony, Smith promoted James McAuliffe to captain, and an African-American officer, Darren Scott, to deputy chief. On had for the ceremony: Norton Bonaparte, Sanford’s city manager, also black, hired from outside the city just over a year ago.
On April 1st, Smith took over the job some wondered whether anyone would want, after a 44-day delay in arresting neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman for the shooting death of Miami teenager Trayvon Martin last year sparked protests across the U.S. and in London, England. Eventually, the controversy forced then-chief Bill Lee out.
The Martin shooting tore open longstanding wounds between Sanford’s black community and its police department, with residents alleging decades of police harassment of black residents, particularly in the city’s predominantly black Goldsboro and Georgetown neighborhoods, long wait times for police response to their calls to 911, and police favoritism for their own. Residents complain about the officer who shot Nicholas Eugene Scott to death in the parking lot of the local Winn Dixie and was cleared, after a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation found the shooting justified, and that Police Inspector Seven Lynch had fired into Scott’s car after the 23-year-old tried to run down Lynch’s partner, Sgt. Stacie Cabello. Some in Goldsboro don’t believe the official story — it’s common for a question about Sanford police to elicit passionate recitations of Scott’s story, including the fact that Lynch was later promoted by Chief Lee.
Or there’s the police lieutenant’s son, Justin Collison, who was caught on cellphone video punching a local man, Sherman Ware, outside a bar, and not immediately arrested, despite the fact that officers had the video that night in December 2010. Collison was eventually charged with felony battery and disorderly conduct, charges Ware asked prosecutors to drop after Collison’s family reached a settlement with him. Prosecutors refused, and in October 2011, Collison pleaded guilty to misdemeanor batter and was given a year’s probation, and a requirement to undergo anger management and alcohol treatment. The sentencing judge, Circuit Court Debra Nelson, today presides over the George Zimmerman trial.
The previous chief, Brian Tooley, was forced to retire early under pressure from the Collison case. He was eventually replaced by Lee, and many in the black community were critical of the process of selection, which brought a “Billy Lee,” a local man they considered “part of the good old boy network,” into office, including bypassing a black candidate named Michael Blow, who many black leaders had dearly wanted to see at the helm of the force.
Smith was the finalist in what had been a national search for someone to take over a police force weighed down by that mistrust, and to manage the second wave of international media attention, which is expected to return with Zimmerman’s second degree murder trial. (Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty.)
Nest: Pushing for a black chief
Many in Sanford’s black community had long pushed for an African-American chief, with some fuming over a failed attempt to court a highly-decorated candidate, Michael Blow, who ultimately lost out to Lee, a local who black residents refer to as “Billy Lee,” replete, they say, with all the southern “good old boy” baggage.
Bonaparte said there was no deliberate attempt to pick a black chief. More important, he said, was finding someone with a fresh view, and the ability to reach out to disaffected members of the community.
“We went through a very competitive national search,” Bonaparte said, noting that two of the five finalists were African-American. Smith was chosen after recommendations from various community groups, the city commission, and a series of public sessions at which the candidates made presentations. “I don’t know that color was an issue there,” said Bonaparte.
A stranger in a southern town
“I have to say that up until November of last year when [the chief’s job] was publicized, I really had no idea that I was going to apply for the job,” Smith said, sitting in a small room just outside of the large conference room where the promotion ceremony would soon begin, complete with plaques and a cake, and a multi-racial cast of officers and staff.
He said a friend, who also works in law enforcement, encouraged him to apply. The friend “said hey, I think this might be something good for you. I think it might be a good opportunity for you to go in and use the skill set that you’ve had here in Elgin, and see if you can make some change. So I applied for the position.”
Elgin is Elgin, Illinois, where Smith was a deputy chief of police. He was born and raised in Chicago’s West Side, and before April, had never lived in the south. His wife, who hails from Colorado, arrived in Sanford in the wee hours that morning — ahead of the furniture for the family’s new home. “Significant days kind of set the tone for who you’re gonna be and where you’re gonna land,” he said.
Smith said his wife Vicky had some jitters, wondering how their interracial family will be received in a small, southern town. But he said his neighbors have been friendly, and he’s quickly settling in.
Smith said he researched Sanford before agreeing to take the job, and what he found was a difficult history, dating back even before it became known as the town that wouldn’t allow Jackie Robinson to play baseball in town with the Brooklyn Dodgers’ farm team back in the 1940s — but he also found some real changes for the city’s African-American community.
“Even before I took the position you had a black city manager who was here, who is trying to make a difference,” he said, referring to Bonaparte. “And you’ve had a black city commissioner who’s been here for years and years and years,” he added, referring to Velma Williams, the city’s lone black commissioner, who was among those pushing hard to hire an African-American chief.
Darren Scott served for a time as interim chief after Lee stepped down, though he did not apply for the permanent job.
Next: A glimpse the dark side
Despite the overall positive reception, Smith said he has also seen the dark side of people’s attitudes toward race. When his hiring was announced in March, he said his 16-year-old daughter (he has two older children: a 22-year-old son who plays semi-professional football and a 19-year-old son who is studying international relations) began noticing derogatory, even racist, remarks on local news websites carrying the story, though it’s impossible to know whether the comments came from Sanford residents.
“She was like dad, why are these people saying this? They don’t even know you,” he said. “But they’re saying horrible things about you; they don’t know you, they haven’t even given you a chance.”
Even within the police force, Smith said he met some resistance. “I had command officers who said they didn’t want to work for a black chief, and [who] frankly put it on the floor,” he said. “And I said to them, if you don’t choose to work for me, there’s the door. I’ll happily have a great retirement party for you, cause I’m not going anywhere.”
Smith said some of the ugliness gave him pause.
“It was to the point where I was gonna say, ‘no, I’m not gonna do it,'” he said. “But you know, I believe in God, I get on my knees and pray every morning. …. [And] know what, He puts us in places and he guides our feet and he tells us where we’re gonna go. There [were] a whole lot of times when I said this is not for me. But I don’t think He’ll give me anything that I can’t accomplish with him.”
Smith said his first act on the job was to signal to his police force that change was coming to Sanford, in terms of the police department’s relationship to its black residents.
“I won’t tolerate any racism,” he says he told his officers right out of the gate. “And I won’t tolerate the fact that you treat people differently, period. And if it comes to a point where I find that you’re doing that, that you’re making racial statements, that you’re doing things that are profiling, then we’re going to take appropriate action against you. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a command officer or just a basic street officer on the street.”
Skepticism on 13th Street
Goldsboro’s main drag, 13th Street, is lined with rundown, old buildings, modest restaurants and makeshift bars. The street, renamed Historic Goldsboro Boulevard after a city commission vote, designed to spark a revival in the city’s oldest neighborhood, is quiet on a Tuesday afternoon. Two men smoke a cigarette outside Mama Coot’s Place. A few young men ride by on bikes. Two more sit on crates outside the Goldsboro Food Mart, which along with the next door bar, The Spot, has become a local hub for residents and for police.
Brenda Hartsfield, who owns the Food Mart, says members of a ten-member police task force constantly pull up in front of her store, demanding that people not stand on the sidewalk. She said the scrutiny gets worse on weekend nights, when the locals congregate in front of the stores and bars after the clubs in the city shut down.
“It feels like they’re out here every ten minutes,” Hartsfield said. “We feel like we’re in a choke hold. As soon as they see four or five of us together, it’s ‘break it up, break it up.'”
She said police have taken a longstanding loitering law, “and they enforce it to the fullest.”
And Hartsfield said that in her view, the stops have become so routine — a kid stopped for not having lights on his bike, or an old man hassled for carrying an unopened can of beer — most in the neighborhood don’t speak up anymore.
“People around here have been harassed so long, now [police officers] just say ‘loiter’ and they duck their heads,” Hartsfield said. “People are just beat down.”
Hartsfield said she and other business owners have complained to Scott, who runs the task force, and that they have begun to complain to Smith. She said in the days after she complains, the harassment eases, only to return. Hartsfield and her family are assertive. She said she’ll miss work to go to the police station just down the road, at the entrance to the historic district, and complain.
“But when I’m not here, that’s when they really get on people,” she said.
Chief Smith has a different take on how Golsboro is policed.
He said he has reached out to residents of the historic Goldsboro and Georgetown districts, areas that date back to the days when Zora Neale Huston’s father, a local pastor, owned a house in Sanford. It still stands in the Georgetown area, as battered by time as the surrounding enclaves and historic districts that contrast with the neatly walled gated communities in the newer parts of the city.
Crime is high in these largely impoverished neighborhoods, where residents have long accused police of oscillating between neglect and abuse. And Hartsfield admits there is a grown gang problem.
In response, Smith has begun “walking the community” — sometimes even showing up at the parties held on the street’s makeshift bars out of uniform — and meeting with business leaders. He said he believes the chief of police should be visible, and that the officers should, too.
“We’re encouraging officers to get out of their cars,” he said. “And we are working to resolve some of the issues of the past. Are we gonna weed everything out right away? Probably not.”
On Tuesday, the chief met with business owners, including Hartsfield and Richard Sims, who owns The Spot next door. Hartsfield said the meeting was followed by one of Smith’s surprise visits to 13th Street. But the small but growing group of people who moved in and out of her store Tuesday evening complained that just after Smith left, two members of the task force arrived.
The two officers, one male and one female, didn’t say much. They came with a tow truck. They told people to move off the sidewalk.
Raymond Hartsfield, a member of the store-owner’s large family, said the officers’ attitude is part of the problem.
“They belittle you and change the rules as they see fit,” he said.
Sims gives Smith credit for being the first chief he’s seen in his lifetime growing up in Sanford who walks through the community. He’s willing to give him time to change things.
Next: Defending the police presence
Smith defends the no-nonsense approach his department takes with local businesses in Goldsboro. He said his conversations with business owners on the strip have focused on “how do we change the economic status on the street.”
“If you’ll notice there aren’t that many stores,” he said. “But there are a lot of little bars. And the bars don’t open until 8:00 at night. And then at 2:00 in the morning they have to close. But the idea is that when you close, your patrons have to leave. They can’t hang out with the doors open and the music blaring, and if that happens, you’re gonna get a police response.”
Smith said his goal is to build trust in the force by showing homeowners in both black and white areas of the city that police can deliver results.
Some residents see him as making a difference. As he picked up his breakfast on Monday, just down the road from the Food Mart at the Pook Bear Restaurant, J.R. said he felt that things were getting better.
“I see the new police chief engaging with the community,” J.R. said. “I’ve seen him a couple of times walking through the neighborhoods, you know, speaking with families, and there’s definitely a presence in the community since the new chief.”
That recognition of the increased police visibility is what Smith says his goal is.
“You know, when some of the bars close, people want to go have some place to hang out,” he said. “And I’m not against people hanging out. But I am against when people are hanging out and I get citizens who are calling and saying the music is loud, people are out swearing, it’s 2:30, 3:00 in the morning. I can’t sleep. what are you doing? So I have to look at the perspective that here are taxpaying citizens who are constantly being disturbed.”
“So I have given my officers instructions that if you see something that’s illegal, you make an arrest. Because that’s what the citizens are asking us to do,” he said.
Hartsfield, Sims and other business owners on 13th Street, and some of their customers, disagree.
“The chief stood right here,” said one resident, as a small group debated whether the new chief — or any chief — could ever really change Sanford’s police culture. “And as soon as he left, who showed up? The task force. And what did they say? The chief has sent them up here. So he just bamboozled the community, as far as I’m concerned.”
Hartsfield disagrees, but she says the problem is not Smith, it’s his officers. “They’re not friendly to me and they know me. Imagine how they treat other people around here,” she said.
Recriminations on Zimmerman case, ‘Stand Your Ground,’ will have to wait
As for the case that reignited tensions in Sanford, Smith said he is reserving judgment, and has not ordered a review of how Sanford police handled the Zimmerman investigation. That will have to wait, he said, until the case is fully adjudicated.
He said he is still learning about the “Stand Your Ground” law, which he called so complicated, even a sitting judge who spent two hours briefing him on it found it confusing to explain.
But he said a basic tenet of police procedure is not going to change in Sanford:
“If an arrest is going to be made, we will always consult with the state’s attorneys office, because we can make the arrest, [but] they have to prosecute,” he said. “They’re the ones who are going to say yes, you have enough to sustain that arrest, or that charges are to be filed. And if they give us the direction that there’s not enough to sustain the arrest or to prosecute then we have to release the person.”
Smith said the city is ready for all contingencies, before, during and after the case, though he doesn’t expect any unrest, no matter how it turns out.
Before heading into the promotion ceremony, the chief, a slight man with wire rimmed glasses, who looks more college professor than cop, noted that he began his job on April Fool’s Day, with some friends wondering if perhaps it would turn out to be a prank — that he wasn’t really moving to Sanford to take the helm of one of the country’s most vilified police departments.
“But here it is, June 10th,” he said, noting the start of the event all those protests last year were demanding. “Significant days set the tone for who you’re gonna be and where you’re gonna land.”
Follow Joy Reid on Twitter at @thereidrport