Prevention, Not Just Arrests; A Police Program Seeks to Stem Crime before There's a Need for an Apprehension

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Byline: MATT COLEMAN

This fence puts chain link to shame.

Each panel is about 7 feet tall and topped with sharpened metal.

A bolt cutter would barely make a dent in the solid iron bars that constitute the frame.

But that didn't stop someone from trying to uproot it. One of the panels that wasn't anchored in concrete was cocked at a strange angle, leaving a small entrance to the debris-filled creek beyond.

"There's a reason it's called an elephant fence," Miles McChriston said. "Whoever tried to move it probably got a hernia."

McChriston, a 21-year veteran of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, isn't in the fence-building business, but he said this is one of the projects of which he's most proud.

He and Officer Rita Cusatti are part of a new Sheriff's Office initiative to alter the reactive nature of police work. The agency was awarded a $1.1 million grant …