Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
How a small town is leaving Broward Sheriff ’s Office to start its own police force
PEMBROKE PARK — The 6,000-person town of Pembroke Park is a tiny community with big goals — laying the groundwork to create its own police department within the next five months.
The 1.6 mile-long community, nestled between Hollywood and the Miami-Dade County boundary line, has grown dissatisfied with the Broward Sheriff ’s Office’s police services. The rift is primarily about money, but also from the town complaining it largely doesn’t see deputies there unless an emergency happens.
Now, the town is setting out on its own for police services, planning to beat the sheriff ’s annual price tag of $3.3 million while keeping its cops in town. It has hired a police chief and plans to recruit police officers to make the switch. Rob Raymond, owner of Dr’s Toy Store, a medical equipment store, is among those eager for the change.
“You know what the truth is? When you have your own personal police, you get to know them,” said Raymond, who said his building has been vandalized with swastikas twice in the past three weeks. “They’ll respond differently, they’ll give you more service, you’ll get more attention.”
Small town, big business
Pembroke Park is mostly known for its sea of mobile home communities, most of whom pay little to no property taxes because of homestead exemptions. It has 6,104 full-time residents, and in the winter that explodes to 14,000 to 15,000, the overwhelming majority of them French Canadian snowbirds.
To pay the bills, including police costs, the town’s bread-and-butter has been its large businesses. Its slogan is “the small town that means big business.” That includes a Coca-Cola distribution plant and the WPLG-Ch. 10 broadcasting station. The latest addition will be an Amazon delivery station that’s expected to open this summer.
The town, incorporated in the 1950s, has long wrangled with the best approach for fighting crime. The town once had its own agency, the Pembroke Park Police
Department, but dismantled that in the fall of 1980 after then-Broward Sheriff Bob Butterworth promised to do the same job for $250,000 a year — down from $400,000 the town had shelled out the year before, according to newspaper accounts at the time.
Through the years, facing an ever-growing bill, Pembroke Park has tried to trim its law enforcement expenses.
In 2012, it unsuccessfully tried to convince the Sheriff ’s Office substation to move to Town Hall to save money. And in January 2020, the town filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff ’s Office claiming the charges to the town “significantly exceeded the cost to BSO” since 2014.
That suit, which seeks compensation of $630,000 plus interest, is still pending.
The town now shares its sheriff ’s deputies with the city of West Park, although West Park pays more for its share of services — at a price of $5.3 million — within the same contract.
When the town asked the Sheriff ’s Office to keep the district to itself and not share resources with West Park, the price tag would have been increased by about $2.1 million, said Pembroke Park Mayor Geoffrey Jacobs. Besides the money problem, he said he wants law enforcement to concentrate solely on the town.
“We’re not getting the service we’re paying for,” Jacobs said.
The town’s most egregious crimes remain low, with no murders and one rape reported in the first six months of 2020. Still, it deals with common types of property crimes, reporting 69 larceny cases during the same period last year, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
“I’m not trying to bash BSO, especially the officers. I have respect for them, but it’s very frustrating,” said Jacobs, a former trooper for the Arizona Highway Patrol. “I want police officers to come by and say hi. There’s not that many of us. Sometimes there is no officer presence, and officer presence in itself deters crime.”
Breaking away
Including Pembroke Park, the Broward Sheriff ’s Office provides police services for 13 cities and towns, the unincorporated areas, as well as the courthouse, airport and Port Everglades.
But cities have periodically kicked around the idea of no longer contracting with the agency for police services, most noticeably there was a call in Parkland to break away after the agency’s failed response to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in 2018. But a consultant for Parkland suggested staying put, saying the agency would “make significant changes.”
Southwest Ranches was the most recent town to leave the agency in 2013, when the Sheriff ’s Office upped the contract by nearly a half-million dollars. It now receives police services from nearby Davie.
Pembroke Park said its departure also is now a done deal. While it no longer will use the Sheriff ’s Office for police services, it will keep Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue for fire services. A spokeswoman for the Sheriff ’s Office acknowledged the town’s decision.
“It was a pleasure serving the residents and visitors of Pembroke Park for so many years,” said the spokeswoman, Veda Coleman-Wright. “We certainly wish the town well during the transition period and success in the future.”
A new police force
Pembroke Park has hired David Howard as the interim police chief to build his own agency from scratch, aiming to create the department by Aug. 1. Howard, who oversaw hundreds of medics while serving in the U.S. Air Force, is a former lieutenant for the West Palm Beach Police Department. Howard started the job in Pembroke Park in February at a salary of $115,000, records show.
The Pembroke Park Police Department will start off with a chief, one lieutenant, four sergeants, nine officers and two civilian support staff to start off.
More than $2.7 million is expected each year to keep the department running, most of it for an estimated $2.3 million for payroll, including overtime and benefits, according to records. The town estimates it will need $1.5 million in start-up costs for items such as uniforms and helmets, cars and radios, firearms and equipment such as body armor, sticks and shields. Officers would be equipped with body cameras.
At a recent commission meeting, Howard told town commissioners he was working on purchasing 18 police cars, which includes a spare, and police badges, and is in the process of transitioning out of the sheriff ’s radio services.
Howard told the town he would start recruiting “in the near future.” He said brand-new recruits out of the police academy would not be hired immediately, rather he wants “a different type” initially. At least two officers and a sergeant would be on every shift, and part-time and reserve officers would eventually be added.
Howard had retired from West Palm Beach Police in 2017 and crossed paths with the town’s mayor because they are both airline pilots. He was offered the job and agreed because “I was looking for a challenge.”
Howard said the undertaking was “huge” and his biggest challenge would be “finding the right people. They have to be a special customer-service type police officer.”
“It’s kind of neat,” he said of his mission to create a department that will offer a “superior” level of service for the residents.