Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti to the Residents of Pompano Beach

I was advised late Monday afternoon of a letter to the Pompano Beach City Commissioners that was written by the newly hired Pompano Beach City Manager. HE RECOMMENDED THAT POMPANO BEACH LEAVE BSO AND START THEIR OWN POLICE FORCE. The commission will be discussing the issue at the regular commission meeting next Tuesday, February 9 at 7:00 pm. I urge you to attend. If you are happy with BSO then LET THEM KNOW. The future safety of your family might very well depend on it. I wanted to clarify some issues for you so that you can be as informed as possible with accurate information concerning the possible departure of BSO from Pompano Beach:

• Residents and business owners of Pompano Beach are being asked to participate in a potentially dangerous and costly experiment in public safety.

• The Wildan Study that the City commissioned to evaluate the effects of starting their own police department is inaccurate, contains false financial evaluations and has made faulty and risky assumptions. The City recognized it and admitted during our discussions that the study has inaccurate numbers and assumptions. The information Commissioners are being given by their consultants is not reliable information. Agendas aside, the numbers simply don’t add up. Yet the new City Manager is still using the flawed recommendations to justify the switch from BSO.

• It is being recommended that Pompano Beach follow the City of Miami Gardens model for police department start up. Please be aware the model recommends raising property taxes and borrowing money to offset the start-up costs.

• The Study projected a $10 million start up deficit for the city in the first year with savings of $1.4 million per year for 5 years. Their start up costs do not take into consideration a host of other operational costs necessary to run a minimal department like human resources, legal costs and risk management (lawsuits) which alone could add up to many millions of dollars that they simply overlooked in their evaluation. I ask why?

• The recommendation claims it can reduce costs by $4 million by hiring less experienced officers (1 to 5 years experience). Again it doesn’t make sense. What the residents would get is a young and inexperienced, lower paid police force (most likely the lowest paid in the county) with a critical void of experienced supervisors. This would historically create a police revolving door as soon as the next higher paying opportunity came around. It is bad public safety policy.

• Our proposal to the City included significant cost reductions, and included in our costs all the critical operational elements they chose to ignore. Even then they rejected our proposal. Their evaluation underestimates many significant costs necessary to operating an effective police department. There are also issues like dealing with unions, pension funds, lawsuits and all the contractual fiscal and legal liabilities that go along with them. The city would now be involved in those critical issues as well.

We have again offered Pompano Beach city officials the best, fully accredited law enforcement system in the nation, one that they admittedly have been satisfied with over the last 10 years of BSO service to the community. They might very well refuse our offer again next Tuesday and settle for less than mediocre in public safety for the residents of Pompano Beach. It is a potentially dangerous scenario. Please remember that the first obligation of government as outlined in our Constitution is “to insure domestic tranquility.” You owe it to yourself and to your family to get involved.