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******************* Chief Sean Baldwin of Fort Pierce, Florida As soon as Sean Baldwin became a police officer, he knew he was doing what he was meant to do. Even in his high school days as an Explorer with the Indian River County Sheriff’s Office, he had “this burning desire to be a police officer.” Instead he got involved in the family swimming pool and spa business, and pushed his dream aside. A few years later, the business faltered, but it gave him a chance to fulfill his goal of getting into law enforcement. He went to the Police Academy and graduated. “In every disappointment, there’s an opportunity,” he said. In 1990, when Officer Baldwin began patrolling the St. Pierce streets, the issues of poverty and simmering social unrest were a surprising eye-opener for a young man who had spent many of his growing up years in affluent Vero Beach and working in the family business in nearby Port St. Lucie. But after only three or four days on the job with the Ft. Pierce Police Department, Baldwin said “there was something I absolutely loved about catching bad guys, putting handcuffs on them, and putting them in jail. I just fell in love with it.” And right away he formed another goal. “I wanted to be a police officer, and then as soon as I was a police officer, I knew I wanted to be the police chief. I set that as a goal in the first week of my career. And I’ve just been blessed with the opportunity to move through the ranks in almost eighteen years. “My goal was to become a police chief, and I did. I worked between August of 2006 and April of 2007 as interim chief and then in April of 2007, I was appointed as police chief [in Ft. Pierce]. Now I’m working on being the best police chief that I can be, and I believe that’s going to be an even bigger challenge.” Seeing Chief Baldwin as a goal-oriented person, we moved into our series of questions by asking about his other goals.
Chief Baldwin: My goal is to impact the historic problems with crime in this area. If you look at the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 2005 UCR [Uniform Crime Report], there are some 3000 jurisdictions in the United States that serve a population higher than 10,000. Of these 3000 jurisdictions, Ft. Pierce is ranked as the 82nd worst for crime, which is not a title we’re proud of. More concerning, it’s ranked as the 25th most violent jurisdiction in the nation. Ft. Pierce is a relatively small community, under 50,000 in population, but we have a tremendous problem with crime and all the issues that contribute to crime. As my goal, I want to help Ft. Pierce become a safer place. I want to see Ft. Pierce out of the top 100 as quickly as possible, both for total crime and violent crime. I want to see Ft. Pierce approaching being one of the safest cities in the state. That’s going to take a lot of work, and it’s a huge goal, but I think we have to move in that direction. Underlying that, I want to help develop our employees here at the police department so that we’re better able to meet these challenges. The police department has a leadership role to play in that we don’t just respond to crime. It’s not just about going out and arresting people. We’re using strategies that are proven to have been successful across the nation in developing a strong relationship with the community, and we have a great relationship with the community. But there are pockets within our community that don’t have the strong relationship we should have. So we have to work on that, making sure the community feels like this is their police department and we’re here to help them make their community safer.
PAL: What other challenges face your department? Chief Baldwin: We’ve got three big challenges that we face. (1) Everybody across the state is looking at the property tax reforms [and how that will impact] our finding and sustaining resources to get the job done. Policing is incredibly expensive in any community. Our budget makes up the most significant portion of the city’s budget, so trying to maintain those resources is extremely difficult. (2) I mentioned our historic crime problem. That’s an incredible challenge because we’ve had disproportionate crime rates for thirty years. There’s a certain element of acceptance or apathy within the community. We need to create an urgency to change that. It’s not acceptable to be the 25th worst in the nation for violent crime. (3) We have a growing problem with youth gangs. I think that’s true across the state and the nation, from what I study and read. In the next decade, overcoming youth involvement in illegal gang activity is going to be one of our biggest challenges.
PAL: Is the Police Athletic League helping with that? Chief Baldwin: The Police Athletic League (PAL) is already helping address the problem. Our PAL started as a boxing club about twelve years ago, and it evolved into the much bigger PAL program that is today. We have about 350 children in our community who are registered and active in PAL today. That’s 350 children who have something positive in their lives. We’ve studied the gang issue, and everybody asks, “What’s the problem?” Well, the gangs are not the problem; they are the symptom of deeper problems in the community. We talk about how our family structures are degrading, and that’s causing a problem because our kids aren’t getting the support or the supervision that they need from parents. That leads to involvement in gang activity. Our PAL provides the support and guidance that kids need to succeed in life. I think it all comes down to giving kids some hope. PAL sends that message to our kids: You can succeed in life. You may not live in the best neighborhood. You may not get the support you need from your parents, but PAL is here to provide that support to you and show you there is a better way. I’m so extremely proud of our PAL. It’s another example of what a community can do, because it’s not the police department. The community took it away from us. [Officer] Paul Pearson is our PAL director. At this point, that is our contribution to PAL. We provide the director, a police officer. The rest is the community. It’s absolutely incredible what we’ve been able to leverage with assigning one officer to the program. We’ve had thousands of kids go through the program. The reason why I love PAL is that you always hear stories about kids that despite the neighborhood or the difficult conditions they face at home, they find a way to succeed. The difference between those kids and the ones who get in trouble is that [the kids who succeed] were given the support they needed. That’s what PAL does—provides the hope. It’s great to be a part of that, because it does change lives. At any given time, our enrollment in PAL is about 350, but we probably serve 1000 kids a year. Our enrollment needs to be ten times that. The City of Ft. Pierce doesn’t have a recreation department. Our PAL program is filling a desperate need in our community.
PAL: What do you like or dislike about being chief? Chief Baldwin: There are many things I love about it. The first thing is, I am driven by challenge, which I love, and being able to find resolution to problems. Being a police chief in Ft. Pierce is certainly challenging. It goes back to why I wanted to be a police chief. I still love catching bad guys. I don’t get to do that so much anymore. I chase a lot of paperwork around and attend a lot of meetings. I don’t get to put handcuffs on bad guys as much, but I do get to live vicariously through all of our officers. I just get this great sense of accomplishment when a patrol officer or detective investigates a crime, finds the bad guy, then takes him into custody and brings him to justice. What I don’t like about being chief is that I get frustrated at times because the bureaucracy that we work in is slower than I would like to move. I talked about finding the resources--it’s sometimes frustrating to see a need and not be able to take care of it. The politics sometimes gets discouraging. But politics is important in what we do. It’s sort of a buffer and it ensures we’re doing, in the end, what the community wants us to do. Other than that, I love what I do.
PAL: What personal qualities or character traits are necessary for a chief to be effective? Chief Baldwin: It comes down to a few things. One, you have to be passionate about what you’re doing. You’ve got to believe that policing can make a difference. If we work more effectively and more efficiently, then we can make a difference in the community. Two, vision is extremely important. We’ve got to want Ft. Pierce to be a safe community. We’ve got to want to be the best police agency in the state. Three, leadership that’s centered on values is important. There are so many gray areas in policing. There are so many opportunities for police officers and police chiefs to get themselves in trouble in those gray areas. The rules aren’t always black and white. There’s not always somebody telling you the way things should be done. One of the things I don’t like about being a police chief is I find myself in situations where there may be two or three responses that we could do and all three of them are wrong in some way. There’s no way to make everybody happy. One response may offend the employees I have and who are very important to me. Another response may offend the community. It’s very difficult to balance, as a police chief, my obligations to the 164 employees that I have and the 50,000 plus community residents and the five community-elected politicians. I’m actually working for three different groups, and they don’t always agree on what should be done. That comes back to what I was talking about: personal values. I try to make decisions based on my values. If I stay true to those values of honesty and integrity, and value relationships, I may not always make the right decision, may not always make everybody happy, but I can feel comfortable with what I’m doing.
PAL: How do you deal with stressful aspects of your job? Chief Baldwin: There is a tremendous amount of stress in it, and I’ve probably just recently taken a little more time to recognize that, because if we don’t recognize that and deal with it, then it can do bad things to us. But I’ve got a great support system: God, and my faith, that I turn to constantly, and I’ve got a fantastic wife. As a police chief, it’s difficult to find someone you can talk to. You can’t always talk to your employees about the problems you’re experiencing or the decisions you face. So my wife, probably more than she wants to, helps me work through things. Just as importantly, I’ve got three great boys that always find a way to get my mind off work, whether it’s a basketball game or a football game. That is tremendously helpful to me. I try to involve my family in everything I’m doing when I’m not at work because my time at work consumes so much. Because I’ve got three boys, a lot of our family time revolves around sports activities--baseball, football, and one kid that travels all over the state and plays hockey. I’m also trying to learn to speak Spanish, and play the guitar, which are both foreign languages to me. I have no musical inclination what so ever, so that is extremely challenging. But especially the music takes my mind off work. I love challenges, and it’s a big one for me. We at PAL ILLUSTRATED & SFAPAL.COM appreciate Chief Baldwin!
Background on Sean Baldwin Sean Baldwin was born in Hamilton, Ohio. When he was in sixth grade, he moved to Vero Beach with his father and brother. In 1985, he graduated from high school in Vero Beach and began working for the family pool and spa business. In 1990, he graduated from the police academy and began his career in law enforcement with the Ft. Pierce Police Department. He worked as a patrol officer, a community-policing officer, and a detective. He served as a sergeant in criminal investigation and patrol divisions, and then as a commander in the community response and patrol divisions. He was promoted to assistant chief in 2001, and appointed as chief of police in Ft. Pierce in 2006.
Chief Baldwin holds a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice from Lynn University (Boca Raton, FL), and a Bachelor’s Degree in Professional Administration from Barry University (Miami, FL). He graduated from the FBI National Academy (208th session), the Southern Police Institute’s Administrative Officer’s Course (113th Session), and the Institute for Law Enforcement Administration’s School of Police Supervision.
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