GETTING RESULTS TOGETHER

Inside the auditorium at the Jewish Community Center in Maitland, nine young adults with special needs sat alongside their parents, scattered at tables around the room.

It's a church Christmas store like you've never seen: all kinds of amazing toys for just a few dollars and parents get all the credit.

It is the missing piece in trying to help addicted inmates recover so they don't come back to jail.

An Orlando City Commissioner's unusual idea to put "safety coaches" in one troubled school to combat violence is now happening.

The University of Central Florida Police Department now has the ability to livestream a police officer's body camera video directly into their headquarters.

It's a first for the police department at the University of Central Florida: a full-time, in-house mental health counselor to assist officers when they're dealing with students in crisis.

Osceola County Sheriff Marcos Lopez said he has fulfilled his promise to have bilingual Spanish speakers answer the phones in his 911 dispatch center.

Newly-sworn in Tavares police Chief Sarah Coursey is the first woman to become the top cop in her city and only the second in all of Lake County.

The many faces of 59-year-old Billy Doran are posted on the Volusia County Jail's website - the mugshots of his many arrests over the years, mostly for theft, mostly related to drugs. He's been arrested as many as 60 times in Volusia County and sent to prison seven times.

Nonprofit Healthy Families Seminole at the Children’s Home Society (CHS) of Florida, which works to keep families together and children out of foster care, has seen a 100% success rate this year.

After yet another police suicide in Central Florida, deputies have come up with a solution: the Osceola County Sheriff's Office has finally hired a full-time in-house mental health expert.

For the past 12 months, Volusia County Sheriff's deputies responding to sensitive calls dealing with people in mental health crises have had another option, besides taking someone to the hospital for their own safety under the Baker Act.

University of Central Florida researchers have discovered one of the simplest stress relievers for families, now and during the height of the pandemic, is plain old child’s play.

For more than a decade, the Jewish Federation has been teaching adults with special needs, at no cost to them, how to get jobs and then arranging jobs.

Annual retraining this summer for Osceola County Sheriff’s Office SROs was longer and more intensive than ever before, according to Sheriff Marcos Lopez.

As Osceola County heads back-to-school, for the first time ever, the youngest students will be getting life lessons on how to deal with bullying directly from deputies.

When the I-4 Express lanes first opened five months ago, the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) started paying local law enforcement to stand guard at all direct-connect off-ramps.

After a racist tirade against the owners of an Orlando Asian-American restaurant went viral a couple of weeks ago, the Central Florida community responded with a wave of support, including from a brand new squad at the Orange County Sheriff's Office created to give Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders a voice.

The University of Central Florida is the first in Central Florida, and the first public university in the state, to give students and staff the power to save their own lives if they’re overdosing.

Sheriff Marcos Lopez said the Real-Time Crime Center and the ongoing effort to add additional school camera feeds means better protection.

Firefighter paramedics of course treat every 911 call as an emergency, but not every call is an emergency, according to Sanford Medical & EMS Director Dr. Todd Husty.

For the first time ever, the University of Central Florida's police department is seeking an additional, significant accreditation only for colleges and universities.

Barb Bergin, executive director of Central Florida’s Crimeline, said a new reporting tool entirely for students is getting results together more than ever, especially for children in mental health crisis.

By all accounts, James Baker — instantly recognizable by his hulking 6 feet, 5 inches frame, bulging biceps and tattoo-covered arms — is an effective police officer within the Orlando Police Department’s Neighborhood Patrol Unit (NPU).

After receiving a federal grant for almost $600,000, the Flagler County sheriff converted two sections of the jail to begin helping inmates with their addiction - if they agree to take the help.

The driver's license designation helps avoid miscommunication with law enforcement.

Every day, a group of local detectives go to work with the FBI at the FBI offices in Maitland to tackle the growing problem.

Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood’s answer to fixing a major problem in his county—taking care of teens in trouble and keeping them off a path to prison—is a long-needed Juvenile Assessment Center.

Every week, John Girard and his fellow intervention officers (who are civilians, not deputies) meet with six Markham Woods students that the school identified as high-risk for dropping out or getting kicked out.

Detectives at colleges across the country are building their cases against a 24-year-old accused of recording women in bathrooms stalls at several different schools, thanks to the University of Central Florida Police Department.

The Seminole County Fire Department is speeding up response times deep in the woods.

The number of first responders committing suicide continues to rise, according to leaders of the first comprehensive statewide task force representing firefighters, EMS, law enforcement, corrections, training and behavioral health services across Florida.

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has received $1.2 million of federal grant money to hire two counselors for the next four years specifically for young people 25 and under.

In a climate where fewer people are choosing to become police applicants, hiring is difficult.

Pastor Alice Mae Faison became the department’s first Black female police officer at a time of discrimination and divide in this country.

In the decade since Trayvon Martin was killed in Sanford, and especially in the last couple of years since George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis, policing has rapidly evolved — perhaps the most ever in a short amount of time.

When a retired Marion County principal suggested the idea of purchasing an ice cream truck for community outreach, the Ocala police chief loved it.

The Daytona Beach Police Department is among the first law enforcement agencies in Florida to have live-streaming-capable body-worn cameras.

Since the Orlando Police Department's Overdose Unit was created a little more than a year ago, it has made almost a hundred arrests of drug dealers who've sold deadly and potentially deadly doses of opioids.

Project Hope was founded in Ocala more than a decade ago specifically for homeless women with children because there was nowhere for those women to turn.

A Central Florida police department is putting its money where its mouth is.

2021 was one of the most successful years ever for Orlando Police Department school resource officers.

Officers can now continue handing out auto repair gift cards instead of tickets.

One Central Florida police academy begins body camera training.

When Corporal Lee Sahs pulled over a young man for a broken brake light, the young man immediately got out of the car.

When University of Central Florida police get a call from a suicidal student, it’s often from the same place: the top of a UCF parking garage.

All new Orange County Sheriff’s deputies undergo an intense, day-long autism awareness training program that includes conversations with those with autism.

Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood was searching for a way to find better recruits and make better cops so he created the first police academy in Central Florida to be entirely run by a local sheriff’s office.

For Osceola County's first Hispanic Sheriff Marcos Lopez, it's important for him to speak to his county the way a large and growing portion speaks to him -- in Spanish.