Orlando Sentinel

Orlando Sentinel article on FDLE’s Pulse Nightclub After-Action Report mischaracterized the findings of the report

Posted on August 25, 2017

Setting the Record Straight

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) sets high goals and demands the best of its members. The goal of the After-Action Report was to analyze FDLE response efforts, identify strengths to be maintained and built upon, identify potential areas for improvement, and support development of corrective actions. These types of reports have become a best practice following mass casualty events.
This article indicated FDLE’s role quickly expanded to include helping the FBI with the investigation, identifying the victims and notifying families who lost a loved one and that led to chaos and miscommunication at times.
Fact: FDLE members responded to the incident in an officer-involved shooting capacity. However, due to the scope of this event, the department soon transitioned to provide other assistance including the role of identifying victims and notifying their next of kin. And while the department does not have protocols in place for this type of process, FDLE command staff accepted this role to assist its partner agencies. Nowhere in the report does it state helping notify victim families led to chaos and miscommunication. Instead the report specifies “When FDLE members arrived at the hotel for next of kin notification, they encountered chaos and no plan of action for the operational processes.” Additionally, it goes on to state “Despite these challenges, SASs (supervisors), intelligence analysts and special agents displayed exceptional team work in these roles. FDLE SASs (supervisors) took leadership roles, provided direction and coordinated the various agency representatives working at the sites.” Encountering chaos is not the same as causing chaos. In fact, FDLE members were able to positively identify 48 of the 49 victims by 7 a.m. Monday.
Further, the Sentinel wrote the report also detailed problems that led to a statewide intelligence agency not immediately sharing information about the shooting, which led to a significant delay in getting details to law enforcement.
Fact: There were no delays in providing information to law enforcement. Notifications began around 4 a.m. Due to the type of intelligence being gathered and the level of the investigation being conducted immediately following the event, the Florida Fusion Center was directed by FDLE command staff not to disseminate specific pieces of information. This was a terrorist event and whether there were other potential targets or impacts had yet to be determined. Until the information and intelligence had been vetted, it could not be distributed to non-law enforcement FFC partners. Similar steps are taken following any event of this type.
Many of Orlando’s Regional Domestic Security Task Force resources were deployed to the Pulse incident immediately. Task Force chairs (FDLE Special Agent in Charge Danny Banks and Osceola County Sheriff Robert Hansell) were on scene communicating with other regional task forces ensuring deployment of additional resources from law enforcement to medical personnel to bomb squads.
It is unfortunate the Sentinel chose to sensationalize the report by providing inaccurate information.
By overstating the recommendations for improvement, while failing to mention the strengths noted in the report, the article is unbalanced and unfair to those law enforcement members who put their lives on the line the night of the Pulse attack and tirelessly worked the days following to ensure a safer Florida.

ICYMI: Orlando Sentinel: Incentive cuts could stymie Orlando's hunt for higher-paid jobs, officials say

Posted on February 6, 2017

Incentive cuts could stymie Orlando’s hunt for higher-paid jobs, officials say
Orlando Sentinel
Column: Paul Brinkmann
February 5, 2017
Alan Horne was worried last year about finding a job in manufacturing when he moved back to Orlando where he had gone to high school.
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But he quickly landed a job at a company that had just been approved to receive state incentive dollars to expand in Orlando: Voxx International.
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The incentive program that Voxx used is facing elimination under a bill filed in the Legislature this week, backed by House Speaker Richard Corcoran.
Local leaders say cutting incentives could spell trouble for Orlando’s efforts to add more higher-paying tech, health and professional jobs — as it did in recent years with incentives for Voxx, Deloitte, Verizon and KPMG — to balance tens of thousands of low-paying hospitality and theme-park jobs.
There are many ways to entice a business to locate in your community, said Crystal Sircy, executive vice president at the Orlando Economic Development Commission. The most important issue is ability to hire a trained workforce. But Sircy said competition is fierce, and sometimes cities wind up being equal at the end of a company’s research. If Orlando has no money to offer, while Dallas or Atlanta does, the company probably won’t come to Central Florida, she said.
“To lose the ability to win the competitive advantage, at the end of that competition, would be unfortunate,” she said.
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Every state offers some kind of incentives, and half of them offer cash incentives, said Jay Biggins, a New York- based consultant with one of the nation’s leading site selection companies.
“Public-sector economic-development incentives are built as a pricing strategy,” he said. “Like any other part of your business, relocating has a cost, and helping companies with that cost makes you more attractive.”
Other states continue to offer aggressive cash incentives. Industry observers said lawmakers in other states, such as North Carolina, have tried to end or cut back some of their incentive programs, only to refund them. In 2015 North Carolina replenished funding for its Jobs Development Investment Grant program through 2018, and raised the monetary value of JDIG grants the state can give each year from $15 million to $20 million for most projects.
Bloomberg produced a survey that year that named Texas, Florida and Nevada as the most business-friendly states for relocations, in terms of corporate taxes and incentives. New York, California and Illinois were deemed the least friendly, although those states do offer incentives also.
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The Space Coast also has been relying heavily on incentives to attract companies such as Blue Origin, which has already been approved for a reported $26 million incentive package to build a new rocket factory and employ 300 people at an average of $89,000 salary, and OneWeb, which is in line for about $20 million in various incentives to build a satellite plant employing 250 people.
In Orlando, Voxx executives said an incentive package of $1.4 million from Florida and the city was among the reasons they chose to move their headquarters here from New York.
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