A Super Bowl conversation with Tampaâs police chief: âWe donât want to be the mask policeâ
Chief Brian Dugan talks about plans to police a city during a hometown Super Bowl in the middle of a pandemic.
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Tampa police Chief Brian Dugan, seen here at a news conference in November, said his department doesn t want to be the mask police but we will if we have to. [ LUIS SANTANA | Times ]
Published Jan. 30
TAMPA â Like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa police Chief Brian Dugan finds himself in an unprecedented situation.
Dugan is leading a department tasked with policing its city during the first-ever hometown Super Bowl in the middle of a global pandemic. And Dugan himself is still recovering from his own bout with the coronavirus â he first tested positive on Jan. 10 and again as recently as last Saturday. He returned to the office on Thursday after a negative test.
Tampa police Chief Brian Dugan returns to office after coronavirus diagnosis
Dugan, 54, tested positive for coronavirus again on Saturday, delaying plans to return to emerge from quarantine earlier this week.
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Tampa police Chief Brian Dugan is pictured in a selfie he took on Wednesday, Jan. 13, three days after testing positive for COVID-19. Dugan tested negative for the virus on Wednesday and returned to the office on Thursday. [ Courtesy Brian Dugan ]
Published Jan. 28
TAMPA â When Tampa Mayor Jane Castor and other city officials gathered Monday for a news conference on the Super Bowl, one blue uniform was conspicuously absent.
Police Chief Brian Dugan planned to be at the event held a day after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the NFC championship game, clinching a spot in the first-ever hometown Super Bowl. It would have been Duganâs first public event after a bout with the coronavirus. But the chief tested positive again for the virus on Saturday, delaying
In a year all life in America was mandated to believe Black Lives Matter (above all other lives), someone forgot to tell the black population of Tampa Bay this monumentally important decree.
Gun violence, almost exclusively with a black suspect (and almost always a black victim) doubled in 2020 from 2019, though we were required to believe Black Lives Matter starting around the end of May.
Again, someone forgot to tell the black community in Tampa Bay of the Holy Writ surrounding Black Lives Matter.
Patrick Reed was picking up his 12-year-old son up from football practice last November when he was killed in a drive-by shooting, his mother said. Her grandson told her a crowd of people watched the 36-year-old Tampa man use his body to shield two children as bullets sprayed through a park.
Former Tampa police Chief Austin âA.C.â McLane dies at age 81
McLane served as chief from 1987 to 1991 and worked to repair the police departmentâs relationship with minority communities.
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Tampa police Chief Austin A.C. McLane served from 1987 to 1991. He died Friday, Jan. 15 at the age of 81. [ Tampa Police Department ]
Published Jan. 17
Austin âA.C.â McLane, who served as Tampaâs police chief from 1987-91, died Friday at the age of 81.
McLaneâs wife said he died at home in his native Georgia, surrounded by loved ones. The Tampa Police Department announced his death on Saturday of complications stemming from pancreatic cancer.
Tampa Bay Times
Florida’s first COVID-19 vaccine doses landed in Tampa Bay this week, poised for distribution to the people public health officials determined need it first.
Millions of healthcare workers and the residents of long-term care facilities will get vaccinated first. Next up will be essential workers, including firefighters, paramedics and police officers.
But when it’s their turn, will Tampa Bay’s first-responders get the shot?
A significant number of firefighters and officers said they weren’t interested or were undecided, according to surveys of local fire and police departments conducted in recent weeks.
In Pinellas County, 549 paramedics and emergency medical technicians who work for the county’s fire departments and ambulance company about 40 percent of the 1,380 respondents said they don’t want to get vaccinated. Another 28 percent, or 385 people, said they’re undecided. That means the number who do want the vaccine 32 percent, or 446 people