Tampa Police say their manhunt for Dantae Morris was proper listen

Tags: Dantae Morris, Jane Castor, Police, Tampa, Tampa Police, Bob Buckhorn

Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor.

photo by Seán Kinane/WMNF (Sept. 2009)

Last summer Tampa Police conducted a manhunt for Dontae Morris, who allegedly shot and killed two police officers. Some residents of the community say that the police may have gone too far. Today Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor and Mayor Bob Buckhorn held a press conference to release a report on the search.

Castor stressed the importance of relationships between the police and the community

"The communication, to keep everybody that needs to be involved, including your own agency and the citizens, and lastly the relationships; to build those relationships with law enforcement, and also as important and if not more important with the community before an incident like this occurs."

When asked about complaints regarding searches by the police, Castor said that issues brought up had been resolved.

"The only complaints that I received personally were second and third hand, and when they were traced back the vast majority of responses that we received from the citizens were thank you: "please come in, because i don't want him in my house harming my family." So the involvement of the community, and the positive response from the community was really overwhelming. There were just a couple of individuals that raised some concerns and again when I researched those back the community was happy."

Link to a pdf of the report

Previous WMNF coverage of Tampa Police