Cape CopCast
Welcome to "The Cape CopCast," the official podcast of the Cape Coral Police Department.
Hosted by Officer Mercedes Simonds, and Lisa Greenberg from our Public Affairs team, this podcast dives into the heart of Cape Coral PD's public safety, community initiatives, and the inner workings of our police department. Each episode brings you insightful discussions, interviews with key community figures, and expert advice on safety.
Cape CopCast
Chief's Chat #4: Smash & Grab Arrest and Building Police Precincts
In this episode of the Cape CopCast "Chief's Chat," discover how Cape Coral Police Detectives swiftly brought a wave of smash-and-grab burglaries to an end and protected local businesses, and learn about our new vision for community policing. Tune in as Hosts Lisa Greenberg and Officer Mercedes Simonds chat with Chief Anthony Sizemore about the impressive strategies the department employed to apprehend the burglary suspect.
Chief Sizemore also takes us on a journey into the future of policing in Cape Coral with the introduction of a decentralization model aimed at bringing precincts closer to residents. Listen to his insights on the meticulous planning behind these new precincts, which promise to enhance accessibility and reduce travel burdens for both officers and the public. Through Project 35 and the development of new facilities over the next decade, Chief Sizemore shares how the city is preparing for future growth, ensuring that resources and infrastructure are aligned with the community’s evolving needs. Don't miss this engaging discussion about smart, sustainable growth and the proactive steps being taken to support Cape Coral’s thriving community.
Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Cop cast, the Chief's Chat edition. I'm one of your hosts, Lisa Greenberg.
Speaker 2:And I'm Officer Mercedes Simons. Together we make up the Public Affairs Office and once again we have Chief Anthony Sizemore here for Chief's Chat.
Speaker 1:How you doing. I'm good how are you guys this week Good? Good, it's been busy in a good way. Steady busy, nothing too too much, we'll take it. Yeah, good, it's been busy in a good way. Steady busy, nothing too too much, we'll take it. Yeah, how's your week been going?
Speaker 3:Been really good, really good. We had a great resolution to a pretty high profile bunch of cases and just really glad that it wrapped up. I'm ecstatic for what happened, although not at all surprised with the talent that we have here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're pretty awesome. What he's referring to is the recent cases of smash and grab burglaries that we had in the downtown Cape area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know a lot of the businesses were concerned because it was all kind of in one little localized area that just had a couple different nights where different businesses were getting hit, and obviously that's where we, you know, set all the bells and whistles. We set up different operations, we have to get this guy and we did it.
Speaker 3:So we did. I wish we could. It's detrimental during the case, right, but if the public knew what we were doing and the net was getting tighter and tighter and had somebody identified while these were happening and we were on it and it was just a good, good resolution, I mean, these are devastating things to a small business to have happen. One of them got hit twice. So there's a lot of pressure internally because we feel for the community and we want to make the case. You know, in our own world we want to catch bad guys doing bad things, but we're also a member of the community and see that it.
Speaker 3:You know, a lot of places, especially a small business, can be on a very thin margin and you don't account for that. Right, we just went through hurricanes. You're worried about surge and inventory and they're still coming out of supply chain stuff and there's a lot to running a small business and we get it, and to have something like this is not planned for and can be really, really devastating. So it's important for us to make that arrest and ultimately get your property back, if we can.
Speaker 1:For sure, and I mean within a matter of days, we had this guy. So it was great. It was great to see how that all was able to come together, especially during the holiday time, when, you know, every cent counts for a lot of these businesses too. A hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Speaker 3:And actually solved one in Fort Myers that he did. That our detectives were able to get a closure on, and another jurisdiction our partners can get a solve on. That too, that's awesome. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, that happened in South Cape and another big thing that we've got going on in the southeast portion of the Cape is we have one of our precincts up and running our substations and I know we wanted to take today to kind of talk a bit about the decentralization model that we're seeing, with not just our department but a lot of different departments across the country with having different police precincts throughout parts of the city. You know it used to be that you'd have to come all the way here to our headquarters to file a report or talk to a desk officer or things like that, but we're kind of changing that.
Speaker 3:We are, and it's on many different levels is beneficial for us. So you want to be where the people are and with a growing city, you know, approaching a quarter million people, it's not really tenable to have folks unnecessarily driving across all quadrants of the city. So we are part of a much larger program where, if you can have retail, medical schools, recreation and emergency services in the independent quadrants or precincts that we call them, you can eliminate trips so that can make an existing infrastructure of roadways seem bigger, seem less congested, if we can. You can't eliminate all trips, obviously, but if you can play a part, you can definitely help in the same police services that you would get here in your neighborhood and limit the time that you would have to go, increase the convenience and still deliver the same product. That's what we're doing, that's what the decentralization is, where the main police department that we're in now would be home base. Or if you watch any television shows that are based around the NYPD, you've heard of 1PP or One Police Plaza. That's here. All of the administrative functions are going to be here and we will have a replication of the operational in your precinct.
Speaker 3:So Southeast is already operational. It's down on Chester Street. It was a fire station way back in the day. It is now the Southeast precinct. That's right over by Starbucks. You can go in and it will be staffed for administrative things, picking up copies of reports. You can meet an officer there, safe place to do a standby for a child custody exchange. Anything that you would do at the police department you can meet an officer and do at the precinct and we are looking to and in the planning process of replicating that in the Southwest precinct, northeast and Northwest, so you have your own police station or precinct building where you live.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, and is it officially open to the public yet, because I know it's been operational for a few months now for our officers. But can the public stop there at this point?
Speaker 3:You can stop there. We haven't done like a grand opening or ribbon cutting yet. There's a few small things we want to get ready. But if you need help and you need service absolutely.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And it's great because we talk a lot about the convenience for the community, but this is also really awesome for the officers who patrol their specific areas because they don't have to come all the way back to our station and run out. It's very scientific the way we deploy.
Speaker 3:We have geographic four precincts like we've talked about, and within each precinct there are sub zones and the officers are confined to those zones and we have the requisite amount of officers per zone depending upon how busy they are, and we try to keep the workload the same, so one officer isn't doing 65 to 70% more work than somebody else.
Speaker 3:So you, you staff it with different amounts of people.
Speaker 3:One of the other big factors in that is you need people in their area.
Speaker 3:So if everything is based up here at Nicholas and Country Club and your Southeast One, which is the Yacht Club if viewers are familiar with that to do administrative runs or use the restroom or take a break and throw something in the microwave to have some lunch or re-up your paperwork, your supply of statements and tow sheets or anything that you need, if you can avoid having them leave their area and come all the way up here, because inevitably you're going to be here and an emergency goes out and you're what we call upside down. You know where all your people aren't where they're supposed to be. It's quicker response, which is ultimately the name of the game. You know it's really simple when you think about police work. You want enough cops that when somebody calls 911, we have them, they get there quickly and then they know what they're doing when they get there. So if you can take care of two of those big three by having the officers in the precincts the majority of the time, the public is going to be better served.
Speaker 2:Makes sense, yeah, and it makes everything easier on the officers too. Coming from my perspective of just having you know, I can keep my dinner there, microwave and everything's pretty self-sufficient there. There's a bathroom for women and things like that. That's actually clean.
Speaker 3:Very important.
Speaker 2:Very important things you might not think about. When?
Speaker 3:you're out on the road in your car for 12 hours. You know, nobody's a camel.
Speaker 3:You're going to have to go and you want a nice safe place to be able to go Right and the ability to go and take care of anything from the restroom to paperwork. You can do it in your precinct. You're never out of zone. You're always in the zone, ready to go. Another key component of this that I think is important for the public is that we're utilizing different funding sources for this. This isn't always going to be an ad valorem taxes. Are my taxes going up? There's a huge building boom in the Cape. There's a lot of great with that. There's a lot of frustration with that. One of the things that is a part of it are building impact fees, and building impact fees are designated for new growth, paying for new growth. So if the growth is requiring us to do more, get more, provide more, then the new growth can pay for that, and a lot of the funding for acquisition of land, design and construction is coming from that fund. It's a benefit to the existing people who are customers of our service.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what would you say is the timeline on kind of what we're looking for all four precincts plus our main building, to have everything in line.
Speaker 3:Each new precinct is about a two-year process. By using those funding sources we have to be a good partner with everybody else and all the other demands in the city. We can't just skip the line. So by using those alternate funding sources we build it into the budget. So I say a two-year process because year one is the design. So we engage a design firm that is talented and their business is building government or designing government buildings, and we'll actually design how it's going to look to get the best flow for the public, the best operational use for our staff, and then the next year it's funded to actually do construction.
Speaker 3:And we looked at many different models. Renting storefront for the immediate need that's good in the short term. It's not good practice in the long term If we're going to be moving towards what we look like at build out. You don't want to have a never ending rental. You want to get the property while you can utilize the funding that is absolutely designated for that. New building impact fees and different funding mechanisms like that is just for this. Acquisition of the land and developing and building capital asset projects in a police precinct to benefit new growth is exactly in the wheelhouse and that's what you use it for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. It'll be interesting to see when they're all built. They're going to be pretty cool.
Speaker 3:They're going to be very, very nice. And another benefit to it is it's not just the storefront. It'll look just like a storefront for the public. You walk into the lobby, you'll be engaged by an officer, desk officer and a customer service representative to help you with what you need, and then on the back end there'll be meeting space for officers, conference area and also workspace, because as we grow the footprint of this building can become stretched. So if we can offsite certain components of the police department, it frees up space here. So it's a long-term project, each one. If you've heard the phrase, the days are long but the years are short. There's little gears spinning and then a big gear going. So there's a lot of planning, a lot of developing and we're moving in stages Design construct, acquire land. In the new one, design construct. These are two years each one, so you're looking at about an eight to 10 year project to have all of them done, and then each one will have different, unique characteristics to replicate what is needed in that precinct.
Speaker 1:Makes sense. I got to ask when you became chief did you realize how much planning you'd be doing for the future when you potentially aren't even working here anymore? I mean, you are constantly planning for the next thing.
Speaker 3:I did not. I tell people that I have two full-time jobs. The first full-time job is the CEO of the police department, administering it, running it. I knew what I was getting into for that, but I really didn't. You think you know because I was a deputy chief. I was one of the number twos before I moved into that role, so it's always a lot more than you thought, but I have such talented, capable people underneath me that administering the day-to-day of the police department is actually the easier of the two. The second full-time job I have that I did not know that I was getting. The previous city manager told me you don't really understand where you're at, what you have to do. I'm oh yeah, I got it. I got it.
Speaker 3:The second full-time job is planning for the future and somebody could come in and do that where you anticipate where you're going, identify the funding. You have to use history as your guide contemporary law enforcement, executive training, the local knowledge of this community, working with our team at City Hall about forecasting growth and then listening to the people. Having engagement like this, you know what people need, what they want, what they're going to need, so they'll tell you what they want and sometimes you have to tell them what they're going to need and you put that all together and you identify where do we need to be? We do one-year budgets. Legally, we do four to five-year lookout or forecast planning. We have a new program that we've. We're in the development stages of it now. We call it Project 35, which is fiscal year 2035, 10 years from now, because we are in fiscal year 2025.
Speaker 3:So 10 years from now, envision what the city and the police department specifically looks like. So this building will be occupied as it is. Who's going to occupy it? What services will be provided here? Our four precincts will be developed. What programs are we going to need? What capital equipment are we going to need? What's our staffing going to look like?
Speaker 3:So you design what you're going to be, based on scientific evidence and your best guess in 10 years, and then we reverse, engineer year by year. So if this is where we're going to be in 2035, where do we have to be in 2034, 2033, all the way back to now, so that you're on pace and you don't wake up unprepared. You're on a schedule, so that 10 years from now, you have what you need and the services will be delivered meeting and going above expectations, and that's a difficult task because I didn't learn how to do that. You just kind of listen to experts and if you don't start moving you're going to be behind. So that's a good motivator. I won't be here in 2035 as the chief, so I'm designing something for tomorrow's leaders, for tomorrow's police department, so that's kind of exciting. I'm hoping that in 2035, whoever's sitting in the seat it might even be you, you never know.
Speaker 2:I can't even test for sergeant for another couple of years. We've got time.
Speaker 3:Whoever's occupying the seat will look back or maybe it'll be so seamless they won't even think to do so and they'll be grateful that we took the steps that we took today so that they're able to run into the future.
Speaker 1:You're doing a great job, thanks. I mean, I know I'm just a civilian who started here less than a year ago, but you're doing great.
Speaker 3:Next week is Thanksgiving, and that will mark four years that I've been sitting in the seat. I was an interim for the first couple of months, but we didn't act like we were interims, we went in there like we owned it. So four years. It's pretty exciting to head into year five.
Speaker 1:It is exciting, it's crazy All the little things that are constantly happening behind the scenes. Is there anything else either of you can think of before we wrap this one up?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's been a great week. Thanks again, great to be here.
Speaker 1:Yes, thank you so much for coming and thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.
