TPD Chief Lee Bercaw to retire

And welcome in streamers to Studio B. Everybody dial us up here on fox13news.com and Fox Local, our Fox Local app. We are honored to have Tampa's police chief here with us in studio, in Studio B, Chief Lee Bercow. How are you, sir? Good to see you. I'm doing great. And congratulations. Thank you. This is the swan song, huh? It is. Announced recently he is retiring after, what, almost four years as chief? Almost four years. 30 some years total. Well, congratulations. We have lots to talk about because you're obviously leaving the city in a great place, which is really important. I know it's a tribute to you as well. Let me start back a little bit with you back to, when did you join? In 96, did you say? 96, yes. Okay. Always want to be in law enforcement? Where'd your law enforcement heart come from? It's a great question. My family, none of them were in law enforcement. My father was a doctor and he wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer. And of course I didn't want to do that. And I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do. So I went to some criminal justice classes and then I did my internship at USF with the department of corrections, probation and parole. Figured that might be something I'm interested in. And then I did a couple of ride-alongs with the Tampa police department. I'm like, no, this is what I want to do. So that's where I kind of got my flavor. And it was interesting. The day I graduated USF, I became full-time at the Tampa police department. So it was a reserve in 96 and then full-time in 97. In an interesting way, it's only going to come back to USF too. We'll get back to that in a second, but that's your full circle moment. I guess it's coming up here. So walk me through TPD. When did you, you joined in 96 and obviously you rose to the ranks. Tell me about some of your earliest memories. I know we've got you being sworn in here. Yeah. You know, being sworn in. So interesting memory with that. So my badge number is 237 and I didn't realize this until it became chief, the meaning of my badge number. So my wife told me her birthday is July 23rd. My badge is 237, the 23rd day of July, which is, I had no idea for almost 27 years what my badge number was in significance until I became chief. So that's, you know, that picture is me being sworn in as a, as an officer there with my wife and funny, she worked here at the time and people thought that we met here going back to USF. We didn't meet at the Tampa police department because we got married in 95, even before I started working. So we met at USF and then I came to the Tampa police department. That is too cool. Did you think back then when you were, when you were being sworn in and you were finally finally a sworn police officer protecting the people of Tampa that you would one day be chief? No. In fact, it's funny because you get sworn in with a class and my class, they all vote who would be the next chief in that class. And they voted for me and I'm like, I don't want to be the chief. Don't vote for me. That wasn't for me. I just wanted to go out, maybe aspirations of being a sergeant one day, but that was it. I just wanted to go out and do my job and help the community. Never had aspirations of being a chief. And then, you know, as I rose through the ranks, I always wanted to go to the next level to make a difference. But once I became an assistant chief, I said, I'm done. I don't want to be in the limelight. I just want to get things done and be that person behind the curtain, as opposed to being in front of the curtain. But then when I became chief, you know, I embraced it and I'll tell you the, the main reason that I did it was the support of the community and support of the officers that, that helped me tremendously in this role. Let me back you up just a second. Cause I think that's that. So that was, uh, that was when you were sworn in and what early 2023, I'm guessing as chief. Yeah. Um, yes, that was from his chief. Yes. Uh, let me back you up to your class. Cause I think that's fascinating. Um, I got most, most voted, most likely to be anchorman when I was in high school, but because my dad was an anchorman and the mind was almost forecast and telecast, uh, you're different though. What do you think people saw in you? Even if the fact that you didn't necessarily think you wanted to be chief back then, what did they see in you back then to, to forecast that? You know, I think it's because I listen, I want to hear what other people have to say and incorporate that. And I owe a lot of my success to the sergeants I had back in the old days, you know, restyle God bless his soul. All the senior sergeants, you know, people thought they were on their outs, but I wanted to listen to them and absorb all that information and have that wisdom. So the mentors that I had, you know, I encourage people ask them what they thought. So I think maybe they saw that in me and maybe that's one of the reasons they thought that. Yeah. That's pretty neat. Um, where, where am I been have been some of your favorite stops. I know you were in traffic homicide for a while, which is always enlightening and frightening. Um, so let me tell you a quick story about that. So I was literally on the phone with my wife and my patrol car. And, um, I'm at Kennedy and Del Mabry. I'm the first car waiting at the red light and, um, a pickup truck made a left turn in front of a motorcycle that had the right way. So the motorcycle had a, um, passenger on it and of course hit the truck and the motorcyclist and the passenger flew up in the air and the passenger land literally right in front of my patrol car. Female passenger. So of course I threw the phone down and, uh, went out and, you know, fortunately, unfortunately she didn't make it, but the driver of the motorcycle was literally crawling over to where I was trying to render aid to the passenger. And he knew that she didn't make it. And he's telling me right there, he's saying, this is my wife. And I finally convinced her to ride the motorcycle. And today was the first day. And it was such a traumatic experience, you know, for him and for me, but just, I mean, his legs were broken and he was literally crawling over. So that's something I'll never forget. That was before it became a traffic homicide detective. And that motivated me to go out and investigate those and do what I could do to prevent those from occurring in the first place. Yeah. Uh, you know, I have girls who've talked about this before and I had, and being in the news business now, 30 some years, not seeing nearly what you guys have seen, but seeing a lot of the ugly side of the world sometimes. And I have always told the girls, I'm like, there's one thing. So many of, so many of certain crimes can be, um, can be kind of relegated to a certain, whether it's a population or a certain area or maybe bad circumstance. But, and I've always told them, there's one thing across the board that could get anyone any day, the way that we have our driving set up and it's these car accidents, vehicle accidents. And it's still amazing to me how many, how many people are running red lights and how many people that haven't had that scary yet don't realize how dangerous our roads can be. So I commend you for, for going through that and, uh, and doing what you can do to always wear your seatbelt, always wear your helmet. Those things make a huge difference. You know, this is just a personal rant. So apologies. If some of our viewers have heard this before, when, when it went over to, uh, France two years ago for the Normandy D-Day invasion, I got over there. And once you get outside of the larger parts of Paris, there's not a traffic light for miles. And I mean, miles and miles and miles, there's nothing but roundabouts. And that's what it kind of occurred to me. And I thought, gosh, they've got this figured out. Never ever. Are you turning in front of another car? You can't T-bone somebody, you can't run a red light. And it's in a weird way. I felt so much safer over there. And I know we'll never get back to that time because our roads are built, you know, 70, 80 years ago. We're learning some of those, but it takes a while for us to learn how to use those. We saw that in Clearwater. Um, well, so after say traffic homicide, what was your next step then? Um, well, I became a corporal over the field training program, which is my passion to teach and train. And, uh, then Sergeant, and I'll tell you a story about Sergeant. So I was assigned to the street anti-crime squad, which is plain clothes squad. And, um, one of the stories that resonates with me was one of your reporters, Gloria Gomez wanted to do a, um, ride along with us on an undercover prostitution stink. I'm like, I'm not sure how this is going to work. And our PIO at the time said, we, we can do this. And then I'm like, we don't have a vehicle big enough. So she said, we'll use the Fox 13, um, surveillance van. I'm like, you guys have a surveillance van. I didn't know that. So, so we used it and we set up on Nebraska and we were filming probably our white unmarked van. So we're on Nebraska at night and we're filming our undercover female officer, uh, from the shoulders down and, uh, we're watching her make cases. And then all of a sudden Gloria says to me, she goes, I think that car's going to hit us. I go, they're not going to hit us. Next thing I know the back of the van's rammed. We're laying down in the back, get knocked over. Then the, then the car takes off down. So then I'm like on the phone in the middle of this operation, we got to stop the operation and go get that car that just ran into us and took off. Right. So in the end we, we arrested about nine Johns for, uh, prostitution and then one hit and run. And that was the story that was, uh, you know, something I'll never forget. I'm doing a ride along for the first time with my media and this is what happens. It's like the traffic stop. There's no such thing as a routine job, right? Yeah. We've learned that. Um, yeah. Back to prostitution. I remember 15, 20 years ago. I mean, I remember when I was out on the street reporting a lot. We, I remember the, I remember the, uh, uh, the signs, the prostitution signs that they put up on Nebraska. It's dramatically different today. Uh, what do you attribute that to? I attribute it to our officers, the hard work that they do, the sense of urgency they have is unprecedented. And if you look at our stats from last year, our homicides are down at record lowest they've been in half a century. I mean, we see that all across the nation that they're down and across the nation, they're down on an average of about 20%. We were over 50%. We're more than double what the nation was. And that doesn't happen by chance. It happens by the hard work of the officers and the community relations that we have. When I became chief, it was right after the pandemic. And you know, one of the things I was, is re energizing our community policing instead of, you know, all the neighborhood watch meetings were going down because of zoom and nobody wanted to have them. So building that all back up was essential, um, to our officers and to our community and to our crime reduction. And it's paid off in huge dividends. You know, we're talking back, you know, in the eighties, in early nineties, we had over 36,000 victims of crime per year. And our crime's gone down roughly 80%. Last year, we had roughly 6,000 victims of crime. So you think the city is growing, but the crime has gone, that's 30,000 less. We have probably a million more people now. We're not a million, but regional wise, but it's probably a hundred plus thousand more, but 30,000 less victims a year. Yeah. That's amazing. I want to talk more about that community policing and that community contact that I know has been important to you. We're going to talk about teaching as well, because you're not done giving back to this community. I will be right back with chief Lee Burkhaw, who's retiring soon after 30 years, uh, Tampa police department. And welcome back into studio B here at Fox 13. I am joined by Tampa police chief Lee Burkhaw, who's retiring in a couple of weeks here, right? Yes. After 30 some years of service to our community, but you're not done serving. You're going to be teaching, right? Yes. USF university, South Florida. I'm actually an adjunct there now. Right. And it's funny because people go, how do you have time to be an adjunct as a police chief? And I go, I just go talk about my day and the students love it. So I had the opportunity to go full time there. Um, I'll be the coordinator for the masters in criminal justice administration program. So future leaders that want to get their master's degree in the profession, whether in law enforcement corrections, uh, they can go to this program, which is a great program, highly, um, coveted programs, a program that I went through, uh, graduated there in 2012 with my master's degree. Well, you're going to have obviously a very unique perspective. I mean, you've gone through so much just to think what the evolution of law enforcement in our community has been in the last 10, 12 years, uh, going through black lives matter, going through a number of national movements that really ruffled a lot of feathers and a number of the communities. We didn't really have too many of those issues here. Um, I want to talk about some of those larger, because I know you were always interested in planning these larger events, which is what you really kind of set you up for. Thankfully, uh, we've had so many here that goes going back to, of course, our parades were parade experts. You guys are of course. Uh, but I think I've always been curious. We've got, you've got some new technology now, but planning for a major event where you're going to have three or 400,000 people out on the streets, that's gotta be difficult. It's all about the relationships. You can't do it on your own. You know, we need the community's involvement, all our stakeholders. And I got interested in large scale events as a Lieutenant at the time. It was Mark Hamlin, who was the assistant chief who was doing that role of the major events. And he took me under his wing and explained to me how to manage these large scale events. And ever since then I got involved and it was this stadium commander. Uh, you think about the parade, that's the third largest parade in the United States. And for one entity to cover that, it's impossible. Our partners at Hillsborough County Sheriff's office, the feds, the FBI, FDLE all come together. We have that great working relationship with them and working together in partners with the community and seeing everything come together is just amazing how well we work together in the Tampa Bay area. And I, I was surprised to hear, I mean, I shouldn't be surprised cause I know Tampa has always been on the forefront of a lot of, a lot of this technology. Uh, even going back to our Superbowls, we've had Superbowls going back to what 84. Uh, but even in the last couple of years, I know you guys were one of the first to use the facial rec, right? Way, way back, probably 25, 30 years ago, almost in Ybor City, they used it. And that was cutting edge technology back then for the Superbowl. And you know, now, I mean, when I first started to have a computer in the car was rare. And now the officers have AI helping them out with their policies and procedures and language translation. So we've, we've really progressed. That was on my list. I mean, did you think an AI is moving so fast? How is it, uh, helping evolving in your daily law enforcement? So if you think there's so many things, but one of the things that we recently put out was, um, policy chat. So if you think about a Tampa police officer, all the policies, laws, and procedures, it's so much when I was a young officer, we have to pull over on the side of the road, pop open the trunk and get a huge three ring binder out to look up what the policy was to figure out how we needed to handle that call. Now they have it through their app and soon through their body worn camera where they can say, Hey, I'm on a domestic violence call. What are some of the things I need to know? And that internal AI just goes through all those policies and goes through the highlights and then gives them the direct link. So it's almost like a Google search just for our internal policies and procedures. And that's huge for the officers. I would imagine. And then factor in cameras, the license plate readers, uh, ring cameras and drones. Yeah. And drones too. I know. Uh, how, how has all that, I mean, uh, to say it's a, it's, I'm sure they're all useful, but at the same time, it seems like you, you know, you've almost got, I would imagine you have departments that just specialize in corralling all this material. Well, you think about it too. The qualities that we're looking for in future police officers are completely different than 10, 20, 30 years ago. You know, having somebody that's familiar with technology, how to fly a drone, drone pilots, you know, we have these new autonomous drones and that safety that they provide. It'll go to a call. Maybe where shots were fired, they can show what the officer is going to arrive onto. So if we need to send more officers or if it's been cleared, so it really does help the situation. And especially for parades and things like that, where we can identify things and stop things before they were to happen. Yeah. That's really amazing. And that's, and then to your point too, um, officer retention is always important. Tampa has always been very good at that, despite some major departments across the country in the last few years. What do you attribute that to? Well, the state is a huge supporter of law enforcement and this community, the huge supporter of law enforcement. So being, um, that police chief of the Tampa police department is a major city across the United States. So we're part of the major city chiefs association. And I get to go to these meetings with all the other police chiefs in listening to them. They don't have the support of their state and the support of their community like we do here. And it's just something that when they come here and see us, they're jealous of. And, um, you know, having such a supportive community just paged huge dividends. Crime goes down and makes our jobs easier. And people want to come here. They want to come more somewhere where they're supported. Yeah. And I know you had mentioned community policing and that contact with neighbors and more neighborhood watches. I remember years ago was a in the late eighties, maybe early nineties, a lot of police departments used it. And then for whatever reason they stopped. Uh, but that's a model that has worked. That's worked for you guys. It's huge. Well, community policing has been scientifically proven to reduce violent crime by 10% and to increase satisfaction in the police department by 37%. Our numbers are skyrocketing from those studies. So they need to redo the study because it's, it's actually better. Sure. So for neighborhood watch, one of the things I did is I don't, if you remember those comp stat meetings, maybe you've seen them on TV. We do those. So one of the things I did was overlaid the crime hot grids with neighborhood watches. Is there a neighborhood watch in this area? And if not, why not? And what can we do to help the community get one going? So you think of it, there's a thousand police officers, there's over 400,000, almost half a million residents just in the city is how can the community help us more in that way. And then measuring how community neighborhood watches are involved is critical. And you're finding that you're getting more tips. You're getting more communication. Absolutely. You think about it, just clearing crimes and preventing crimes. Cause if you don't have witnesses or tips, your back's against the wall with these investigations, right? It is. And we're solving crimes at an unprecedented rate to the rate from, you know, time of offense to arrest is the lowest it's ever been. So that's the community working together with those officers that have a sense of urgency. Interesting. Um, what else about the city of Tampa makes you proud as you're getting ready to walk away? It's such a great city. You know, it's a growing, prosperous city. The people in the city are great. I've had a great boss who was my police chief when I was, I was the captain of internal affairs when she was the police chief. So we had intimate conversations and we know each other back and forth working with a mayor that doesn't know the police department would be a challenge. And I found that a reward, everything that I've needed as far as technology or additional officers, she's understood and supported me through that. So I think that's huge seeing this community grow the business partners that are coming in the community. Um, it's something that I'm very proud of, of the community. Yeah. You're going to miss it. I, yeah, I'm going to miss it, but I'm going to be in a different role and I'll still be part of the community for sure. And teaching that next generation, like you said, between the technology and showing the involvement and then all your experience with these major events. I mean, people are going to love to be in your class. I'd so far, I still have a five-star rating on rate my professor. We'll see if that keeps up. I'm sure. I'm sure. Don't worry about that too much. All right, well, let's take one more break. We're going to chat a little bit more about what you're going to be doing. Uh, any last thoughts as a, you're soon to be retiring and we're gonna talk about music as well. Cause I know we had a good music chat a couple of weeks ago that we have to chat on back more with chiefly Burkoff and Tampa police department. We'll be right back. And welcome back into studio B FOX 13 unscripted. Appreciate everybody dialing us up here on your Fox local app and fox13news.com back again with chiefly Burkoff. So I knew you were from the area, but you were actually born in Pinellas County, right? Morton plant hospital. I went to Clearwater high. Yes. Uh, and that, uh, I I'm, I'm not quite a true native. I'm in the native transplant. I've been here since I was about 11. So you've got me there, but I appreciate all your years of service to this community. You're going to be teaching at USF for another criminal justice program. Uh, that's going to be exciting. You start soon, I do August 7th. Yeah. Getting ready for the fall semester. Very good. So you know, big trip, no big celebration after retiring. I did a big trip last year. We did a cruise to Norway and it was amazing to go through the fjords. So, okay. No time this year for one. So, uh, will you have any kind of mid retirement time? Are you going to be working a lot? I mean, where's your, what's your schedule looking like in the next couple of years? I'm not quite sure till I get into it, but going from 150 miles an hour, I can't imagine I'll be going that fast. So a time will tell, but, uh, you know, when you're doing something you love, it really doesn't matter. Yeah. And you have, I know you said from early on from teaching, I mean, teaching's always kind of been part of what you're doing. So this seems like a real natural fit to be teaching this, teaching criminal justice to some, to our next generation. Right. And especially from a practitioner standpoint. So I can bridge that gap between academic and practitioner. And when I went to USF, I always value the professors that were out in the field because you you're hearing it from a different perspective as opposed to the book perspective. We could probably talk about that forever. I know we had a great chat over and props to you again, and your entire city team for, uh, Liberty, by the way, that was so much fun. Thank you for the invite. Uh, the drone show was amazing. The fireworks show was great. What? Close to 40 some thousand on the river on both sides. That was really special. That was pretty awesome. So then we start talking about music because we're kind of same era and your eyes just lit up when we start talking about eighties music, right? Tell me your Michael Jackson connection. Cause I thought that was fascinating. Well, you know, as a kid, I always listened to them and you know, eighties music's coming back, you know, they have all these things with Michael Jackson out. So they had his play at the stress center, went there with my wife. We loved it. Um, we saw the movie and I recently, I came back from Vegas and saw Michael Jackson one there, which was amazing. It was amazing. Did you get to see greatest night in music yet? No. Okay. Promise me you'll see that. That's the doc on we are the world with Michael and Lionel Richie and all that. Uh, we could talk about that forever, but I, and you got to see Michael live, right? Did you? No, never did. No. Um, they had a hologram of them, but they did. I was lucky. I got to see him in 84 with that victory tour when he did the, those are the last big one that he did with his brothers. And I remember the Billy Jean throwing the hat and everything. And it was pretty amazing. Who else, who else from that era, do you still find yourself kind of connected to, you know, some of the rock, you know, I, I liked back then, you know, you, you name it, just any type of genre from the eighties. I really like, well, we need that release. I know you've had a tremendous amount of stress over here in your life. I knew we do too. And that's kind of why I always, I've, I love kind of my, my guitar time. Cause that kind of takes me out of that. Um, so as you're getting ready to sail away from Tampa police department, uh, what are your final thoughts here? You're obviously leaving the city and the department in a very good place. These violent crime numbers are way down auto thefts is down. Um, well, I know what I wanted to ask you about. We almost forgot about this, uh, that I'm fascinated with these, uh, street takeovers. That's been a big thorn in everybody's side, but you guys have had a really good handle on that. How have you been able to keep those to a kind of minimum? Well, again, it all comes back to relationships and the community, right? We can't do it without our stakeholders in our community. And right after we had that event, Curtis Hickson, which is happening all across the nation beforehand. Right? So it came, you know, we have to protect our community. We had to make 22 arrests, but we don't want to continue that. We wanted to prevent it. So days later, we do a video with Titus O'Neill. We do it with Freddie Barton. We do it with councilwoman Naya young, you know, state attorney, Susie Lopez, all talking about a safe alternative. Yeah. We didn't expect a great turnout. It was a huge turnout, but that's something we couldn't continue on our own. It's hard for the police department to organize and manage these events. So Freddie bark from safe and sound took it over and then did a series of events afterwards. So we've provided a safe alternative with you name it, football, basketball, crafts, video games, and the kids are coming out. They're enjoying it. And we're not having any more knock on wood of these takeovers. It shows you they're looking for something for sure. Looking for a little bit of direction. Chief beer crawl. Thanks so much. Congratulations to you. Thank you. Appreciate all your service. And he'll be teaching criminal justice program at university of South Florida. Good luck to that. Hopefully come back and see you sometime. Absolutely. Thank you. Congratulations again. And thanks for watching. See you on TV.