Fighting Crime 9-1-1 Brevard Sheriff Wayne Ivey

The 9-1-1 Communications Center in Brevard County is the center of communications that keeps Brevard County citizens safe and law enforcement together with first responders on track to save lives. 

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey is back on the Great American Senior Show with inside information about the importance of the 9-1-1 Center and what it takes to be a 9-1-1 member of his law enforcement team.

Sheriff Ivey also comments on the mass shooting of school children in Uvalde, Texas and how that relates to the training his entire Sheriff's team relies upon to save the lives of every man, woman and child in Brevard County.

This is information that may save your life. And that of the law enforcement officers who respond to critical incidents. Please share. 

Transcript

Sam Yates: 0:11

Hello, everyone and welcome to another exciting edition of The Great American Senior Show. I'm your grey haired host, Sam Yates. And today one of America's best known sheriffs and number one crime fighter is back with us, Sheriff Wayne Ivey. Sheriff. Welcome back to the program. Thanks,

Sheriff Wayne Ivey: 0:26

Sam. Thanks for having me back. My friend, always great to be with you. And as I've said many times before, we appreciate the partnership that we have with you and how you share all the information and education and awareness that we need to get to our seniors. It's my

Sam Yates: 0:39

honor to do that. And one of the way that seniors and anyone in the Brevard County area can reach out to law enforcement in general is 911. Tell us how the 911 Center operates and is staffed and why is it so important?

Sheriff Wayne Ivey: 0:54

Yeah. So you know, if you've ever sat back and looked at your washing machine and spin cycle, that's what our telecommunication center looks like the men and women that work in there are truly the most dedicated law enforcement officers you'll ever see. They are what we call the lifeline. They are the lifeline to our our deputies, as they respond to calls and things that are also the lifeline to our citizens who are calling and asking for help or needing information. And so they serve a dual role of protecting our team and protecting our citizens. You know, the worst thing you can do in a calm center, and also at the booking desk of the jail, by the way, I'll say is to walk in and say, Man, it sounds quiet tonight, they will throw stuff at you. You Jinx them as soon as you use the key word. So we try not do that in here. But you know, it goes just like you might imagine some some at some points, you're sitting there with, you know, two calls on the screen. Others you have 40 calls on the screen. And the those those individuals have an ability to multitask, like nothing you've ever seen. They have ability to recognize stress. You know, literally I can tell you from my days in patrol, which were long, long ago, as you might imagine, but from my days in patrol, you always worked with the same rotation. And the comm Center team could literally hear stress in your voice. And as such, figure out what they needed to do, do they need to send you back up? Did they need to do this or that. And it may not be something you said as much as how you said it. And so they're amazing people, they they serve an amazing purpose for us. They're they're getting calls of anything from there's a turtle crossing the road to my my son or daughter just hung themselves. They're getting calls from anything from a traffic, tragic automobile accident to somebody just stole a lawn chair out of my yard. Those dynamics come and they come in minutes.

Sam Yates: 3:09

Yep. And you know, I personally want to say one of the reasons I want to focus sometimes on areas that are not necessarily immediate crime prevention, of course, the 911 COMM center is, but they are doing an important job. And I think with education to our public, they can appreciate it more.

Sheriff Wayne Ivey: 3:27

Yeah. Oh, and there's no doubt, you know, one of the things that makes me cringe as, as an agency head is when I see other agency heads, talk about a unit. And you know, we're talking about the comm center. So we'll just use that, for example. And say, you know, they, they support our mission. Listen at the Brevard County Sheriff's Office, we don't have support units, every one of them is vital to our success. I don't care if it's our comm Center, our corrections, our patrol deputies, the person that makes our computers turn on or the person that makes sure we're recruiting the best of the best. Every one of them is vital to our success. And if you take one of them out, we're not the great agency we are. So when you start looking at that and you look at the role that comm center plays it's stressful man. It really is there. They know they're responsible for lives in there. And they are they are going Mach two with their hair on fire. They're getting multiple calls, having to calm people down, having to reassure people having to talk people through how to deploy Narcan. I mean, it just the range of things they deal with is unimaginable and they're their heroes, every single one of our heroes.

Sam Yates: 4:36

One of the things that stands out to me for our audience is when you meet Sheriff Wayne Ivey, you meet an individual who is really an honest, genuine person and some of the things in the way he's saying them to me now give me goosebumps because that's the same way he said and what he believes in his department and his people as that whole. So, I just want to stress that that you know, sometimes you You get lip service from people not so here, this is a genuine, you know,

Sheriff Wayne Ivey: 5:05

I'm telling you, I I'm honored, I get to wear the same uniform as these brave men and women. And granted, mine's a little bit bigger. You know, I think that's my thyroid, Sam. But, you know, it's, you see this amazing work, and you also see how they come off of it, you know, and I'll give you an example. And I've learned a lot as, as I've you know, been sheriff and everyday I learned something. But a few years ago, we had one of our deputies that was tragically killed in a car accident. And we, we got to the scene and of course, we're dealing with his squad and we're dealing with his family and, and, you know, dealing with it ourselves, processing it, you know, ourselves as command and everything else. And it was brought to our attention, has anybody been to talk to the comm center because those in the comm center where we're trying to get that young man every ounce of help they could get him and I'm sure that they felt helpless at times to be able to help Kevin and man and what a smack in the face it was to me that we hadn't thought to do that. Thankfully, somebody did and we were able to go talk to them and sit with them and, and, and deal with it. Fast forward. We had a couple of our deputies that were involved in a an unbelievable assault by an individual with a with the rifle. They survived. But lesson learned, one of my first things was to the comm center. Everybody, okay? How you know you guys handled it perfectly. You saved lives, everything. So you know, we we look at those things, and we try and learn from them. But those men and women in there, they are truly what our deputies are depending on out there. And they're what our citizens are depending on

Sam Yates: 6:54

one of the things that you are doing not just here in Brevard County, but statewide is helping with the training, the philosophies, the the core values of law enforcement all over our entire state. Thanks to our our Governor Ron DeSantis. When you and I chat, I know there's never anything that's off limits Uvalde, the law enforcement response there in many ways people are not satisfied. What are your thoughts?

Sheriff Wayne Ivey: 7:25

So I say that I'll answer that in two parts. The first part is I don't I don't know everything that happened out there. I haven't seen the very specific particulars of what happened. I've seen what I've what I've seen on the media like anybody else I haven't through any bad channels or anything, see anything else. But with that said, I don't know exactly what happened. Now, the second part of that answer would be if what we have seen is is accurate in any way. The ball was dropped, lives were lost because of inaction. And in in when Columbine happened in 1999, prior to Columbine law enforcement approach to an active shooter was to arrive, wait for significant other units to arrive. And then to go in. And that that mindset that design was designed to protect the officer that was responding. When Columbine happened. And they did that we realized that we needed to change that dynamic that we needed to go to a dynamic approach of saving a child's life saving somebody in the malls life. And so from 1999 on the training drastically change to the first person that gets here goes in, tries to locate, identify and neutralize our eliminate the threat. As others come in, they stack and you know, we get the subject down. Using that idea using that strategy using that technique. You've already didn't do that they did just the opposite. And they had they had someone that was telling them what to do. That was giving them the bad strategy. Unfortunately, they adapted to that strategy and lives were lost. And so if what we've seen at this point is 50% accurate, lives were lost. Our deputies here are trained. If you're on that campus, you are flying Mach two with your hair on fire to get to that shooter as fast as you possibly can. Nothing's gonna stop us not a door, not a window, not anything else. We're going through it as others are arriving on that scene. They are flooding that school and we are going to get to that threat and put it down. You have strategies you have training you function and work and all of that. Until that moment happens. Courage is not tested. And so one of the things that helps with with courage is having proper training, having proper awareness of what's going to take place, having confidence that you're going to be able to survive this. And if you go back to one of my leadership mentors, George Patton, I've read everything about him, I would love to have met him as well. But if you go back and you look at pattern pattern says, even a bad plan, violently executed is better than no plan at all. And so you know, the plan is get in there and meet violence with violence. If you don't meet violence with violence, you'll be violently

Sam Yates: 10:35

sure if I want to thank you for touching on what too many would be a taboo topic, because I think it's important for our residents to know part of your philosophy that you have instilled with your staff throughout the entire organization, and also that you are now helping to cheer throughout all of our state's law enforcement. So thank you for answering

Sheriff Wayne Ivey: 10:59

my my pleasure, I will tell you this to where Sun Su says in the art of war, that every battle is won or lost before it's ever fought. Part of the problem that these these shooters are doing is they're going to gun free zones. And we, we need to do away with gun free zones. We need to create zones specially in our schools, that if you bring that crap in here, we shoot you and put a stop to it. Our school resource deputies are getting into rollout this new year. They're gonna have a different approach. They're gonna have a different look. And my goal is to win the battle before.

Sam Yates: 11:37

Is that a topic we can talk about in the future? Absolutely. All right. That means ladies and gentlemen, that Sheriff IBW just without absolutely asking the question who said he will be back for another episode? Absolutely anytime. Alright, until our next episode, Sheriff, thank you for being here. And I remain your gray haired host of The Great American senior show Sam Yates and that's the way our program is

Sheriff Wayne Ivey: 12:03

Excellent.