The Gainesville Police Department and the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office have been arresting more juveniles for first-time misdemeanor offenses rather than issuing citations.
The changing pattern stems from the decreased frequency of youth dialogue meetings and difficulties in supporting at-risk youth programs, according to over a dozen interviews with community leaders and law enforcement officials.
Officers may issue temporary penalties called civil citations if a youth aged 8 to 17 has committed a minor offense, said Olivia Hollier, the youth services manager for the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office. Citations are resolved by attending Teen Court, where children are frequently sentenced to community service. Once completed, citations rarely appear in a person’s background, she said.
The rate at which both agencies are issuing civil citations has decreased.
Gainesville police data show the most drastic change. The city police department averaged 82 citations each year since 2010. In 2023, it issued 35.
The spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, Art Forgey, said the quantity and severity of crimes committed by juveniles has increased in recent years. It’s less appropriate now to issue civil citations, he said.
“Most of the juveniles we're dealing with … this isn't their first encounter with law enforcement,” he said.
However, data from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice show police are arresting more children with no criminal history for misdemeanors rather than issuing alternatives to arrest.
In 2017, the city police and the sheriff’s office each arrested nearly 20 youths with no criminal history, the fewest in recent years. New data suggest an increase. In 2023, city police arrested 56 juveniles instead of issuing alternatives to arrest. The sheriff's office arrested 63.
The data above strictly depict the outcome of interactions between law enforcement and juveniles without a criminal history when they are confronted for committing a misdemeanor.
Hollier said there are instances when an officer may want to issue a citation but is unable. She gave the example of a child with a THC oil vape pen. Any possession of THC oil constitutes a felony, she said, so no citation could be issued.
However, she said just because a youth is arrested does not mean they will end up behind bars.
“Our state attorneys actually read every one of these case files,” she said.
Some cases are dropped, and some are diverted out of the criminal justice system.
Youth dialogues bridge the gap
A dozen years ago, the Gainesville Police Department started holding monthly youth dialogues.
In these multi-hour trainings, officers socialized and bonded with at-risk youth. They addressed barriers, played games and shared stories. They opened up about traumatic experiences and saw each other as more than a stereotype, said William Halvosa, who retired in 2015 but took on a role as the department’s disproportionate minority contact officer.
That year, the dialogues spread to the sheriff’s office, said its former Racial and Ethnic Disparity Coordinator Paul Pardue. For about four years, there were two youth dialogues in Alachua County each month as the city police and the sheriff’s office both hosted them.
About five years ago, though, the pace slowed.
Jeffrey Weisberg is a primary facilitator of the meetings. He founded the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding, which worked with Halvosa to establish the dialogues. He said around 2019, the police department’s dialogues changed from monthly to quarterly. Now, he estimates that the city police host two dialogues per year.
The sheriff’s office followed a similar pattern. Pardue said the pandemic made the dialogues infrequent. Once the lockdown began, meetings occurred at irregular intervals. He recalls the fall of 2021 as the last time the sheriff’s office hosted a dialogue.
Former Police Chief Tony Jones, who spearheaded the decision to bring youth dialogues to Gainesville, said understaffing is responsible for the city police hosting fewer dialogues. Personnel shortages are plaguing the sheriff’s office, too. Hollier said it is experiencing a “very weird growing pain” as it refocuses its efforts to catch up to the needs of the community.
Numbers obtained earlier this month showed the city police department had 61 uniformed officer vacancies out of about 300 sworn positions. The sheriff’s office lacked 32 positions out of about 400.
Micah Johnson is a community advocate who holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Florida. He studied dialogues extensively and worked with Halvosa and Weisberg to establish them in Gainesville. He said part of the decrease in dialogues is due to attitude shifts within the city police department.
“Passion for these sorts of projects is contingent upon an individual or handful of folks in leadership that set the tone,” Johnson said. The sheriff’s office’s dialogues stopped the Youth and Community Resource unit was dissolved in 2021, Pardue said.
Johnson urged both law enforcement agencies to increase the frequency of their youth dialogue programs. Consistent dialogues are a vital tool to “keep a pulse on how youth are feeling in the community,” he said. They foster empathy between police and marginalized community members, he said, who don’t often mix.
Some community members “may look different than you,” Johnson said, “but they're worthy of your dignity and respect.”
The longer a community hosts regular youth dialogues, the more likely it is to reach children who are especially distrustful of law enforcement and may join gangs, he said. Dialogues do more than just deter confrontation between police and youth, he said. They fundamentally alter the way each group considers one another.
The sheriff’s office planned on hosting its first youth dialogue in four years earlier this month at Fort Clarke Middle School. It was canceled due to scheduling issues with the school, said the youth and community coordinator Jasmine Singleton.
The sheriff’s office hopes to host youth dialogues quarterly. However, she said it may increase the frequency of dialogues if needed.
Preventative programs deter at-risk youth from committing crime
Andrew Miles works with children, teaching them important skills through his organization Out East Youth Tutoring and Support Services.
Out East aims to keep at-risk youth focused — especially during the afternoon when youth are most likely to commit crime, Jones said. Miles leads one of many grassroots organizations in Gainesville that provides preventative programming for at-risk youth. These groups face challenges fundraising.
No preventative programs directly receive money from the city. Instead, Gainesville supports them through grants, said Director of Government Affairs and Community Relations John Alexander.
To balance the city budget and make up $1.4 million that Gainesville Regional Utilities stopped providing to Gainesville, the city commission in February moved $250,000 set-aside for at-risk youth. Miles said that decision doesn’t bode well for other non-profits, saying a lot of programs are “about to be cut.”
The city used to directly support the finances of preventative programs — specifically, the Reichert House, which offered proactive services to assist at-risk boys. However, since closing in May 2023, Alexander said the city began exclusively supporting preventative programs through grants.
He said the city is considering how to maintain support for these programs in the face of continued budget cuts from Gainesville Regional Utilities. One option he’s considered, he said, is leaning on federal grants.
Jasmin Hall is the executive director of AMIkids Gainesville, a school that mainly educates children being processed by the juvenile justice system.
“There’s sometimes not enough help until the children get into the Department of Juvenile Justice,” Hall said. She said she feels that more should be done to prevent children from entering the juvenile justice system in the first place.
The Children’s Trust of Alachua County disperses grants to support at-risk youth programs. Even when there is ample money to apply for grants, Miles said accessing it can be difficult. As someone with felony drug charges in his past, he said the Children’s Trust is hesitant to select him.
Kristy Goldwire is the Director of Program Operations for Children’s Trust. She said having a member with a criminal background does not reduce any organizations’ chances of being funded “as long as they organize themselves in such a way that they are not the ones in direct contact with the youth.”
Miles said he feels frustrated that groups can “decide that certain people are never rehabilitated enough” to work with children. When Out East does receive grant money, he uses it to ensure children don’t end up with drug charges like himself.
The glorified idea of “doing your time” is a myth, he said. “They’ll never forgive you or let you become whole again.”