Issue link: https://newsleader.uberflip.com/i/144898
Sarasota News Leader July 19, 2013 Page 35 The new Office of Professional Standards will be run by veteran SPD Capt. Lucius Bonner. It will be home to the department's numerous volunteers, as well as the Crime Prevention Unit, the accreditation team, a planning and research section, and Internal Affairs. It also will be responsible for the Citizens Police Academy, which begins July 31. The department's first female captain — Corrine Stannish — is running the Bureau of Support Services, replacing the retired Capt. Jeff Carr on July 12. She will be in charge of records, training, the property and evidence unit, red-light cameras, special events, alarm enforcement and recruiting. The last is a critical function, because in five years, half of the serving officers will be retired. The fourth new organization is the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, run by 28-year-veteran Det. Pat Ledwith. He is in charge of 24 sworn officers, including 17 detectives along with crime-scene technicians. His bureau is divided into four units — Crimes Against Property as well as those against persons and children, and the Vice/Narcotics Squad. Chief Bernadette DiPino. Photo by Norman Schimmel WAIT, THERE IS MORE … Chief DiPino opened her presentation to the commission with a list of accomplishments. She has hired a deputy chief and a civilian public information officer, for example. In another organizational rearrangement, the Intelligence Unit now reports to the Office of the The Police Department has embarked upon Chief. a so-called High Point (NC) strategy of crime reduction, arresting serious criminals and Every sworn officer will receive 80 hours of "high-liability training per year," she said. That threatening second-tier offenders with prisis a response to an analysis undertaken earlion unless they promise to go straight. As The er this year by former SPD Chief John Lewis, Sarasota News Leader has reported, the strat- indicating the force had nearly zero training egy has begun. Ledwith says the second-tier over the past two years. effort, using the carrot of deferred prosecu- After Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight tion, is just getting under way. dropped his school resource officers stationed