In the wake of national concerns about how law enforcement agencies handle officer-involved shootings, Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons sat down with (We Don’t) Color on the Dog to walk through the comprehensive process his agency follows when deadly force is used.
The Sheriff stressed that transparency begins immediately after an officer-involved shooting occurs. “We try to be as transparent as possible when we have to use any force, but certainly when we have to use deadly force or an officer involved shooting.”
The process involves multiple layers of oversight. “We contact the state attorney’s office. We typically contact a representative or an agent from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to actually respond to the scene,” Simmons said. “We can do our own crime scene, but FDLE also comes and they do crime scene as well. So there’s this redundancy with regards to crime scene.”…