The following article is a highlight submitted to the mailroom and presented by reader/contributor “Ackbarsays” Such a great job was done in presentation that we’ll just present it as it was submitted, including commentary by Ackbarsays, and you can determine for yourself the agenda at play.   This example cuts to many of the central issues surrounding stories you are seeing under current headlines.

Ackbarsays (ABS) Writes: This article concerns Bethune Cookman University. You’ll remember them because a group of BCU students famously marched from downtown Daytona Beach to Sanford during the height of the whole Zimmerman lynch-fest last year.   This private university of less than 3600 students is asking (demanding?) they be allowed to establish their own police force, answerable to the school president rather than the local police chief. Note that they try to cover their real intentions by saying that this is about student safety (an “added layer of protection” from “violent shooters”).  I highlighted a few things and added a few notes:

DAYTONA BEACH — Bethune-Cookman University could have its own independent police force in about five months, an autonomous law enforcement agency that would report to the school’s president — not the city’s police chief.

That’s the hope of top B-CU officials who have been talking to city officials and working on a proposed agreement they would like city commissioners to vote on within the next month.

“As we looked across the country at the number of violent shooters, the Board of Trustees felt we needed an added layer of protection,” said Cheryl Lawson-Young, B-CU’s crime prevention and compliance manager.

But the idea will have to pass muster with city commissioners and top city officials, some of whom rejected the same idea two years ago over concerns with setting an improper precedent and liability for the city if it allowed the formation of a separate force of sworn officers in the middle of Daytona Beach.

Mayor Derrick Henry met with B-CU officials about the idea a few weeks ago, and he said he liked what he heard.  “I’m excited about the possibility,” he said. “We’d put up the necessary guidelines to protect the city. I think it would help us and the college.”

Who is Derrick Henry?

2010 – Daytona Beach City Commissioner Derrick Henry and his campaign manager, Genesis Robinson were each charged with a dozen felony counts related to absentee ballot fraud.

DAYTONA BEACH — City Commissioner Derrick Henry and his campaign manager were arrested this morning, charged with committing absentee ballot fraud during Henry’s 2010 re-election campaign.

The arrest of Henry and Genesis Robinson comes a little more than two months after Volusia County Supervisor of Elections Ann McFall requested an investigation into irregularities in absentee ballot requests coming into her office.  (link)  {snip – Now he’s the Mayor}

Daytona Beach Police Chief Mike Chitwood {who led the march to Sanford on his bicycle to the city limits and used uniformed motorcycle police to block off lanes of traffic on Daytona’s largest and busiest road for the very small number marching that day – all while there was a sidewalk the entire route of their march through the city… /ABS} declined to comment on the idea, and City Manager Jim Chisholm could not be reached for comment. Chisholm opposed the idea when it first came up.

B-CU’s proposal was modeled on the University of Miami’s 44-year-old agreement with Coral Gables. Back in the late 1960s, Coral Gables entered into an agreement with the private south Florida school to let the university set up its own police force at the university’s expense.

No other private Florida colleges have such an agreement, city and B-CU officials say, but state law allows public universities to establish their own police forces without asking anyone’s permission.

{public universities – 30,000+ students and the size of small cities. BCU – 3600 students and the size of a large high school….. /ABS}

The idea now for B-CU is to form a partnership with the city that would make the campus officers an autonomous, self-supporting division of the Daytona Beach Police Department. The new force could save the city money and free up Daytona Beach police officers who respond to incidents on campus hundreds of times a year, college officials say. The arrangement would also allow campus police to make full arrests immediately, rather than only restraining suspects until police arrive as they do now.

“It gives us a little more control over what we do here in terms of policing,” said B-CU President Edison Jackson. “It is a good proposal. I’m certainly in support of it.”

Jackson said it’s about keeping the school’s roughly 4,000 {3543 Fall Enrollment} students safe, and helping them to feel safer. He said the proposed agreement calls for using the same standards as the Daytona Beach Police Department, and putting liability fully on the shoulders of B-CU.

Jackson said the idea is being suggested again because “there’s a new spirit of cooperation” between the city and college.

{ostensibly because the new mayor will support anything that BCU suggests… /ABS}

Until early 2010, B-CU had private security guards who were mostly unarmed and working under contract. Now the school has armed security officers who are employees of B-CU. The private force includes officers who formerly worked for city police departments, and it has an organization that includes a chief and lower ranks.

The school’s uniformed security team includes 30 public service officers who are unarmed as well as 13 officers who are armed, Lawson-Young said. The officers patrol the main campus as well as the school’s nearby properties.

{Holy crap that’s a lot of officers for 3600 students! This school is a public nuisance!}

“They are the eyes and ears of the campus, 24-7, 365,” Lawson-Young said, explaining the officers routinely circulate both inside and outside buildings.

They can restrain and handcuff someone if they’re a harm to themselves or others, she said. But the campus officers do not arrest anyone, they have no facility in which to hold someone and they can’t transport them to jail, she said.

{ So, we’re talking about much more than a police force. They want a holding facility too – more jobs and MONEY! ….. /ABS}

They use police radios, and call Daytona Beach police for help when it’s needed, she said.

Campus officers also can’t process a crime scene, and they only guard the area, she said.

If commissioners agree to the proposed new partnership, all that would change. B-CU officers would be granted all the powers of Daytona Beach officers, but the difference is they would be limited to campus properties unless requested to assist off campus, Lawson-Young said.

The chief of the current B-CU security force, Mel Williams, sent a letter to city commissioners this week that outlined how the city could benefit from the arrangement.

In 2012, Daytona Beach officers responded to about 340 calls for service at B-CU properties, Williams wrote in the letter. If campus officers could have handled those calls, it would have freed up Daytona officers to concentrate on other things around the city, he said.

BCU Brawl Home Video 092909 STUDENT RECORDS VIDEO OF SCENE Watch Raw Video (explicit) | See Images

Williams said he didn’t compile the work hours Daytona police devoted to his campus or the financial impact to the city. But he did point out that allowing his security force to become a department of sworn police officers was a value of nearly $464,000 annually to the city.

That’s the amount the city would have to spend to hire 13 new officers — the same number of officers the university has now as armed guards — at the Daytona Police Department’s base salary of $35,673. The tally doesn’t include benefits.

{This implies that if this deal isn’t agreed to, the Daytona Beach PD will have to go out and hire 13 new officers. That’s not the case. Those officers respond to the calls at BCU as part of their normal duties in addition to policing the rest of the city. It’s not like DBPD is going to fire 13 people if this deal happens…. /ABS}

The new proposal is very similar to the idea city officials wound up killing two years ago, Lawson-Young said. She said a draft of the new proposal has been volleyed between B-CU and the city’s legal department, but City Attorney Marie Hartman said this week the only thing she’s seen recently is a Feb. 21 letter from B-CU informing her the college wants to renew the idea.

The campus officers would be employees of B-CU, which would pay for their salaries and benefits as well as all training, vehicles and equipment. The city Police Department would vet people applying for positions on the new police force, but Williams would be in charge of hiring and firing, Lawson-Young said.

Under the current draft proposal, Williams would answer to (BCU president) Jackson, not (Daytona police chief) Chitwood, she said. 

But written reports would wind up at the Daytona Beach Police Department, she said.

{Williams makes decisions based on marketing, so it seems obvious that the number of reported arrests and violent incidents would go WAY down under this plan…. /ABS}.

“There’d be no blindsiding,” she said.

Another provision of the proposal calls for Daytona officers needing to let the college know if they wanted to come on campus, she said

{How does this enhance student safety? If there’s a violent shooter, does DBPD have to wait until someone at BCU calls and requests assistance from them before they can enter the campus? Does the BCU police force want to set up their own SWAT team to deal with this kind of crisis? MORE MONEY!…. /ABS}

In addition to the mayor, Lawson-Young said she and other school officials have met with three of the six city commissioners so far, giving each of them a full briefing.

City Commissioner Carl Lentz met last week with B-CU leaders on the proposal, and he said he’s the one who suggested the college do the cost-benefit analysis that Williams compiled. Lentz said he’s not ready to say if he’d support the idea, but he said he’d be interested in a deal that would at least maintain the same level of service and save the city money.

City Commissioner Rob Gilliland has not met with college officials on the matter yet, and he said he’d like to review the proposal before he does. He said he has concerns about liability and campus police pursuits spilling over into other parts of the city.

“I think there is a deal to be struck, but not exactly like Coral Gables’ agreement,” Gilliland said.

But before any deals are signed, Gilliland said he wants to slow down, study the idea and have public discussions. B-CU wants a new police force fully operational by the fall semester   {why so fast?},   but Gilliland doesn’t see a way for that to happen until 2014.

City Commissioner Pam Woods said B-CU could try to go the route that public universities did in Florida years ago, winning enabling legislation at the state capitol that allows them to set up their own police forces.

But Lawson-Young said the university isn’t interested in pursuing legislation in Tallahassee to try to set up the private police force, nor is the school interested in only using Daytona Beach police officers when they’re off duty from the city force.

{Why? Why pay for training new officers when they could use officers who are already trained? Because they only want “their people” to do the policing?}

But the university would consider making the deal a pilot program of three to five years, she said.  (full article link)

{why does the university feel that they can dictate the terms of the “deal” to the city?}