Miami officer who shot distressed man was trained in crisis intervention
The Miami Police officer who shot a man on the front porch of his Liberty City home two weeks ago — and other officers at the scene — were told by his mother before the shooting that he was suffering from a mental health crisis. And when the officers arrived at the home, they first encountered Donald Lenard Armstrong in the street, according to a police report obtained by the Miami Herald.
Armstrong, 47, then somehow made his way to the porch of his home with what police said “appeared to be a pointed weapon,” before he was stunned with a Taser, then shot multiple times by an eight-year Miami police veteran trained to deal with mental health crises named Kassandra Mercado, police said.
Miami Fraternal Order of Police President Felix del Rosario called Mercado a good young officer.
He said Mercado, who has also received Crisis Intervention Training, has not given investigators a statement. Mercado is believed to have fired her weapon as many as 10 times. Police haven’t said how many times Armstrong was struck or why none of the other officers at the scene fired.
“Nobody but her can say what she perceived in a split-second decision,” del Rosario said.
Almost two weeks after the shooting, police have yet to explain exactly what the “pointed weapon” was that Armstrong allegedly wielded. In Armstrong’s arrest affidavit, it’s described as a “dirk,” a rarely used term for a doubleedged blade made popular by Scottish Highland soldiers in the 1700s. One person with knowledge of the incident but who asked to remain anonymous, said the object held by Armstrong appeared to be some type of musical
a loss of millions of dollars every year.
ENROLLMENT, FACILITY CONDITIONS COULD DEFINE SCHOOLS’ FUTURE
On Wednesday, Zoie Saunders, the district’s chief strategy and innovation officer, said Licata’s team wants to use two main criteria to pick which schools will be affected: the schools’ enrollment levels and the facilities’ conditions.
The last time the Broward school district assessed its facilities was in 2014, so the district is in dire need of doing it again and is in the process of hiring an outside company to perform the task, Saunders said. In the meantime, the district will deploy internal teams to start gathering information.
Because of the lack of data on facilities, Licata focused on enrollment Wednesday, asking board members to define a baseline on how underenrolled a school has to be to be considered.
“My objective today is having a specific range of schools, starting with enrollment as the primary [criterion] to begin the process,” he said at the top of the meeting.
One by one, each of the nine board members delivered mixed messages.
Sarah Leonardi and Debra Hixon both said that the district should consider schools operating at or under 60% of capacity. Jeff Holness put that number at 55% and Nora Rupert even lower, at 50%.
But others declined to give a number.
Instead of citing a percentage, Daniel Foganholi said he already expected Licata to have filtered it down on his own before Wednesday’s meeting.
“A lot of people expected to see names today,” he said. “I really wanna get to the solution right now.”
Torey Alston agreed with him: “I, too, was expecting this update to be a little different. … I was expecting to get some type of list.”
Alston also said he doesn’t want Licata to make decisions on the basis of low enrollment because the list of 67 schools that are most underenrolled are in “heavily Black and Hispanics areas.”
“This list clearly focuses on certain communities, certain populations . ... This is not equitable,” he said.
Similarly, Brenda Fam said that low enrollment shouldn’t be a main factor because some of those schools are underenrolled because the district has neglected them for years in what she called a “vicious cycle.”
“If you’re not going to invest, how are you going to blame people for not coming?” she said.
Allen Zeman didn’t provide a number, either. He said he wants to see more data on all schools before filtering down the list of schools the district could possibly close or repurpose.
Alhadeff, who spoke last, said she wants the board to use facilities data to guide the decision. She then asked Licata whether he got what he needed.
“I am confident that I got the viewpoints of everyone in a public setting, that I have enough criteria to move forward,” Licata said.
WILL ANY SCHOOLS CLOSE?
Still, at times, it didn’t seem clear whether the board would end up closing any schools.
At least three board members — Holness, Leonardi and Hixon — voiced some level of hesitation on Wednesday about closing schools.
“I’m not [averse] to closing schools; I just don’t think we need to close five,” Hixon said, adding that she wants to close one or two.
Leonardi said she “accepts” the idea of closing schools but doesn’t think the district “necessarily” has to do it.
Holness said: “Closing schools is not off the table; it’s just a last resort for me.”
Conversely, at least three other board members embraced such change wholeheartedly.
Foganholi said that closing schools doesn’t have to be the last option and that if it’s the best solution, it should be the first option.
Alston also said the board should be more open about the need to downsize.
“We are not being openly honest as a board with the community,” he said. “We know we have too many schools. We are underenrolled. Those are facts.”
Zeman described the idea as a “grand opportunity” to reallocate resources and improve the quality of education in Broward Public Schools.
“Every school closing is a loss, and every school closing is a gain,” he said.
“I have a vision about what Broward County can look like after these decisions are done. It’s a Broward County with an extra hour of instruction in every elementary school that’s left over. It has funding for after-school academic programs. It has funding for summer school academic programs for every child that gets behind on academics. And its primary goal is to rebuild the K-3 system so that 100% of our students are proficient by the end of third grade,” he added. “That vision is possible only with real change … and in the end closing some schools.”