Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves asked Pensacola Police Chief Eric Randall to resign after multiple years of declining employee engagement within the department.
Reeves explained the reason for Randall’s departure, which he described as a “mutual” decision, during a press conference at the PPD on July 15 after several days of rampant online speculation over the chief’s unexpected departure from the department.
“While I understand this decision may have seemed abrupt externally, if you know me well, we don’t make decisions flippantly or without data,” Reeves said.
Randall abruptly resigned on July 10, and Captain Kristin Brown was named acting chief.
Reeves said if police officers “aren’t confident in the directions of leadership” and “show up consistently unengaged,” then the city and his administration are not serving the public.
The city has conducted employee engagement surveys since at least 2020, when former Mayor Grover Robinson implemented them, to measure confidence in leadership, job satisfaction and understanding of the city’s direction.
Reeves said he had conversations with Randall about expectations for PPD and the levels of trust and confidence in leadership that are reflected in those annual surveys.
“Those expectations set inside the building (Pensacola Police Department) had not been met to the agreed-upon standard over months and years of time, and we mutually agreed to part ways last week,” Reeves said.
Randall was hired as police chief in 2021 after a nationwide search. He is a Pensacola native and a U.S. Navy veteran, but his law enforcement career had been entirely in the Newport News, Virginia, police department until he was hired for the PPD job.
The search took place in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, in the aftermath of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Those nationwide protests left PPD and the city grappling with community outrage over a 2019 police killing of Tymar Crawford by a PPD officer, who was ultimately fired but not charged with a crime. Those events led to the creation of a Citizens Police Advisory Committee, which held meetings to review the operations of PPD while the city conducted a search for a new police chief.
Randall came on board and was tasked with implementing the recommendations of the advisory committee, which had been dissolved after producing a report of recommendations, and led an organization that had historically been led by a chief who had come up within their own ranks.
Randall focused much of his attention on community outreach and crime reduction efforts. One of his first high-profile acts as chief was to remove the Confederate flag from PPD badges and patches and require SWAT team members to wear body cameras.
Reeves acknowledged that building trust within an organization like a police department as an outsider is a tough task, and he believes Randall was given “ample runway” to make a change.
“I will say, as we made clear with Chief Randall, that we provided accommodation for that,” Reeves said. “In terms of how quickly we would normally react to employee engagement numbers versus how quickly we reacted, this department was an outlier among all 18 other city departments. In terms of having a consistent need for improvement there, and we allowed that to prolong a little bit longer because certainly I sympathize with being an outside person trying to come in and build trust inside a building, especially in public safety, a very fraternal organization.”
Reeves said the decision does not change his respect and appreciation for Randall and the work he did with the PPD.
However, after days of rampant and growing speculation in the community, Reeves said he had to comment on his departure.
“Any theories out there, I’ve heard them all over the last four days, that it has anything to do with ICE, that has to do with anything else — absolutely not,” Reeves said. “There’s no ill will, nothing below board that took place under Chief Randall. He’s a good man, and my goal honestly is to certainly preserve a good man’s dignity.”
Reeves said being the PPD chief is a difficult job.
“I have the utmost respect for him, and I certainly want him to have great success in his future,” Reeves said.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: PPD Chief Eric Randall resigned after rank and file lost ‘confidence’ in leadership
Reporting by Jim Little, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
