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- eric_winstrom_segmen-og8TxqgRj: Welcome back. I'm Rick Altson. This is Rick's Blog Live. The month of July has really been I don't know if the word saturated, but we've dealt with a lot coming out of the Fourth of July shooting in downtown Pensacola. we've it we're moving towards a conclusion and now prosecution of of those cases. And we've got with this Pensacola Police Chief Eric Windstrom. Eric, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, Rick. I know it's In an active investigation, there are limitations on what you can talk about, but give us the best update you can give us on this case. And really we're moving, you know, very much past the investigation, say now moving to the to the court phase. And so you want to make sure that it that those individuals who have been charged, you know, they're entitled to to a fair trial. And I don't wanna don't wanna corrupt that at all, but the detectives did an excellent job. as you said, July is is for the police department a very busy summer as it as it is. This incident that happened July fifth with seven people shot is the the most individual shot that I I think my entire team said in the city of Pensacola. I said, have have we had a mass shooting like this in in the city? You know, what's our experience been? And just about every single person said this is the most they've seen. There's a officer who relocated from Baltimore, he seems certainly I supervised a scene with thirteen individuals shot in the city of Chicago and unfortunately the city of Chicago was was numb to that so much so that I can remember just a day or two after that incident that that I supervised, it was already out of the newspaper, off off you know, the blogs and and and media coverage. That's a sad thing when a city is so numb to to to violence that it's just like any any other day when when that many people are shot. So we're not numb to violence. We never want to be numb to violence. A very sad incident. With two individuals now ha have been been lives have been taken. one obviously by by gunfire of someone else, one by a choice o of their own, but tragic nonetheless, families torn apart, very sad, and I hope it's nothing that the the city experiences. But by way of update, you know, the we met with the prosecutor's office as as recently as last week to to tidy up things and to make sure that they have From our investigative team, all the information that they need moving forward. There's a ton of evidence involved. So finishing and process processing that evidence, making sure they have all the technological evidences. You know, an individual who gets arrested might have a phone on them, and that phone might have more information on just that small device than dozens of computers 20 years ago. So a lot to work through. And hopefully, if nothing else, we're getting the answers for for the families of of those involved to. not make sense of this, but the most difficult thing that I've heard from a a lot of individuals who's who've had loved ones taken from them, especially from gun violence, they want to know what happened. And it's not gonna bring the person back, but it brings some level of comfort, some level of of ability to to start a healing process, whatever's available, and so getting those answers is a is one of our primary objectives as well, obviously is is justice for those who need to be held accountable. I mean it seems just based on the police reports and the in our conversations and and the press conferences that it was a very as you can imagine it's a very it was a very tight area. Seems that a lot of chaos that was going on and that and and I was talking to s to another group of reporters about it from out of town and I said, you understand, it's not like the movies where when someone sho shoots a gun they know exact they're gonna hit all the people they wanna hit. It's it's not it's not an organized shot field at all. And everyone's everyone's a potential target. You see those those old Western bar scenes where the two people standing across and and you know who's gonna shoot who and where those bullets are are generally or John Wick walking John Wick walking through a huge auditorium and hitting everybody before they exactly right. And unfortunate in real life with the chaos with that many people around, with individuals who probably aren't aren't trained at operating handguns and in in this case we had individuals that were shot by their own friends, you know, people running and and shooting while not even r really appearing to look where they're shooting. So an incredibly dangerous situation, obviously a tr tragic ending, but as you said, the chaos in a scene like that with that many people in one place that's a night. yeah. Alcohol involved with some alcohol. you know, without the sun shining. And that many young people around it really is a recipe for tragedy and unfortunately that's happened. I am thankful that that more people weren't weren't hit as that's a real possibility that could have happened, but but still it's a little comfort to PJ Shepherd's family, for to Trevon Bradley's family. So very dark day for for the city and I hope hope nothing we ever have to deal with again. Right. Yeah, just we've got just a few minutes before we break for commercial, but just the you know, just We talked last time about it and you've and you've done it at the press conferences too is you know, the steps to an investigation like this, just you know, without hurting the prosecution or anything. Talk about just the steps that that y'all had to go through here. Well that I think the the the the beginning which made it not easy because this was not an easy, it's still it's a very complex investigation, but Something that we probably wouldn't have 20 or 30 years ago is that video which was released by the by the state's attorney's office at a bond hearing that you see it's grainy, it's taken from a distance, it's black and white, but it at least begins to tell the story. And once we understand that a lot of the individuals involved were were riding that line of are they a victim, are they an offender? Are they somewhat of both? You can see the resistance the police face in approaching an individual hit by gunfire. You're gonna ask them, hey, Tell us what happened and they refuse. Well, when when that that that's a big step obstacle to overcome, and so that video helped us out immensely. The forensic evidence, the shell casings certainly tell a story. And then I really have to give it to the community who stepped up, all the businesses in the area, anyone who really wasn't involved in this, who was on scene, was willing to talk to the police, share what they saw. That started filling in those gaps and then even even towards you know a a week or so ago when we were asking the community for help identifying one final individual who was likely you know an alleged shooter in this, the community again stepped up, we put pictures out and and almost instantaneally we we we had feedback, individuals saying, I believe this is the person you're looking for, and we were able to to put the final pieces to this puzzle together. You know, in talking to the business owners and the business managers downtown, they feel very confident in how the Pennscoat police have handled it. that that it it's not I guess the sense returned to normalcy but but there was a tremendous amount of trust in how y'all were handling it. And I think there was a huge sense of of the businesses, let's do what we can to help so we could could pre prevent this from happening again. And we felt that. We felt that when we were the the morning after when we were going door to door canvassing the area and the The the days after when businesses were coming, in individuals that were on vacation coming back so they could access the hard drive of of their surveillance system, et cetera. Everybody was stepping up. That made a a huge difference. And I think I'm glad that they're comfortable with with our response. I think they should expect that. They want to know that that that area of Pensacola, and I want to say the whole city of Pensacola is not the place that is going to tolerate violence. And if there is is some some evil act like this, you can guarantee that the Pensacola Police Department's gonna step up, take all the steps, be very professional. We're gonna follow through, we're gonna hold people accountable. All right, let's let's go ahead. When we come back, let's I want to talk a little bit about your first hundred days. Great. Here, we'll move on from from this instance. We'll take a break, pay a few bills, we'll be right back with Rick's blog live. Welcome back. I'm Rick Altson. This is Rick's Blog Live. We've got with us Pensacola Police Chief Eric Winstrom. Chief, you know, you have, what, five months? Yeah, about five months coming up a few days. On the job. What has surprised you about the Pensacola Police Department? I'm I I won't say it it surprised me. Well, I'll just I I'll admit the the level of warm welcome that I got internally in the police department. I know that there was a very good internal candidate. There was a candidate from another part of the state that that applied to be in this in this job and police are skeptical, police are scynical just from what we see on a day to day basis. And to have an outsider come in, I've done this before. Right. I knew that there was I was gonna be met with some resistance, but so I didn't expect the level of of of welcoming that that I found, including, you know, Captain Goss is a excellent police officer. his his grandfather was chief of police, I think for maybe the longest chief of police we've ever had here, back in the 80s, eighteen years he did. He loves this police department very much and and he was one of the individuals that that put in for the job, I think just because he cared so much about making sure that there was a good steward for a police department that he cared about so much. And I w was thinking, you know, I might show up and I might get the cold shoulder. He one of the most welcoming, supportive individuals and the whole police department has been like that. So I was a little bit surprised by how how easy the transition it was and how everybody was, all right, the new chiefs here, what are what are the marching orders? What are we gonna do? And let let's get at it. Let's get to it. So well, you know, you've done this before, Grand Rapids. You were you were an outsider coming in. there you looked at remember you talked about you really looked at the use of force policy that Grand Rapids was using. You made changes to it. It still may be early and you've had to deal with a lot of I don't mean to laugh, but you've dealt with a lot of big instances in a very short period of time. are you looking at policies here that you'd like to refine? We a and you know, we we already we touched around the edges a little bit on on some of the things so far. And certainly there are some big ticket items we want to talk about. We want to talk about curfews, which is which is a big topic of conversation, which we can talk about. talking about use of force is as recently as about an hour before I came here. with with the leadership in the in the police department. So I don't think that we're gonna get to a place where all right, I'm done, here's it. We're always gonna be looking to get better. And so all those things were on the table. I communicated with our training division yesterday about bringing in possibly some different instructors for use of force because there's there's new ideas, new changes in our profession on a regular basis. And we wanna be a leader. We don't want to be catching up with some other police department in the region or or in the country. We wanna know know that We're the gold standard of policing. So always looking at things. Our pursuit policy is something that we've changed since I've been here, where officers know that it's a balance of of chasing vehicles because that's inherently dangerous. But we also want to make sure that they have enough tools so that criminals don't become emboldened thinking the police will never change chase me. So always looking to do better, always looking I I was the commanding officer of policy and procedure in in Chicago for about I know, fifteen months or so, maybe a little more. I love police policy, I'm a little bit nerdy in in that way and still have a lot of contacts across the country, always looking to say, what can we do better? How are you man-wise, you know, the ma the the workforce? Are you still looking for officers? What where how many positions you have? Still looking for I believe our our application system might be open right now. However, if no one retired over the next, you know, few c over the next year, we'd be good. We're we're at you know, filled our vacancies. We've got seven in training right now. Those count for the seven vacancies, but we know that there's gonna be retirement, big, big police department. There's always gonna be somebody hitting that that twenty, twenty-five, thirty year mark that wants to move on to something else or or just retire altogether. And so we know that we we can't keep our foot off the gas and make sure that we can both keep an eye on making sure we're a good steward of city money as you know, a lot of unknown uncertainties, looking forward property tax changes and everything, but knowing that we have to to provide a a safe environment and that includes filling those vacancies and we're doing well. You know, Grand Rapids is bigger population wise than the city of Pensacola. But but what are some of the similarities in the two cities and some of the differences? Well I'll tell you one of the interesting similarities that I found is Grand Rapids is the is the second biggest city in Michigan, a couple 200,000 plus people. but it's on the west side of the state. It's far away from Detroit. And it's really this the hub of that region. And whereas Pensacola is a smaller city. But when you're talking West Florida, when you talk in this area, the panhandle, you know, I'm friends now with the Panama City Chief, and you call him up and talk to him. It's a long drive out there. The area, you know, Pensacola really is. Well, let me put it this way if you're looking to go to a good restaurant. You're going into Pentacle. You look you want something to do, you're coming to Pensacola. You want to go see a Wahoo's game, you want to there's so much happening in here. We really are the central hub of this re region. So even though it's a little bit smaller of a city, it still kind of has a feeling of, yeah, we're not you know, we're not a city of the size of Chicago, but we have a much oversized influence for the population that we have here. So I recognize how important this city is. as far as as far as differences. One thing that it talking to my leadership team, you know, in northern cities when it comes to December, January, February, that's usually the time that the police departments often catch their breath. They focus a lot more on training because crime statistically drops a lot. Let go over to the clear inside. That's it. And it's not I mean it's it drops significantly so much that your violent crime may right might drop fifty plus percent. And you know those are the times that a lot of officers want to take vacations and you can do that. So It's a a different look here when I realize that this is gonna be active all the way through. There is not, you know, a season where everyone hides inside. Maybe there's a day or two if if we catch a a snowstorm or an ice storm or something, but generally speaking, that doesn't happen here. So it's a little bit different of of how you view it. You have to spread out all the training, spread out, you know, everybody's vacation, et cetera. So it's something different that I'm one of the positives about being here. One thing, what can we expect from the Pensacola Police Department over the for the rest of the year? What what do you we've moved past this crisis. Now we're what's next? Well I mentioned seven individuals that were well hopefully that's it for crisis crises. Right. Right? That's what we want. we've got a lot of discussions to do. We've got a budget coming up. we're gonna be fine. We have a very supportive city, a very supportive city government. elected officials which is wonderful, it puts us in a great position, but we've got a a lot of unknown as far as the the budget moving forward. We know that if that the property tax changes happen, that that's going to impact the fire department. It's gonna impact the police department. We always want to make sure we're being as efficient as possible, but that's one of the things that we're gonna be looking at, efficiencies. Is there some way that we can, you know, tighten our belt for for lack of a better word and and do things better. And we're always looking at that. as far as changes for the future, I mentioned the seven individuals who we've got in training right now that are gonna fill those vacancies. In a police department this side, when you've got seven vacancies, you know we've got a dis detective spot that's unfilled. We've got a a vice narcotic spot that that's unfilled right now. we've got a traffic unit that's overextended because we have so many complaints about speeders. Just those seven individuals are gonna make a difference. People that live in Pensacola are gonna see the level of customer service. is gonna go up. I just responded to an email complaint about speeders on on a street on the north side of town today and it and my message really is help is on the way. we're gonna get there. And fast forward a few months here, I think you're gonna see our reputation as giving excellent customer service is is gonna just keep getting better. Well great. Chief, thank you so much for doing this again. Of course we'll we'll make this a monthly deal because I I enjoyed the cover I like the coffee. We'll go ahead and break we'll be right back. Rick's blog live.