Police seek info on violence

PANAMA CITY — Reporters were limited to one question during a press conference Thursday in which Panama City Police Chief Scott Ervin urged people to share with police information about violent crime in their community.

Ervin held the brief press conference to address the recent wave of gun violence in the city after another teen was shot earlier in the day. He read a brief statement praising the working relationship PCPD has with other local law enforcement agencies and the news media.

He briefly addressed the latest shooting, which occurred around 4:30 a.m. in unit C-102 at the Macedonia Garden Apartments on 17th Street. Police found Samuel McGriff, 17, shot in the gut in the kitchen, according to a PCPD incident report. Ervin said McGriff had just left a nightclub and lamented the failure of McGriff’s parents.

“Where are the parents?” Ervin said. “Clearly someone has failed this child.”

The press conference lasted about six minutes. Ervin explained he was pressed for time and had some training he had to get to, so reporters were allowed to ask him only one question. He didn’t elaborate on the training, and no reporter raised the question.

By the time three reporters had asked their allotted question, Ervin had not provided any information on McGriff’s medical condition, whether the police had any suspects or any information about a potential motive in any of the recent shootings.

Bay Medical Center spokeswoman Christa Davis said a patient listed as unknown who came in Thursday morning with a gunshot wound was in stable condition in the hospital’s intensive care unit.

The department has been sporadic in releasing information about the recent gun violence, which has claimed four lives in Panama City in the span of a month. The department did not issue a press release on McGriff’s shooting Thursday, although did release an incident report when it was requested.

After a teen was shot and killed outside a nightclub last week, police didn’t issue a press release or return at least three messages from The News Herald seeking information. A press release issued the following day announcing the arrest of two suspects in the shooting was the department’s first acknowledgement of the shooting.

“We try to do our best to make sure that we’re giving statements to the media and making sure that those media releases are going out,” Ervin said.

The position of public information officer, which is traditionally the primary point of contact between the department and news media, was eliminated around the time Ervin was appointed chief of police in February 2013.

Ervin said Thursday none of the shootings were random, and police have made arrests in each case except McGriff’s shooting Thursday. Ervin didn’t say if police had any leads in McGriff’s shooting, but he was confident the investigation would be resolved quickly and urged community members to come forward with information about the crime.

“My hope is that our shared community values will result in parents, family members and other community members continuing to contact us with information about crimes, preferably before they occur, but certainly after a crime occurs so that no violent criminal has a safe haven,” Ervin said. “Remember, when you possess information and you don’t share it, you condone the acts of violence that are taking place.”