A Day on Patrol with Sgt. Morgan Mills & Officer Steven Klakowicz

In this episode of the Cape CopCast, we invited Sergeant Morgan Mills and Officer Steven Klackowicz to pull back the curtain on day shift patrol in Cape Coral—where a quiet morning can turn into a hot call in seconds, and a “slow” precinct like the Northwest becomes a laboratory for proactive policing. From the first moments of roll call to the final report, they walk us through the real workflow that keeps a city safe.

You’ll hear how precincts shape the job: Southeast pulses with bar traffic and back‑to‑back calls, while the Northwest’s residential stretch allows targeted patrols, traffic enforcement on Burnt Store Road, and community touchpoints that prevent crime before it starts. We unpack the top daytime calls—vehicle crashes and overnight vehicle burglaries discovered at dawn—and the triage that determines who gets help first. There’s practical advice here for residents too: when a phone report beats waiting on scene, why locking cars at night still matters, and how traffic visibility aims to educate, not just cite.

The conversation turns inside the perimeter on a recent armed robbery response: securing the scene, setting a perimeter, spinning up UAV and aviation support, and carefully transitioning to detectives and forensics once the scene stabilizes. It’s a choreography that looks static from the outside but protects lives and preserves evidence. Along the way, Sergeant Mills shares the view from the supervisor seat—approvals, mentoring, and trusting experienced officers—while Officer Klakowicz highlights a culture of problem solving that keeps the whole shift moving. The human thread ties it together: officers working overtime, parents juggling schedules, people managing stressful moments at crash scenes. When both sides bring patience and grace, service is faster, safer, and better.

Transcript

Meet The Hosts And Guests

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Comcast. I'm one of your hosts, Lisa Greenberg.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

And I'm Officer Mercedes Simons. Together we make up the public affairs office. We have two guests today. We do. We have Sergeant Morgan Mills and drumroll, please. We have returning guest Officer Steven Klackowitz. Thank you for being here again. Obviously, it wasn't very bad the first time you were willing to come back a second time. I think that says a lot.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

I think this will help us get continue to get guests. We'll be like, see, he came back twice.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Absolutely. So we love having you guys here. You guys are the backbone of our department, the best representation that we have. Not in like the whole department, just to clarify. But as far as patrol goes, you guys are an amazing representation. You do so much. And the police department and city could not function without what you do on a day-to-day basis.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

So you want to start just a little bit by introducing yourselves?

SPEAKER_02 0:58

We'll start with you, Sarge.

Morgan’s Path Back To Patrol

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Oh boy. I am Morgan Mills. I've been with the Cape Coral Police Department since 2007. I started here when I was 21, fresh out of college at Florida State, Go Knowles. Um worked patrol until 2015, and then for 10 years was assigned to our professional standards bureau where I did compliance and background investigations. And just in August of this year was promoted to sergeant and shipped back to patrol, where uh I've really enjoyed getting back out on the street. So it's good.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

I don't, I, you know, uh, I think patrol can be scary when you've been off it for a while. It's something there's a lot that changes. There's a lot of technology and policy and just the way that we do things in general that changes a lot. But I think going back is was probably really exciting because you get to absolutely refresh on your skills, get back in touch with everything that you missed, and then you kind of come back to why you wanted to be a cop in the first place, which is helping people and now camaraderie is yeah. I was gonna say you get to help the people who work underneath of you as officers and and advocate for them, which is great.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Yeah, that mentorship must be pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yeah, it's fun. It's fun to be out amongst other officers where when you're in the building, you're just kind of in your own units and your own bureaus, which is fantastic. I enjoyed my time upstairs too, but you don't get the same camaraderie anywhere else like you do in patrol. That's so awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah. So no pressure, Officer Clackowitz. How much do you love your sergeant? She's great.

Night Shift Vs Day Shift

SPEAKER_03 2:32

She was the first person that uh I interacted with here because she did my background investigation when I was being hired. So um if anybody ever wonders, like how did that guy ever get a job here, I would blame her.

SPEAKER_02 2:45

Oh my gosh. I don't think anyone's wondering that.

SPEAKER_03 2:48

But um yeah, I've been here since 2021. So I'm in my fifth year and I've been on patrol um for that tenure, and I've done night shift and now I'm currently on day shift.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Yeah, we actually worked night shift on patrol um together before I got the spot in public affairs. So you went when did you switch to day shift?

SPEAKER_03 3:09

In uh spring of twenty twenty-this, I think. I'm sorry, fall.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:16

So it's just been just over two years. I've been on days and I'm sure it's a a lot different than nights. It's a totally different experience.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

Which do you like better?

SPEAKER_03 3:25

I really like days. I've I've been enjoying it. Just the um the schedule.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:30

Because I I have a family, I have kids, and um to be able to to go home and and have to stay on that night shift is is tough. So I had to flip-flop and uh sacrifice getting adequate sleep for those couple years. But um now that I can go home and have a normal schedule, it it goes a long way.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Oh, for sure. I bet the difference in the activity that you would see on shift is totally different. Like night and day, no pun intended.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

But what district or precinct did you work when you were on nights?

The Northwest Precinct Profile

SPEAKER_03 3:59

Uh I was in, I started in South, it was South District at the time, and then I worked in North District. So even and um just even between those two precincts, it's it's almost like being in a different city. Yeah. Just with the size of our city and the the makeup and the demographic and the way things are laid out, going from working along Cape Coral Parkway at night to working along um Pine Island or or Burnstore Road during the day or even at night, is um it's almost like two different cities. So I'm sure. Um, and then that versus nights versus days is just a completely different composition of the kind of calls that you're going to.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

Yeah, absolutely. So you guys work Northwest, the Northwest precinct right now. Can you tell us a little bit about it? What do you like about it? How's it different? Because when I I worked in Southeast, and Southeast was always really crazy busy, always really fun, something going on. That you had the bar district, so you could always look for drunk drivers or whatever was going on. So, what is Northwest like?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Very residential. I mean, we've got Pine Island Road that has some commercial properties and some businesses. We've got burn stores, so you've got a lot of folks that are coming in from outside of our city that are using that as a thoroughfare, but a lot of residential properties. So we see a lot of burglaries, thefts, um a juvenile problem here or there at the parks, but uh not to the same extent that you're going to see in South District.

Proactive Traffic And Hot Spots

SPEAKER_03 5:29

Yeah, and Northwest is probably the least populated precinct in the city. So uh just the volume of calls will be different. Somebody in Southeast working the same shift as me, their day is is pretty back to back with having to go to calls, and um, it makes the day go quick. Uh with Northwest, we get a little more downtime throughout the day, and I don't want to brag about it, but um, we get the opportunity to be more a little more proactive with doing traffic or community-related stuff that we we have the desire to get into, we have that ability.

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Do you want to tell the people a secret and give away some of your favorite places to run traffic that you see the most issues with?

SPEAKER_03 6:11

Well, in Northwest, it's burnt store work.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Burnt store, I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

And it's not a secret. You I mean, you'll see us along there, and we're trying our best to uh you know, to address the concerns of the state.

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Educate the uttering public. Yeah. Well, that's why I say it. Like I say it jokingly as a secret, but we don't want it to be a secret. We're gonna be here, we're gonna be enforcing things, stop doing stupid stuff and speeding, just drive safely. I think that's probably the overall message that we can get across.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

We want our citizens to get home safely to their families and their kids or whoever they have waiting for them. And the best way to do that is to drive safely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Thank you guys for what you do and enforcing traffic.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

Yeah. So that's gotta be a big part of the day, for sure. Um I feel like we kind of want to give people who are listening some insight into what like a typical day in the life is like. So if one of you, both of you, would tell us kind of how was today? What have you been up to today? What's it been like?

A Day In The Life On Days

SPEAKER_03 7:09

Um today and and day shift didn't how it differs from night shift is you know, when we come in at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m., there's typically not a lot of calls holding. So you have some downtime sometimes in the morning. It depends on where you work in the city, to maybe catch up on things that you didn't get from the last shift or to do that proactive type stuff. Um and with day shift, as the day goes along, the call volumes are they'll increase as there's more traffic and there's just more people out um doing things with night shift. When you come in at 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., typically there's calls already holding and there's there's a lot going on, and you you get right to work and you get to it and you're busy until maybe after midnight, and then that's when you get your time to maybe catch up on some things to um and then ride out the rest of the shift and hopefully uh go home on time.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Hopefully. Yeah. So when we start our day, um I'm coming to the station, you know, might stop for gas on the way in, but you're coming to the station, checking through emails, checking to see if there's anything holding anything left over from the night before, and then we'll start our shift with a roll call. Officers start their day at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. I'm here by 5, 5.30 a.m. And um we'll start the day with roll call where we can go over anything that was carried over from the night before, any training that we might need to do, any updates that are passed down from you know, second floor, third floor, other bureaus, uh bolos. What else might we go over?

SPEAKER_03 8:39

Um any carryovers. So if we have an area of the city that might have um a higher volume of vehicle burglaries or construction thefts, um, we'll set up targeted area patrols and we have officers that try to do extra patrols in those areas uh just for more visibility to try to try to prevent more of those crimes from happening.

Top Calls: Crashes And Burglaries

SPEAKER_00 8:59

So we'll go over that kind of thing. Like I said, if there's training or inspections that need to happen, we'll handle that at roll call the very beginning of the shift. A 23836 Avenue. From there, we'll uh kind of break off into our own precincts. And if there's anything that I specifically need to go over with anyone from Northwest or anything that they need to address with all of us, then we'll kind of break off and maybe grab a cup of coffee or maybe meet up at a park or somewhere that we know there are some issues and we'll handle that and have those chats and be able to debrief on what the day brings. And from there, it's that proactive enforcement that we talked about, you know, whether it's traffic or we have targeted area patrols where if we know right now in the Northwest we're having an issue with um water systems being stolen from the side of houses, maybe new construction homes. So we have certain areas that we're really trying to show a presence, hopefully to deter or to gather any information from suspects that might be out and about, you know, casing those items to take. Um, we'll hit those areas and wait for calls to come in and handle them as we need to. What kind of calls have you guys seen today?

SPEAKER_03 10:06

Uh we had a pass accurate theft that somebody um had a firearm stolen from their house from by someone that they had hired to do some work. Um vehicle crashes are uh during the day, those are um a lot more frequent than on night shift just because of the volume of cars on the road. Yeah, right. So vehicle crashes and um our traffic units are here during day shifts, so they're um able to assist with some of those uh traffic crashes, and um also our public service aides can can handle those as well. Um but it's it's a variety of calls. I mean, uh I just came from a burglar alarm call, and you know, the alarm goes off in somebody's house, their alarm company notifies us and we go check it out.

From Hot Call To Hand Off

SPEAKER_01 10:50

So what would you say that your top three calls that you go to during the day usually are? Probably accidents, I would say is one.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

Um vehicle burglaries. Um because they'll happen overnight, and as people wake up to go to work or go to school, they'll notice maybe they didn't lock their car overnight and somebody may have gone through it. So um those types of of reports are taken with day shift a lot. So they're usually though sometimes they're waiting for us when we get in. Um and vehicle crashes and uh a disturbance here and there, but not to the level that night shift sees.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You guys are essentially the face of the department. You're the first people that our citizens are seeing. They're seeing you guys out on the road or at uh their local stores investigating retail thefts or whatever it might be. And I think it's kind of interesting because with like these big crimes, like last, I think it was last week we had that robbery. You guys are the first ones on scene. You show up, you handle the case, and then you hand it off to the detectives. Kind of tell us about that process too.

Supervising, Reports, And Reality

SPEAKER_00 11:55

So when we get a we call those a hot call. So when we get a hot call that's toned out because we need response and we need response now, we'll respond to those codes. When you see us heading somewhere, lights and sirens, it's because we're going in this case, an armed burglary. It ended up being we had information that there were mass subjects inside of a jewelry store that had the owner inside with them. And we needed to get there and assess the situation right now. So we get to that area, and usually everyone's trying to figure out, you know, are we at the front? Are we at the back? We need to set up a perimeter. We need to make sure that, you know, what do we have? Are the suspects still inside the business for that situation last week? We didn't know yet what we had. So we're trying to hold it down, keep people out of our perimeter that we have set up, figure out what we have going on inside. And from there, you know, set that perimeter, get the information that we have. We were trying to review video to see. At the end of that, we determined that those folks fled before we got there as we were pulling up the stretch. Prior to as well. That's what was so. They were leaving the back of the business. You weren't here for this one. No, you missed it. Um, but we don't know that information until we can ascertain. And sometimes video doesn't work as quickly as we want it to work. And I know we've got folks that are in the area that are wondering, what are you guys doing? It looks like you're just standing around. Well, I can assure you there's always something that's going on. We're waiting. We had the UAV up, we had the choppers up, and we're trying to gather all of the information and simultaneously keep folks safe. We don't want them coming into the area, you know. We don't want them being hurt. Um, in that situation, we were able to apprehend using our resources and our local, you know, contacts and task force and all that good stuff. But really it's it's hurry up, ascertain, keep people safe, hold the area, wait, and then we've got to call in our detectives, we've got to call in our forensics, we've got to call you folks so that you can come and answer questions that the media has and do it far more eloquently than we're able to do. You guys do a great job.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

You do a great job. Um you hold the fort down.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

It's it's mean it's calls like that that patrol will handle initially. Um, you know, the most serious types of calls are to even the most um, you know, minimal priority type of calls. And we're the ones that that respond to them. So um it's a it's a good variety of of any type of call that you can imagine that's patrol that's going to be the first to to respond and go from there.

SPEAKER_02 14:20

Yeah, and you like hand it off and you're on to the next thing. So it's like, you know, you don't really have people think, oh, this officer's just sitting around in their car. You guys don't have a break. I mean, your break is spent doing proactive work and enforcement and things like that. Right.

What The Public Should Know

SPEAKER_00 14:34

I often wonder what people think when they see us, you know, sitting in a median or and I've got this phone out, and I'm this phone, and I've got this computer, and I assure you, I'm not playing games. I'm categorizing videos for you know that become evidence in these types of cases and approving reports and approving citations and traffic crashes and making sure we have all the information that we need to submit to the next floor when it's got to go to a detective or to another resource and answering questions. Hey, my car has this issue going on. Can I take it over to get worked on? Just all the things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Is that like one of the things that you would say has just changed from being an officer/slash detective to being a sergeant? Is just all the like, I feel like you're probably everywhere answering 10 people's questions at the same time and trying to get everything approved and make sure everybody's reports look good when somebody else reads them.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

It is. I think I'm pretty fortunate in the folks that I have that have some time under their belt and they don't need me to hold their hand or babysit them. So I know when one of them is calling me for something, it's because they need approval for a resource that they can't authorize themselves and I have to, or they really just have something that that requires me to weigh in on because other than that, they're self-sufficient and I greatly appreciate that. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 15:51

I yeah, I try my best to make hers or any sergeant that I've had to make their life easy, um, because I know that they do a lot. And we try among other officers within our precinct and even our entire shift to to fix a problem or find an answer before having to to go to them. And uh I, you know, as I'm if I'm training a new officer, I I try to reinforce that with them is you have these resources of the people that you work with. Like I there's a really, really good chance that you'll find your answer and get this figured out before having to to go to them because we that's a what we we need problem solvers. That's that's what a lot of being an officer is.

SPEAKER_02 16:33

Yeah, for sure. And I do have a question. This isn't to put you on the spot, so if you can't think of anything, we can cut it out. But um is there anything that you guys want the public to know about what you do or what we're currently doing or anything like that? Is there like some sort of message that you wish the public would just listen to? Whether it's something specific about like I don't know, e-bikes, or whether it's just a something more generic and broad.

Patience, Grace, And Community Trust

SPEAKER_03 17:02

Um I think we have there's instances where people will call and and say they backed into somebody's car in a parking lot and they have a a crash report that they want, and we will gladly do that. Um but if if no one's injured and it's not blocking traffic and um we have to prioritize that. And I've seen instances where someone has called and then 15 minutes later they're calling back, you know, why isn't an officer here? And and our dispatchers, they prioritize sending us to calls, and unfortunately that has to sit there sometimes, and and we will get to you. Uh, we certainly will. But um, we we try our best to, you know, if somebody's in danger, whether it's uh a disturbance or uh you know a more serious crash that has injuries, this this other type of call might have to wait. And uh we we really do our best. Um, but yeah, that's that's something that uh I I think most people know that, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

No, that's something that I think even the chief has talked about in some of the chief's chats, is just sometimes the staffing is the staffing that we have. Sometimes we're we have time to take a coffee break, and sometimes you guys are running calls in other people's precincts because they have all of their officers tied up on one or a couple different things. Like there's a there's a huge span of busy, not busy, but either way, we only have this exact staffing that we have. So within whatever's going on, whether it's a busy day or a light day, that all factors into our response times, which will always be good, honestly, for the hot calls, but it they might not always be as good on the calls that might not be a life-threatening priority.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

Yeah. We also have desk officers that are here that are able to take phone calls, reports. You can call and ask for a phone call back from an officer, and you might get that phone call quicker than we can get to you, depending on what's going on in the city. And that's an available resource. Um, and I think in the same way that the public wants us to have grace and patience with them when they're not having a great day, we're also human. And you have no idea what an officer or a supervisor has just come from when they're responding to your call. Uh, they could have come from a terrible traffic crash, they could have come from a death investigation, they could have come, you know, from sitting on a house for several hours with victims of some pretty significant crimes, and that could be weighing on them. And so if we could all just have grace with each other, you know, both the officer to the public and the public to the officer and approach it from that standpoint, I think that that would go a long way, not just here, but really anywhere.

Closing Thoughts From Patrol

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Yeah, I think that's a good message for sure. I think people can get frustrated thinking that, you know, of course, whatever's going on in their life, they got into a minor fender bender, and now it's oh, it's such a bad day. I have to do this crash report and I have to call my insurance and it's awful. And now the officer's taking 30 minutes plus to get here. What's taking so long? But in the grand scheme of things, if you just zoom out and realize your situation isn't that bad, there could be it could always be worse. Have some grace. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

You can have an officer that's there handling your crash. That's a major deal for you. But now that officer is working overtime and missing an event for their child that they were looking forward to and they're wondering how they're going to explain that to their kiddo. And that that's a tough thing. And that's not to say that that gives us an excuse to be unprofessional or sour. This is our job. We're paid to do it and we're grateful to do it. But if we could just show a little bit of grace on both sides, for sure. That would go a long way.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Yeah, absolutely. I think it just goes back to the the initial reason why we do what we do is we're here to help people. We want to help you, we have the heart to help you. And sometimes it just takes a little more time to get to this call, or you have to remind yourself to have a little more patience because everybody has their own stuff going on. But in general, I would say you guys do an absolutely phenomenal job. We get rarely ever get complaints on you guys, not you guys specifically, but I would say like patrol in general. I don't we don't we don't even get a ton of complaints because you guys are just so professional in everything you do. And I think that's one of the things about working in Cape Coral specifically, is we have such a good relationship with the community that we know that they know that when we come, we're there for them. They get our time, we're there to listen and help them. And I think that that's really felt back and forth. And and we see a lot of that, especially in public affairs, is just the good response that we get from the community that they see that you're there to help them and they really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_02 21:36

Definitely. All right, guys, anything else you want to cover?

SPEAKER_03 21:41

I don't think so. You guys crushed it.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Yeah, I think that was great. Thank you guys so much for joining us. This is really enjoyable. Thanks for watching. Just to talk about the heart of the department, the heart of patrol and police work in general. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Well, we will catch you guys next time. Maybe we'll get you for round three. Yeah. You never know.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

The podcast hat trick. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Yeah, we need to do that. That's awesome. Well, thank you guys so much. And if you're listening or watching, we'll see you next time. Have a good time. Stay safe.