Police officers are trained to be prepared for anything and everything. But it’s one thing to be trained, and it’s another thing to have to actually do it.
Dadeville Police Department was the first on scene of the April 15, 2023 shooting in downtown, and there’s nothing that could’ve fully prepared the officers for what they found.
“In a small town like Dadeville and a close community like this, you can wish that you are immune to these types of events,” DPD chief Jonathan Floyd said. “But the truth is, there is no Mayberry existence in America, so when I got the call, I immediately started putting people in place.”
Fortunately, Dadeville officers have a take-home car program so officers were immediately able to get to the scene of Mahogany Masterpiece Dance Studio, where a shooting broke out at a 16th birthday party. Ultimately, four people died and 32 others were injured.
Although the scene seemed chaotic, Floyd and his team went right into a plan and had officers at Lake Martin Community Hospital and Russell Medical.
“Luckily, we had such a tremendous response from our neighboring agencies,” Floyd said. “And when I say neighboring, I mean even neighboring counties, not just Tallapoosa County response. That allowed me to have personnel near the crime scene where I was able to send my officers, my investigators to where they needed to go.”
For an event of this magnitude, Floyd didn’t have to call in extra troops, but they were there for him.
“The boots on the ground that night, it was 100% victim focused and focused on identifying the shooters,” Floyd said. “But at the same time, remembering not only are there victims, but ultimately you have victims’ families, you have friends of the victims. There’s so much collateral hurt. People use the term ‘collateral damage,’ but there was just so much collateral hurt over an event like this.”
Early into the investigation, Floyd, with the advice of Tallapoosa County Sheriff Jimmy Abbett, called in Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s State Bureau of Investigation.
“The two of us decided that with the resources that our state and federal partners have that we don’t have, the resources that they have that were desperately needed, we were going to let them take the lead,” Floyd said. “And I say we. There is no way I could ever repay Sheriff Abbett for his leadership, his support during this entire time. He was a tremendous blessing.”
Just because the state and federal agents started their investigation didn’t mean things became easy for the Dadeville Police Department.
“There was no, ‘OK, we can just put our hands in our pockets, sit back and let them do everything,’” Floyd explained. “There was still work to be done.”
More than anything, Floyd and his officers continued to be a support system for the survivors and their families. Like most people in Dadeville, Floyd had a personal connection to one of the victims.
Although not much has changed in terms of how investigations are done in the day to day operations of Dadeville Police Department, Floyd said that day ultimately changed everything.
“I think it’s not just our department how we’ve interacted with the victims and how we’ve been affected,” Floyd said. “I think it’s really changed the way our entire city deals with each other. Everyone knows that there was a tremendous tragedy here, that we will give anything to go back in time and hope that it wouldn’t happen, but it did.”
Not only in the hours after the shooting, but in the days, weeks and months after, Floyd said he continued to see an outpouring of support.
“The amount of people who have prayed for our victims, for the families, the police, fire, EMS that were involved in the investigation and the treatment of the victims, it just blows your mind the people who actually care,” Floyd said. “You have so many people who they really didn’t know what to do, but they knew they wanted to do something and that comes from a sense of caring and it comes from having your heart in the right place.
“With that being said, without the support of our community and our surrounding areas, we wouldn’t have the strength to do what we do every day.”
