Hallandale Beach, FL — One Florida city of 40,000 residents is without a SWAT team this week after all eleven members of their previous team resigned at once.
On June 9th, the team submitted their resignations in a now-public memo. The memo states that the team was “minimally equipped, under trained and often times restrained by the politicization of our tactics…”
Their letter went on to say, “The City Administration has shown a clear disdain for our agency.”
They specifically mentioned Vice-Mayor Sabrina Javellana, saying, “She has actively protested against us,” they noted.” She has shown that she takes pleasure in besmirching the hard work and dedication of the members of this professional agency, having the gall to compare us to the Minneapolis Police Department.”
It wasn’t just Javellana’s statements, but the fact that other command staff in the Hallandale Police Department ‘took a knee’ “in solidarity with Vice-Mayor Javellana… and a handful of political activists.”
City Managers Are The New HOA
Like all city managers, Hallandale’s City Manager Greg Chavarra was quick to reassure residents that they would still have SWAT team coverage — just from the surrounding cities.
He didn’t mention how much longer the response time would be, but then, city managers don’t like to talk about things like that.
Chavarra clarified that the SWAT team had resigned their assignment to that specific team, but not from the police force entirely.
Chavarra said, “The City of Hallandale Beach continues to have special weapons and tactics coverage through regional mutual aid, which the City has used for SWAT operations in the past. While the voluntary resignation of our officers from this assignment is unfortunate, our residents should be assured it has not had any impact on our commitment to protecting their safety. Also, while these officers have resigned from the SWAT Team, they have not resigned from the Department.”
Their Own George Floyd
The City of Hallandale Beach sits only 20 miles from Miami. It’s in the southern tip of Florida and is far from a ‘sleepy little town.’ In 2014, the Hallandale Beach SWAT team killed 34-year-old Howard Bowe as he stood, unarmed, in his kitchen. Officers, who were executing a pre-dawn search warrant as part of a drug investigation, also killed his dog.
But their overly-militarized SWAT team didn’t appear in a vacuum. Your odds of being a victim of a crime while living in Hallandale Beach are one to 26.
It’s Not An Either-Or Situation
Unfortunately, the media has broken the conversation about the abuse of power in police departments. They’ve intentionally divided Americans into only two camps: the cops can do no wrong and must not be questioned….or every cop is a racist and we need to dismantle the police.
This scenario of having only two options doesn’t help anything — and only opens the door wide for criminals to act without restraint. More and more good cops are going to quit if this is the scenario they’re supposed to work with. After all, nobody wants to be punished for the crimes or mistakes of others — including cops.