DEERFIELD BEACH, Fla. — Deerfield Beach city commissioners were set to vote on Tuesday evening on whether the city will sever its longstanding ties with the Broward Sheriff’s Office and go its own way for policing and fire protection.
Sheriff Gregory Tony has aggressively fought to keep the contract with Deerfield Beach, criticizing city officials for exploring the move to reconstitute the police and fire departments, which folded into BSO in 1990 and 2011, respectively.
At a population of more than 86,000, Deerfield Beach is the second-largest city BSO deputies patrol, behind its next-door neighbor, Pompano Beach, which is also considering cutting ties with the agency.
Deerfield Beach leaders have balked at a new contract they say would raise costs more than 10%.
On Tuesday night, they’re expected to go over a consultant’s report that claims getting rid of BSO would bring savings to the tune of a half-billion dollars over 20 years.
Tony, in a statement, called the study a “flawed document that appears credible on paper but lacks the rigor, experience, and data required for decisions of this magnitude.”
“The Center for Public Safety’s report appears designed to justify a pre-determined outcome rather than objectively evaluate the facts,” he said.
During the meeting, Tony apologized to the board for the sometimes nasty war of words between both sides.
“This is important, not just for this commission, it’s important for this community to understand what’s happening here,” Tony said. “Our emotional attacks have distracted the truth and reality behind this, and I again owning my part, and I hope this commission owns theirs. This is a new opportunity, this is a new year to get past this.”
If Deerfield Beach returns to having municipal police and fire departments, it would happen after a two-year transition period in which BSO would continue to patrol the city.
Tuesday’s city commission meeting began 7 p.m. and went long into the night, with public comment stretching for several hours.
Multiple commissioners said they felt they just don’t have enough data to justify getting rid of BSO right now.
As of 11 p.m., they had yet to vote on the matter, and it appeared that they would push the vote and continue the discussion at their next scheduled meeting on Jan. 20.
Background
The much-smaller Pembroke Park is the last municipality to sever ties with BSO: It began its own police department in 2022 amid acrimony between town officials and Tony, which has continued years after the split.
Before Tony’s tenure, Southwest Ranches switched from BSO to using Davie police in 2014, while Lauderhill restarted its own police department in 1994.
Besides protecting county facilities like the airport and port, nearly all of BSO’s routine policing is done under contract with municipalities: only about 15,000 of more than 1.9 million Broward residents live in unincorporated areas, most in small enclaves bordering Fort Lauderdale.
That’s in contrast to many other large Florida counties, including Miami-Dade, where more than 1 million residents live in unincorporated areas that the sheriff patrols by default.
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