The Leon County Sheriff’s Office is preparing the second edition of its Anatomy of a Homicide project. The report will look into local gun-violence incidents from 2021 through the end of this year. Sheriff Walt McNeil says the report serves as an important tool to understand who commits crime in our community and how to stop them before they start.
McNeil says Leon County averages 20 to 30 shootings a year.
“Those youth who come from broken families, the youth who don’t have a father in the household. The mother is a single parent who’s trying to work two or three jobs," McNeil said. "The kids are kids who’ve been kicked out of school, expelled from school. Those are the groups of kids in our community who are most likely going to go into a life of crime.”
The first Anatomy of a Homicide report, released in 2020, reviewed 141 homicides. The data showed most victims and offenders were 15 to 24 years of age. Seventy-five percent of victims and 81 percent of perpetrators were Black. The majority of homicide offenders surveyed had been suspended or expelled from school and most had been arrested for the first time before age 18.
“And so, there’s a four-year – I looked at it, a four- or five-year interval, then the next generation of kids," he said. "We arrest them. We’re sending a lot of kids to prison, but that’s not solving the problem. That’s why prison isn’t the answer. The answer is to work on the front end, so we don’t have these issues that continue through the life cycle of families.”
McNeil believes data can help guide law-enforcement agencies on where to start that work. That’s why he’s got research experts combing through data on local gun-violence incidents. Sara Bourdeau, the executive director of LCSO’s research division, says the data from the first project is old now, and it’s important to operate based on the most relevant and recent information.
“That’s important for us as a law-enforcement agency because everybody looks to law enforcement to solve crime," said Bourdeau. "You first have to understand crime before you can solve anything, before you can prevent anything, before you can reduce anything.”
Dixie Rocker is the LCSO research and planning administrator. She says her office also wants to know the context of the incidents: Was it gang-related or a drug sale? Where did it take place?
“Who was involved?" she asked. "How many suspects per incident? What demographic was that? What kind of victims were we looking at? What was the motive or the relationship between the victim and the offender? Was this a domestic situation? Was this road rage? Is this – crimes that are occurring during the commission of other crimes?”
McNeil says this research team helps his agency develop policy.
“They came back and said, ‘Yes. These are the things we should focus on in our community.' And we’ve been really excited about the fact that Florida State University has come alongside us," said McNeil. "And each and every day that we do these things, they analyze that, they go back and do research, and in a year’s worth of time, they’ll come back and say, you should tweak this or tweak that because that wasn’t as effective as you thought it should be.”
McNeil also stresses the role of the Council on the Status of Men and Boys, which collaborates with both law enforcement and community to reduce gun violence.
Royle King is the council’s executive director. The council works with at-risk young males to try to help them break away from the culture of gun violence.
“Sometimes, those individuals we can’t save, they have siblings who are growing up in these spaces, too," King said. "And so, if we can prevent or intervene before they get involved, then that’s a success in itself, too.”
McNeil says the Leon County Sheriff’s Office offers at-risk young people a choice. One option is that LCSO will help them find alternatives and try to change their lives. But if they stay engaged in crime, they’ll be targeted for arrest.
McNeil believes it’s the best way for the community to turn around the culture of gun violence.
