I was out there one day I was by myself on the south end of the Dyan Causeway and I stopped four guys fishing on a boat just do a Fisheries check that I get their four of their IDs I run them and one of the guys has got a warrant and when you're in a situation like that you're tied up right alongside of them so they're hearing the radio traffic coming across the radio and so now it's four against one and I'm tied up to him so when I asked him to step on the boat he says uh why I said well I didn't see to talk to you he goes I'm not stepping on your boat so now the guy definitely knows what's up and the boat was a pretty decent boat so I thought for a second I looked at the guy the captain or the owner of the boat I said I might be real blunt with you here's the deal I said he's got a warrant he's going to step on my boat and if not I'm going to drop the throttles I'm going to drive your boat and this boat right up on that Rocky sh line right there and those deputies right there and I are going to arrest him so I said those are your choices this is 56 a pelis County Sheriff's Office podcast I'm Ricky Butler with Laura Sullivan and Ashley we are really excited today to have Chief Deputy Dave Danzig as our guest on 56 uh he has always been a great friend to PR on all the things we're doing as long as he's been around so we're excited to have him to talk to number two I guess he's the that's there probably an Austin Powers joke there but he is the second highest ranking person we've ever had on the podcast of course behind the sheriff so we're happy to have you Chief thanks for coming we're going to talk about of course that origin story tell some stories along the way hopefully talk about some leadership stuff but before all that Ashley has a question it's all yours you can get rid of one mildly inconvenient thing in the world what is it wow mildly inconvenient thing do I go first I don't know the rules can they be people that that's what came to my mind right away I can't say that on the record yeah mildly if as long as it's mildly and it's not like all the murderers or anything like that mildly inconvenient so yeah there's no order to it it's just whoever comes up with one yeah I'm going to get rid of allergies solid M mine mine in particular but if I can get rid of allergies all over the world yeah no more sniffles yeah I was going to say lines like I hate waiting in line okay like a line like a line at the bank or a line at the nobody goes to Banks anymore but when they want the banks when I used to go to the bank yeah uh amusement park things like that grocery stores for the world or no Lines Just For You chaos no no for everybody you just so it's like whoever strongest gets there first no just for everybody just lines are just inconvenient I think we're live in such a world now where you're used to stuff at your fingertips on your phone or or wherever and all a sudden you hit a line and you're like oh I wasn't anticipating this yeah that's this is inconvenient why am I why am I waiting in line I could just order this from my phone or right you do you do yeah I mean especially at Chick-fil-A like Chick-fil-A in particular like yeah well what they can rock a line they can they can but but what happens is is you can literally order on your phone and then Park in a parking spot and they bring it out to you with pleasure they do but then people can you can order and then stay in line anyway like what's the point yeah all right I'm off that tiate I'm still thinking because there's so many things you're still stuck on the people you want to get rid of yeah mildly inconvenient mine would be mosquitoes mosquitoes oh yeah yeah they love me yeah makes being outdoors not tough what would the dragonflies eat though doesn't sound like [Laughter] dragonflies eat mosquitoes I didn't I'm learning you're learning here didn't know we had David atenor on the podcast yeah law enforcement and nature show um yeah I I would I think that there are and this might be way too deep for this but I think there are some aspects of social media uh that I could that I could eliminate and live without and it would probably be gosh is it's a mild inconvenience for us because we are trying to put out good information so I guess the idea of it is people but it's not a particular person I guess people in general that just have no interest in like research and and learning actual information and they just dive in right I was just thinking like when people don't watch the entire video right or and then they have they decide to comment and it's like you just watch the whole thing you would have that answer you're looking for it's not a really good answer but that's what came to mind and it's mildly inconvenient for us and I think it should be mildly inconvenient for everybody that cares about you know facts and stuff all right yeah that's my answer I'm sticking to it so we got mosquitoes on one end and people not commenting on before reviewing on the other for broad spectrum but that that would have worldwide implications that would have much bigger implications than just social media if you got people to to think before they acted and to read and research before they commented yeah it's really not mild anyway but that's I'm just big I was starting to think about things that just me mhm and that was it's it's specific to us so I don't know I feel like it's mild but if it were gone its effect would be yes yes that was a good one that was good all right cool all right tell us your life story Chief life story uh where where to begin where where do you want to start no so um where'd you come from how'd you get down here how'd you end up at the Sheriff's Office that's how we usually start so I um grew up in Norther Virginia was born Bor and raised in Fairfax County Virginia uh was there up through high school so um my brother who works here as you guys know we uh come from a a police background family or a law enforcement family we always kind of joke that law enforcement's been our family business so some people you know their parents own a a business or a storefront or name it and the kids end up taking it over we kind of view our our upbringing that way so our father was a uh a Fairfax County Police Officer so he started up there in 196 68 was a police officer from 68 to 88 so we grew up in that culture and grew up with it um in Virginia our mother um worked as a civilian in the police department she was a dispatcher she worked in records she had a lot of different roles in the police department up there so they that's where we came from we came from a police family and um our dad retired in 1988 so I we've always had a take-home Cruiser in the driveway and some of my earliest memories of a as a child growing up and going to school was in the police car my dad would drive us to school in the in the cruiser and occasionally pull somebody over in the cruiser while you were with it yeah yeah for sure yeah back then um so that's kind of how how it started and I knew uh early on that I wanted to be in in law enforcement um law enforcement is even part of your your very very early childhood right when you were for sure years yeah just a funny story right here at the beginning um when I was being potty trained as a youngster uh way back in the day the the reward that my father had arranged if I could complete potty training and give up the diaper was I get to go for a ride in a marked car so there was an officer by the name of June June Bole at the time that worked the the district that we lived in and June came over and got me in the cruiser and I got to sit up front uh and go for a ride around the block because I had uh been potty trained so uh so my brother uh he's a few years younger than me he got a little bit better of a deal so when he was being potty trained um if he was able to complete the the potty training he got to go sit in one of their new helicopters they just got a flight what didn't get to go fly in it but he got to go sit in it so I got the Cruiser ride and he got the the the younger sibling always gets the benefits they do I wouldn't know but I've heard that oh yeah yeah I'm I'm an oldest so they always get the better stuff I'm youngest I can vouch always better so that's kind of how it started for me it's it's I didn't uh really consider anything else thinking back to elementary and middle school and up into high school I'd always planned on going into law enforcement and quite frankly had planned on joining the Fairfax County Police Department going to work up there and then uh my grandparents uh moved here in the 70s so we' been coming down to the Tampa Bay Area down to uh South Pasadena St Pete Beach the seminal area for vacations over the years so I uh graduated high school was going to college up there um my parents are divorced so my mother had relocated down here with my brother um they were living down here so I came down here for Christmas break in 1994 and while I was down here my mom had applied for a job here at the Sheriff's Office and she had just gotten hired as a uh at the time I think it was a clerk 4 which is like a secretary so she was telling me about the sheriff's office and said that and in Virginia uh the Sheriff's Office up there just does the jail and courts and things like that so she was telling me about the sheriff's office here and she you know it's really like the Fairfax County Police Department but then add in the the Fairfax County Sheriff's Department they really kind of do everything here from from Road Patrol to the jail to investigations mhm I said Okay cool so I came down for that Christmas break and I said hey you think I could do a ride along so she said yeah I talked to the captain's secretary and the captain's secretary said you could do a ride along so she brought home some paperwork so I had to get out a map um for those of you that are younger it's a piece of paper that had like lines on it directions so got out of map yeah I had to look up how to get to the 10750 Alberton Road here in Largo so I looked it up and she had arranged for this ride along so I drove over here on a Friday night and I walked in the lobby of the old building sat down I said hey I'm here for the for a ride along and then uh long behold Joe Manning um who's retired from here came to the door he was a Corporal and Joe just is a side not is now the chief of police he's retired from his chief of police up in Seville Tennessee Okay so he walks to the door and says hey how are you hey how are you nice to meet you so we went out and went for a ride along and I was just blown away by the agency I really it was it was a nice warm night it was you it was beautiful weather we were busy we went on a bunch of calls um we went to dinner with him and his Sergeant uh they were talking about working here really just talked about the agency gave me you know walked me around a little bit so I was done with the rod along along was super impressed with with the agency and I uh left went back up to Virginia after Christmas break and right as I got there um where I was living was in Bradford Virginia which is in the southwest part of the state I was going to college there and we had an ice storm right when I got got back so The Whole Town's frozen over and that was the first year that the penel County Sheriff's Office had done a calendar and if you remember that calendar the first one it was one of our old uh capric Cruisers out at the belir causeway boat ramp and the sun was setting behind it and there was palm trees and you could see the other Coastal so I I took that back and had it hanging on the wall where I was living it was happened to be beside a window and looking out that window there was an ice storm and my roommates and I sat there and looked at that window for a week and watched car slide down and crash during the the ice storm oh so I'm sitting there looking at that picture and I'm looking at the ice and I say you know if I'm gonna do policing uh for a career which I wanted to do I said there's got to be a better way than doing it up here in the cold so yeah so I sold everything I owned uh when the semester ended and and threw my clothes and my Nissan Sentra and off the floor I came so now you were so how you were you said you you know you went on a ride along SE how old were you when you came down 20 okay so I assume You' done ride along some things with Fairfax as well I had yeah I was a police explorer up there um I'd been in the Explorer Program which I really that explore program really solidified for me about my career choice I knew I was pretty certain I wanted to be a a uh police officer growing up or a deputy and then once I got into the Explorer program and I did some ride alongs as an Explorer I'm like okay this is cool this is what I want to do um I never wanted to work in an office and I wanted something with variety something that was different every day and that's what law enforcement is you never no two days are ever the same you don't it's not a predictable job so that's what really drew me to I wanted to work Outdoors now my job now I work a lot inside I wanted to work Outdoors right and get into it yeah so you load up the Nissan Sentra you come down had you applied at that point or what was the plan you're just going to come stay with your mom another story so I get down here my obviously my mom knows I'm coming I get down here and then she had done a little checking for me and at the time we weren't hiring pre-certified had to be certified to to work here as a a patrol Deputy so I had found out that the academy was through St P college or St P Junior College at the time which was the All State Center so I got down here on a Friday after school got out so Monday morning I get up I get dressed I get the map out again I look up where the All State Center is and I drive down there I walk through the door I park visitors par spot out front I walk in I find the office for the Academy I walk in I said hey I'm Dave Danzig I'm here from Virginia and I want to go to the police academy I gu I can sign up and do that so they were super nice but they gave me like a weird look they're like well you just you just drove here from Virginia I said well I drove here Friday I said this is Monday yeah I said I have to go yeah I guess I have to go to the academy I don't know how where do I sign up like is there a sign in sheet what do I do here right she say well have you been through pass yet no I'm I'm familiar with what pass is she say it's the police applicant screening service you have to go through that before you go to the academy I said great is that where was that is that next door where did I go to do that I'm going to go sign up and I'll be back I'm going to go to the academy mhm says it's up on Druid Road in clearw at the time I'm like perfect get that off the old map again so she says you have to go through them first so I leave as I'm driving up to pass I get pulled over on Missouri Avenue for speeding Clearwater Police Clearwater officer walks up and say hey how's it going I just got here I'm you know from Virginia I'm going I'm trying to find this Pass Place on Druid Road and he goes oh you want to be a police officer I said yeah he goes you going to work for Clear Water I said maybe I'm just trying to find the pass place so I can get signed up I want to start the academy there's no problem I'll be right back and he comes back up with a ticket so I got a ticket on the way to the pass office that's a BS I've been Florida three days yeah four days so welcome to Florida yeah so I go to the pass office and I walk in I'm like hey I want to be a police officer and but not in Clear Water yeah not in Clear Water was actually surprisingly enough I mean guess I was actually impressed by the officer cuz he was driving a Mustang oh and it was like a slick topped Mustang one of the old Fastback five Mustangs and it was a clear water police one and he got me I was speeding I think it was 50 something odd and 40 I forget what it was it was like 17 over I think but he came zipping up behind me in the Mustang and after even though I got the ticket I was upset with that but I was like man that was a cool car it was a Mustang we didn't have those in Virginia I that's super cool um so I went to the pass office make a long story short and then I started filling out the paperwork and there was a waiting list even then just to get through the pass process so it took me almost a year I didn't get into the academy until May of '96 and then I started here uh in October of 96 so went through the academy and then um as an academy was nearing end Clear Water offered me a job so initially even though I gotten a ticket initially started with clear water and when I say started I went to an orientation day and had taken the position and then at the at the time I was going through the process here and then I got home after that orientation day and this was in the answering machine days pre pre- cell phone days and I had a message from Human Resources here and they said hey we'd like to offer you a job with the sheriff's office so then I called clear water and said uh I was going to come here so then I started here it was October 1st of 96 wow and it was the academy easy for you yeah it was challenging it wasn't I wouldn't say easy I mean you have to put the work in into it you know like it's I don't think it's easy for anybody you have to study and and things and I uh in that time that I was waiting to go to the academy I took a job as a server I was working at lever rocks in madira beach so I I worked uh pretty much full-time serving until I could get into the academy so I I saved money doing that and I was living with my mom at the time M so when I went to the academy I was fortunate enough I didn't have to work I just went to the academy full-time and there were some classmates of mine that were trying to balance that with a family and balance that with work I didn't have to do that so I had the time to dedicate to it um but I remember it was challenging I mean the physical parts of it and the studying and back then the you know the state exam was a written WR an exam you had to go over to the Tampa Convention Center and take it people came in from all over the state it was like a big deal so I guess also like obviously you did some ride alongs had some knowledge with your dad and everything you know was it what you expected oh for sure yeah for sure um policing is a great profession it's the you know it's the greatest show on Earth um you see things you know you see the best in people the worst in people and it was definitely what I expected MH for sure um and I was excited going through the Academy I couldn't wait to get out and and get started and I was like a kid in a you know kid in a candy store so to speak I knew early on that you know I didn't have any regrets in this career field U but I was beyond excited to come to work here at the Sheriff's Office and much like everybody that says that comes on now is this the opportunities here we do so much and have so much and there's so many opportunities here to move around the agency and that's what I was most excited about um compared to a smaller agency just all the specialized units we had and I remember starting as a 21y old remember thinking I'm going to do everything here you I want to touch where do you want to go everywhere yeah I want to stop everywhere and see everything I was just that yeah that excited about it so you graduate the academy everything goes well start fto how was that yeah so fto was good um you know I had had good fto we had just um a year prior had uh merged with the city of dun Eden so my first fto was a guy by the name of Mike Anthony and he was a uh Duneden officer for years so he he'd only been with us for a year but he had a ton of experience and he was just an old school street cop just knew how to be a cop and taught you how to be a cop and how to investigate and how to think things through and how to talk to people and how to solve crimes and investigate so then I had Kurt Romanowski for phase two uh and we worked up in deden and he was another just an investigator nothing went to CID when we were working together he's like you know we got we got a call okay yep you're going to investigate that I'm like well no I should I do a report sent it to the detective division goes yeah when you're on your own but when you're with me we're going to figure this out so we worked some cases that should have gone as a recruit some cases that should have gone to CID that we worked all the way through so uh those two guys really taught me at the beginning like how to how to be a cop and how to do it how to think things through how to investigate how to turn over rocks how to research you know back then we didn't have the laptops in the cars we had the old data terminal so you research was kind of old school you had to go to a data terminal at one of the stations look stuff up and you had to do a lot of Sho leather type police work it wasn't all cameras and Technology like it is now so it was good I got through field training and then uh when I got out I was assigned to evening shift uh down here in the South part of the county when I got out asley je have something I was just going to say C criminal investigation division yes yes sorry criminal investigation division yeah C so a lot of times the way that it works is the cases that require followup now and even back then the deputies will take a report and if there's followup to be done or there's no suspects or you're waiting on forensic evidence to come back or Prince the deputies will take the initial report and then they'll refer it up to the detective division the detective will get it you know they'll be assigned to an area they'll get it they'll review it they'll get the prints they'll do the the followup the homework on it if you will and try to solve it so um with Kurt it was no you're not we're not doing that he goes uh we're going to keep it and you're going to you're going to do the work on it go knock on the doors and and put the work in behind it so you I was with him for a couple of weeks I think I was with him for might have been a month now I forget three four weeks and we we had a couple burglaries early on and he had me work the burglaries all the way through and we ended up solving them which was interesting they were kids in the neighborhood and we got Prince back and it really opened up my eyes to to to that process so you make it out of fto you're on your own do you have a memorable first call or arrest yeah so my first arrest is is a memorable one which I'll never forget it's the only time I've ever arrested somebody uh for this so I'm um I was still in the program so my first arrest was before I got on the program I'm still in the program and I'm working uh down in lman and back then we had a street crimes unit at the time it was the uh Omega Squad so there was a fight over to trailer park in East lman so we we all get over there um I was with my fto and my regular fto was off I was with another fto like a substitute if you will so we get over there and the fight wasn't is what it was reported to be or reported to be it was pretty much broken up so we get over there and me being the new guy I collect everybody's IDs and get everybody's names me run everybody real quick so I run this uh this woman through the terminal and it pops that she's got a warrant this is the first time i' had seen this I was this is a warrant this is cool so this is going to be a mass murder I got you know got a warrant this is cool so there's things that the times are hard to read so I saw that it was a failure to appear warrant so I'm scrolling through the screen it was like an old calculator type screen and I looked down and eventually I came to the charge and the charge was failure to appear for cat running at large so I'm like okay so I get out and I tell my fto I said hey I got she's got a 60 which is a police term for a warrant like 56's for me was she kind of 60 he's like oh cool what's the for I said cat running at large he goes what I said I don't know I said I I don't know it's a failure to appear so when over and told this poor woman I said well I said y do you want a cat and she goes yeah several I said did you get a ticket for your cat being on the loose she goes yeah I said did you pay it she goes well no I said well the bad news is you got a warrant I said you got to go to jail and she goes for my cat being out I said well fortunately yeah I said your Bond's $113 and so and of course being new I'm like you know all you know Joe frish if you will Bam put your hands behind your back and you know went through the whole double locking of the cuffs and you know the whole thing so I drove her to jail for cat running at large so how does that even happen how do you get acket was what was the cat doing I don't know running that's all the cat used to running it was large I don't know it was like a big deal I guess at the time and I've never seen that uh charge since and I don't think that's a statistical category that we capture that I'm aware of I would imagine not that's kind of like a Gateway crime you know leading on to to Thomas like that that was the first time I ever like personally like arrested somebody you know I was like I was the guy on that one I'm like wow all right it was me yeah and you know she's like that bastard yeah yeah I should go in and look that up and see what ever happened to her I don't know if she uh well she probably went Comm much more serious crimes now Life Of Crime yeah or maybe intervened in her in the cat's life an early stage and now the cat became a home cat and know that it can't be on the Run anymore I don't know got domesticated got domesticated started using its litter pan I don't turn it life around turn it life around I hope she's listening right now yeah I don't remember her name which is sad if you are call in call it be a guest on the 56 podcast 526200 uh yeah that's awesome turning lives around first first week on the job the cat the cat turn I can't get over the cat turning his life around crazy domes stop the catnip yeah um well what else what else in that time I mean what any other good stories your firsts any colossal screw-ups do you crash any cars yeah I wrecked a few cars yeah um back then um I used to you I tell the deputies now you're you're probably not going to wreck a car around here that somebody hasn't wrecked it you know wrecked a car like that before um and what kind of Cruisers did they have the Caprices them when you started or what were you driving oh so my first car was a 1988 Dodge Diplomat if you can believe that AM radio and crank windows and the first time I went to drive it is that our classic car now car it look just like that and the first time I went to drive it uh there was a little bit of rain coming down and I turned on the windshield wipers and this the driver side one work the passenger one did not like this is interesting um so I only had that car for just a little bit and then I moved into a Crown Vic and we had um at the time had just absorbed Mader Beach Police Department so they had taken they had some Crown vix they had taken their Crown vix and repainted them with our logo so it had the Old City Light package in it but it had our logo on it and that car had a lot of miles on it and it burnt oil so when you accelerated it would it would leave you a smoke trail behind it it was kind of cool like a James Bond thing like a James Bond thing yeah so that but that car had carpeting it had been the I guess the captain's car something one point so down there so it had Carpeting and it had a a power seat which were luxury items at the time didn't have the plastic floor right um yeah but unfortunately I ended up wrecking that car I had an issue back early on with ghost riding like you jump out of the car I forgot to forget to put it in park it's called ghost riding uh and you look back and the car's rolling away and you're like oh sir I'll be right back I got to go retrieve my car and then we'll uh carry on with the uh enforcement action of the hour here yeah um so I did that a couple times which happens yeah it happens it happens yeah you get a little caught up now the new tahos is a spoiler alert if you jump out at 5 miles hour it automatically slams into into park for you instead of another car like what you would do correct yeah for sure for sure that I don't know why GM hasn't hired you to kind of do some messaging on that yeah that's nice I I popped my door the other day pull up to the gas pumps I just popped it before it came to a complete stop in the Tahoe and it locked the brakes up and I'm like oh that's nice nice feature as you hit your head on the a pillar just about yeah nice feature that's awesome the the daning feature for sure for sure yeah so I was in Patrol for a while a couple of years I worked predominately evenings I worked midnights I worked out on the Gandy on on Midnight's first shift which was a lot of fun Gandy uh back then I guess so now to a certain degree on midnight shift was like the wild west back then it was just a lot of traffic between Tampa and Pano a lot of people out there at night doing drugs and doing things and we had Racers and it was that was a that was a fun shift um and then I became an fto so that's kind of a funny story I was just walking down the hallway one day and Sergeant bardi was the fto coordinator and he always thought he had myself and another deputy confused from when we started he always thought my name was John so he stopped me one day he goes John I said hey so what's going goes you want to be an fto sure he goes all right great you got to recruit this afternoon he'll be in at 3 o'cl I said okay perfect so that's how I became an fto so I recruit that afternoon come in and I'm like all right perfect um so I did have for for a while we went we were hiring back then a lot so I went through we went through a period of time I was an fto for a year and we had a recruit uh had a recruit with me for every shift for a whole year you know not the same recruit varying recruits but it was a lot of fun but there's a burnout Factor there but it was a lot of fun um helping train new people and again I I was excited to work here and at the time we hired some folks from some other agencies much like we do now that were coming on board that had some experience so it was fun watching them come on board here and learn about us and some of them brought some skills that I hadn't seen before so I learned from them as they learned from me it it was fun um I enjoyed doing that so after that I uh went over to the the Omega Squad the street crimes unit for just a little bit um and then I saw a posting come out for burglary so I decided to put in for burglary to be a burglary detective and I got um picked or accepted I guess if you will picked for that position so I left Patrol was my first official transfer was to the burg and pawn unit so I went up there and I I I'll probably say this a lot in this podcast but I thoroughly enjoyed that actually I've never had a job here that I didn't thoroughly enjoy so I say that a lot um because I just love what we do I love this I I deep down I love this profession but burglary was fun um I worked up there with a good group and that was the first time in my career since really since fto when Kurt Roman ASU showed me how to do long-term investigations and that it was extremely rewarding and it still is to me to this day when you're able to put a case together when you're able to find fingerprints you're able to get that first lead and in burglaries it's high volume so you have you know uh a neighborhood or an area where you'll have you know sometimes 15 20 30 cars broken into a lot of valuables stolen people things stolen out of cars and you're trying to put that together and then you get that first lead or you get that print hit or you get that piece of evidence or p a patrol Deputy may have F somebody and you're looking at the fs which is a field interview report Ashley thank you you're welcome I was going to ask the advocate for the the common man yeah there you go um so you get that that fi and then you start looking at that person's background and you're going what are they doing out walking around at 2 o'clock in the morning and peaked the deputy's interest and then you start getting and then when it comes together you're like okay this is my guy this is my guy we okay this is cool now now we're going to go get him maybe do some surveillance so I really enjoyed that and then at the time we worked a series of um cases we were getting hit back then with boat motors being stolen uh at a high uh from highend uh marine stores so we had a pattern back then where we'd have a van stolen and then we'd have a a boat store hit in the same area and they clear out all these high-end outboard motors so we were all of them had all of us had cases in that we had I don't know maybe 10 or 15 of them it was like a habitual thing that was going on we'd have a stolen van and then uh the motors and the Vans kept getting recovered down hiia down near Miami is where the Vans were being recovered so we surmised that the Vans were being used to transport these motors and it was all tied in together because they were in the same proximity so long behold one night our Patrol deputies uh got behind caught one of these guys in in progress and got behind one of the vans that had just been stolen and got into a short Pursuit they end up abandoning the van they arrest a couple of the guys and then they end up impounding their uh one of their vehicles that they were using so they were using this Ford Explorer um which they coming up in the Ford Explorer from hiia they'd steal a Vance got out the Marine store the marina steal the motors load it in the van and then the Explorer and the van would go back south and the motors were actually going to uh Central and South America it was a pretty large uh ring up and down the East Coast so that was the first like big big case that I had ever worked where we worked with FDLE we worked with the FBI we ended up putting a Tracker um on this Explorer and then they got out of jail came and got the Explorer out of impound and took it back to South Florida so we took turns we split it up with all the other agencies and we took turns doing surveillance on this vehicle down in South Florida so I got to go down to Miami a couple of times um got to work with the police down there got to work with the FBI and these guys were hitting all up and down the East Coast they're hting as far up as Virginia all the way down through the keys so it turned out to be a big case but that was the first time that I got exposed to something that that was that large and that involved I really I really enjoyed it and then getting to travel and do surveillance and and trying to do surveillance down there was challenging too um being from out of the area and we didn't have radios that worked as well as they do now and it was it was fun the FBI was involved they had an airplane up in the air the FBI took the ca ended up taking the case and it was called Operation Blue Water and we worked it with the FBI for it's probably about 6 months wow before they made a bunch of arrests on it and it was pretty cool but so I thought at the time I'm like this is this is super cool I want to I want to go continue to be a detective and and do that so I was up in burglary for a little over a year we just finished up that case and then um I started thinking do I I'm young I wasn't married at the time do I really want to be inside even though I enjoyed the work is just what I want to do and I'd always wanted to be in the Marine unit I grew up uh I mentioned my father earlier uh being a police officer but we also uh boers we grew up on the water boating a lot my father is a side job had a charter fishing business we used to char our fish up in Maryland and all so I always enjoyed boating and I said you know I'm in my 20s I'm young do I want to be up here with all these detectives and there's a spot that opened up in the Marine unit and one of my friends at the time was out at out in the Marine unit I went out and did a ride along in the Marine unit and we just worked this Operation Blue Water case it was a boat heavy case we were down in Miami it was a little Miami Vice you know theme to it if you will we're down there you know felt like we were Crocket and tubs running around down there doing surveillance so I said you know the marinia looks like a lot of fun and I don't mind working weekends and all so I went out and did a ride along and I'm like okay I'm going to put in for the Marine unit so I kind of took which a lot of people at the time considered a step backwards cuz I left the detective division to go out to beat to go out to the Marine unit but I did and that uh I'll say it again was was a great experience I had a a complete ball out there was out there for five year almost five years um enjoyed every minute of that job out there um and you still assist with the trainings that they do sure do yeah I I I still try to get out there as often as I can I tell the guys whenever I see him I say I got to come out and ride again I actually have a Marine uniform that I had to make me up so when I go go out there I can I can wear blend right in yeah I I enjoy that that that job is really underrated for what those guys do out there um I tell people all the time that that job is 90% skill and about 10% guts at times uh those guys go out there and operate those boats and that equipment and adverse weather conditions and there's not a lot of time there's not a lot of backup out there right and you know people's lives are on the line a lot of times counting on us and that was the first time in my career that I got exposed to rescue type work it's not all law enforcement it's a lot of times it's fishing somebody that's that's going to drown if you don't fish them out out of out of this surf line in the Gulf you know you come across those situations or you have somebody seriously injured by a propeller boat propeller and you got to pick up a fire crew and get them and they're bleeding and you your heart attack victims um all kinds of things back then was there still like the extensive like tryy out process there is now or was it a little bit more yeah there was yeah you had to you had to drive I was like hey you want to be an fto no no no it was and it was quite competitive to get in out there you had to um put in I actually put in twice before I got out you know accepted if you will to go out there and you had to go through an interview process you had to do a boat try out there was a swim test um yeah it was it was challenging it was you had to demonstrates that you could drive a boat and not only just drive a boat but drive a police boat which is different you recreational boat driving and police boat driving or or two different things like I said a minute ago recreational boating you kind of get to to choose when you're going to go out and choose your conditions and choose what you're going to do and how you're going to do it when you're driving a police boat you got to go you you got to you got to go and do it um so was the expectation that you I guess that's what you're saying is that you had to already know how to operate a boat and operate it well at that time not really and and a lot of people have gone out there over the years with very little boting experience yeah so we we used to tell people and I think we still do to a certain degree is that we want you to understand the basics of a boat but we're going to teach you how to drive a police boat and we're going to teach you the skills and there's a lot of emphasis out there on training especially at the beginning yeah and we do different scenarios and different things out there to teach you how to drive these boats and adverse weather conditions and this time of year during the winter was some of the best training that we did because you just have these cold fronts that would move through that would create these sea conditions offshore that were extremely rough we go out there and throw buoys over or or floats over different things and practice fishing them out and fishing different things out and teaching the guys how to surf the boats and how to pick your winds and pick your waves and pick different things and then when you're trying to fish out somebody you can get in Peril Peril pretty quickly if you don't know what you're doing so we spent a lot of time and I I got transferred out there in the winter which was a good time so I started out there in January so we got a lot of that turning knocked out before the summer season um and I I enjoyed it like I said it's it's a great job out there and the training is is second and done a lot of people just see those guys kind of bump it around the boats and wave to them but there's a there's a lot that goes into that job yeah I think the biggest eye opening thing when I I've been out with them a few times is just the the backup piece like you're you're out there by yourself you know and if something breaks bad somebody can come but it's going to be a minute and then they got to get to you yeah yeah I uh I was out there one day I was by myself on the South End of the ding Causeway and I stop four guys fishing on a boat there's fishing so I pull up I tie up to them just do a Fisheries check which a Fisheries check is just make sure they had their licenses and didn't have short fish and things along those lines so we're having a conversation no big deal and I get their four of their IDs I run them and one of the guys has got a warrant and when you're in your situation like that you're tied up right alongside of them so they're hearing the radio traffic coming across the radio uh just like you are so the dispatchers are good they say you know the you know you 12 yes you know one of the subjects has a 60 so they're using codes um but these guys were pretty Coy at what was going on so now it's four against one and I'm tied up to him so I remember thinking to myself well let me uh let me see if I can make this one against one so the guy with the Warr I said hey I forget his name now but I said hey can you step on my boat for a second because what my plan was is have him step on my boat I was going to untie from their boat and then it'd be one-on-one versus four against one so when I asked them to step on the boat he says uh why I said well I didn't see to talk to you he go I'm not stepping on your boat well now I look up and because the deputies had been listening the causeways now got a couple cruisers on it so they're watching me as I'm talking to this guy so now the guy definitely knows what's up and the boat was a pretty decent decent boat so I thought for a second I looked at the guy the captain or the owner of the boat I said I might be real blunt with you here's the deal I said uh he's got a warrant he's going to step on my boat and if not I'm going to drop the throttles I'm going to drive your boat and this boat right up on that Rocky sh line right there and those deputies right there and I are going to arrest him so I said those are your choices so he goes he grabs the guy goes get on that boat he want his boat destroyed right but it just happened to be the situation where we were and there was rocks in front of us and the deputies were on the other side of the Rocks I said well we're going to do this easy way the hard way we're going to destroy some equipment you're going to go to jail or you're going to step on here and go to jail and that's and that's what the guy ended up doing but you have to be out there in that you have to be creative like that you have to think and then your backup sometimes you're by yourself and your backups on on a good day might be 30 minutes away right um oh at least their heads up listening though so they you know they there for you yeah for sure for sure five years in Marine five years y five years and then where what what possibly could lure you away from that yeah so I I got married during that time I had met my my wife um during that time and I had gotten married and my wife um moved to Florida when she was a baby so when she was one so she grew up in essence in Florida and very much liked uh the water of the beach being outdoors and being in the Marine unit and working on the holiday weekends and working out there in the summer you get you get out of your truck your air conditioned truck in the morning and you're not back in air conditioning sometimes for 12 hours in the summer so when you get off work the last thing you want to do uh is go on a boat go to the beach be outside you really want to go to an ice skating rink or an air conditioned Mall um and that and so we we'd gotten married while I was out there and uh she uh you know has a Monday through Friday a regular job if you will so after five years I'm like okay this is this is not fun anymore mainly because it when I was off I didn't want to do anything but sit in the air conditioning so did you ironically leave the Marine unit so you could spend more time on the water yeah actually yeah but I took a break um that you there's a little bit of a burnout it's funny and we talked about it when I was out there I think sometimes it holds true to this day is that a lot of the guys when they go out there they end up selling their personally owned boats because they don't use them for that reason and then it happens I think to a lot of us or a lot of them a lot of the folks that have been out there and then when you're done working out there for me five years I didn't want a boat for a while I was just tired of it you get kind of burnt out on being on the water MH so you just you take a break I guess I just took a break it wasn't intentional but I took a break if you will so I saw um a position another thing that i' always wanted to do I enjoyed working with kids and I I had good relationships with the police growing up so I saw that there was a posting out for a school resource officer so I said okay this is cool um I'd always thought it is you know I said earlier I always wanted to be a a police officer or Deputy growing up but I I had a great High School experience I played Sports Growing Up played football and I had a good relationship with the police growing up so I always thought that if I didn't become a police officer I would I would like to have been a teacher and been a sports coach in the schools and and teach so I always kind of on my police bucket list if you will or Deputy bucket list I wanted to be and school resource officer so I saw a school resource officer positioned open up I knew it was going to be at a high school so I put in for that and was transferred into school resource and then was assigned coming out of the marinho to bogus sea High School you sure were yeah were you there uhhuh did you know me there you're in my yearbook oh did you bring it no I didn't I should have yeah in one of my yearbooks I did not know that yeah okay so that was in 2004 200 that was my yeah think my freshman year did we have any contact there no no okay that's good no no no no I was a straight A like nerd nerd yeah yeah I was in the medical magnet okay yeah yeah yeah you weren't General pop down there no I was not I was not General magnet yeah yeah that's funny that's small world yep I ween the people from there uh often at times yeah some unfortunately when I was at the jail hey Depp hey Depp danz I'm like hey they called me Depp short for deputy and I'm like hey what's going on you remember me I was it bogey I'm like oh what happened you're in here uh but it happens they probably let their cat run at large large the cat the cat was at large they just didn't didn't turn their life yeah yeah for sure that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard cat so I liked s um it was fun I was partnered with Stevie Thomas who's still in the SRO program yeah so I was down there for two years and then that that second year um I decided I was going to take the Sergeant's test we had had um you know we were going through a period of growth back then and then we hadn't made promotions there was a period of time where we hadn't made promotions in a long time and I uh how long how long's a long time so when I started we were in a period of time I don't think we had made promotions in 10 years nothing at one point how how yeah it was crazy um so yeah in 1996 when I started I mean the sergeants were just these old people I was young but they were older people and there just wasn't a lot of upward movement then and it just seemed like we were in a I guess a period of stagnation even the year that I started going back to 96 I think I was one of maybe 10 that were hired that whole year it was it was very wow different then so we went through a long period of time without promotions like was there was there Movement Like trans transfer yeah yeah transfers not promotions but not a lot of promotions and you had people that just were in these positions for a long time um and a lot of the sergeants were just older people they were just old and then they were uh good Sergeants but they just been in those positions for years and years and they and they retired out of those positions eventually we didn't have the the growth and the expansion that we had years later so we were coming up on a period of time back then so would have been in probably started right probably 2000ish we 20 2001 we started kind of breaking out of that and we had a lot of retirement so then uh we started putting out the agency started putting out um notifications for Sergeants tests and they used to do them over at semal High School in the auditorium so you know as a deputy I'm watching people go take the test and then lists are coming out and then we started making promotions again um people were getting promoted so that's back to me being at the school I had seen some folks that i' had worked with and people that I was looked up to and things had gotten promoted I say yeah I'm going take the test and just see what it what it's about um so I spent and again I was a newlywed then and uh we my wife and I didn't have any children so I had some free time to devote to studying outside of of work so I studied for a whole year for the Sergeant's exam I took you know spaced it all out mapped it all out and put the effort forward then ended up getting a good score and end up on the up on the list so back then we had a ranked list I think when the list came out and we had a matrix system back then so you had a your test score and then you got Matrix points for different things so ended up when the list came out I think I was 20th which was fine because I knew I had some Matrix points coming up so in one day I collected some Matrix points for tenure and a few things I jumped from 208th to 10th at the time it was uh Sheriff coats he promoted a couple people the next thing you know I was you know Fifth Sixth and then I got promoted um right at the time I so my wife was pregnant at the time and then I got promoted um right after my daughter was born so it was it was kind of a cool it was a special time my daughter was um pretty mature so she was in the nicku so I was out on FMLA and I was driving home from visiting her and uh Sheriff coats called me on my cell phone we had cell phones then we' evolved the cells and uh you know back then people and probably they probably still do it now to sheriff cter and probably to me who knows but um people would prank call you right and say they were the sheriff you know and a lot of people had Sheriff coach his voice down pretty good so it was a Friday afternoon it was in uh December of 2006 so it was it was the Friday before Christmas so I'm driving home from the NICU um my daughter's in the NICU uh so the phone goes off and it's it's the Sheriff's Office it's the inside line so I answer it and it's Sheriff coast and I said I'm thinking to myself as he calls me well all my friends know that my daughter's in the nick you yeah they're not got to screw with you no one's messing with me so he promoted me called me and and promoted me to Sergeant so uh it was cool it was cool and I tell people this you know I've been I've been fortunate enough to be promoted obviously since then but the first time is always the best time that first phone call uh when you're you know when you're a deputy and that first time the sheriff calls you and promotes you to Sergeant it's like wow this is cool you know so I was fortunate I got promoted to Sergeant and then from there I went to midnights North County um I hadn't worked in North County a long time hadn't worked midnights and that was a ball um think I said it earlier it was great great experience um loved every minute of that that position had a good squad and midnights is just a different animal in a sense that there's no traffic and there's no heat and a lot of the people that you see out there at night most of the people out there in the middle of the night are out there for a nefarious purpose and it's just fun you go out there and just look for bad guys and respond to calls and you're not dealing with heat and traffic and lines and occasionally a mosquito now so that that was obviously your first first role as a supervisor um you know and you had of course you'd been here a minute you know the idea of having like a deputy that's that's been here for 10 years becoming Sergeant is like unheard of right if you if you're wanting to if you're wanting to to be promoted so that was kind of a different time yeah I've been on 10 years at the time so but as a new as a new sergeant like because obviously leadership is something you got going on right yeah for sure so what what is that like as a as a deputy stepping into that role you obviously know how to do the job but Now you kind of have to step back and and just kind of help support your squad yeah what what is that Dynamic like what was that like for you so it was challenging um because I had I had never been a Corporal um just the way things had shaken out along the way I'd put in for Corporal at different times so we didn't put an emphasis back then on the Corporal program like we do now so I literally went from Deputy to Sergeant so my my first day um the lieutenant was off and I came into the um Sergeant's office at North District and I even know how to approve reports I didn't know how to check the update the schedule or any of those things so um one of the other sergeants came in and kind of had to start showing me kind of showing me the ropes but um I remember thinking at the time you when you first get promoted to Sergeant as a as a deputy or as an employee you're worried about what you have going on your cases your activity what you're going to do with your day you know backing up your fellow co-workers if you're working the street or helping your fellow detectives if you're a detective or even in the Marin who you're going to ride with that day if you can pair up where you're going to patrol what you're going to focus in on well as a sergeant now you have to focus in on everybody and keep an eye on everybody and and make you hopefully make decisions to keep everybody out of Harm's Way and I I remember at the time thinking that this is pretty serious position because you know especially out there at night you're having to make judgment calls as a supervisor um and a lot of times on high risk Stu so it it it's uh it's challenging and there's there's definitely a learning curve we see it I saw it then we see it now with so folks they first make Sergeant um some people I think are just boring and step into it and others it takes them a little bit to get used to that and having to to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of the people that you have working with you but I I enjoyed it I enjoyed um working with the group and I had a good group back then we had a good group I had a good Lieutenant back then we just had a lot of fun it was a lot of a lot of fun working out there at night it's a weird weird weird breed of people that you deal with and and the folks that work midnights are weird in a good way too it's almost you know it's you get used to sleeping during the day and being up all night stuff like that so so back then so my daughter this is not a funny story but my daughter was a baby back then um so I went right back to work after I got pomoto she's came out of the NICU so my sister-in-law was gracious enough to come over and spend the night with the nights I was working with my wife so she wasn't home alone with the baby so one night at like 4:00 in the morning my wife calls and I answer I said hello what's going on she goes your daughter has not slept at all tonight I said well I'm at Denny's right now with my squad I said can I can I call you back and then she hung up on me remember the old school phones when someone would hang up and you hear that click I was like oh I got the chills when oh man she's gotten no sleep she's got to work tomorrow and I'm having a moons over my hammy right now at this is not good it's not good but those times were fun my sister-in-law helped us out a lot back then my wife's sister and she would spend the night at the house and help with the midnight feedings with my daughter and all that so being a new parent a new sergeant was a lot going on at once yeah it was fun but being a sergeant also is parenting so for sure for sure yeah true yeah for sure so what was next so I um moved over to evenings and uh the fto sergeant coordinator at time was a a j by the name of Jason Lions he called me and said hey would you like to be an fto Sergeant this is I said yeah for sure so because I got a spot on evenings for fto sergeant so I moved over to evening shift as fto sergeant and that was again rewarding I enjoyed that I got to get kind of back to my roots with the training I enjoyed being an fto and I took a lot of satisfaction in that we had a good group of fto we were going through a period of hiring back then we were having recruits come through and I used I enjoy enjoyed watching the recruits come through and our Squad getting to teach them kind of the ropes how we did business working evening shift up there North End was fun of course he had a lot of traffic but the call volume was always good um so I did that for a while and then um eventually moved to dayshift uh we had we bided back then and then somebody wanted evenings and I got bumped to days as fto sergeant so I was fto Sergeant on days up there for a couple of years and then one day uh the captain uh called me into his office and he said hey uh you like you like what you're doing and I said I do I said I got good days off I got a great Squad fto I'm just loving it yes he goes what do you do you want to be fto Sergeant forever or do you want to move around the department I said well I've got a long way to go I don't want to be here forever he goes well I'd like like you to go out to SRO and be a sergeant over there and I said all right I said well I'm enjoying working the street I'm enjoying catching bad guys I said you know I all right I I'll think I'll do it I'll think about it I'll do it so I did and uh that was a lot of fun so I I didn't expect that to be as much fun as it was so I went over to there as a sergeant so kind of went back to to where I'd come from uh that particular time I had the north schools so there was two three sergeants I think at the time with the way we had the county divided up but I had the north schools so I I worked over there and that's really um it was before stowman Douglas but obviously after Coline so we just kind of started down the road of an emphasis on school safety we did a lot of training back then on uh single officer response and recognizing threats in the schools and I enjoyed that because we got to partner with the schools in a good way I got to form relationships with some of the principles and the different schools and really be an ambassador for what we did and and working in SRO is fun because it's not all bad stuff it's not all bad kids there's a lot of good kids that go to our schools that we have great relationships with and you get to spend time with them and CM and there's a lot of good people that work in the school system so I I enjoyed both my stops there you know the first time as a deputy and then again as a sergeant so that's um you me keep talking so I go from there yeah no you're you're doing great I don't even know why we're here um CU you can just go but uh it's I've been a lot of places a lot of things it's got to be that was your goal well yeah I mean there there's got to be some level of like oh man like you know when you're getting pulled from places you're having a good time but then you just throw yourself into the next thing and it's not that big of a detriment right yeah for sure um yeah and then again being a new father at the time and having the freedom the flexibility of s mean that you had weekends and nights off for the most part um you could take some time off during the holidays it was good and I and again I enjoyed the the the staff that was in there the deputies that were a great job they all they all had great relationships in their schools and it was just a good time there was just no no issues and then we had a lot of the big football games back then I remember working the East Lake and Tarpon game which was a big deal back then and when we hosted it at East Lake we had a bunch of deputies working a big crowd one of the games was a sellout game you know tickets were sold out and it it was just fun school spirit and the relationship we had with the students it's much like they have today it hasn't changed it's just it's just a from a policing perspective it's just a fun fun job it's fun it's not all bad stuff there's times where you had to arrest kids or right deal with you can kind of it's just a microcosm or something else you can kind of still see more of the positive a lot easier than me out on the road so I was happy as could be over there and then I got a phone call um from Glenn Luben at the time and you guys probably know Glenn he's retired um still teaches and he's retired captain from here so Glenn called me and i' had known Glenn for a long time we had been work friends for a long time so he called me and said hey um I've been out at SRO now as a sergeant for something about in my second school year so just about two years and he called me and said hey we got a position uh coming open in Internal Affairs Sergeant's position yeah that was the same reaction I had I said o o so I told him no I said no I'm good I said I like SRO and I said I don't want to see uh you know dep's get in trouble I don't I don't know if I have the stomach for that you know the reputation of IIA and I don't I I don't know if I have the stomach for it I I love this place I love our guys our girls and we do such good work and it's just like I don't know if I want to be part of seeing people get in trouble and he goes it's so I told him no he goes well think about it he said it's not it's not all that he said you know probably 75% of what we do is highlighting the good work of of what of what our staff does and I said well no that's what you Pio or public relations does you guys you guys are the bad news police so I said no I'm I'm good so we got off the phone so he called me the next day he said ' no did you think about it I said yeah I told you yesterday no he said ' no I really want you to think about it so we spent about another hour on the phone and I said ah all right all right I'll think about it so he calls me the third day and he said are you in or out I said I'll put in for it all right you beat me up enough about it so I put in for it so um I went in there and at the time I was in there with Daryl spiva uh George brochi uh Luben myself um Joe Garretts who's still here a lot of the guys I mentioned have have retired um and that was a again I'll say like I said about everything it was a great stop I learned a tremendous amount about the agency because you work cases throughout the agency and I'd never really been exposed to Corrections at that point so I got to work some cases out of Corrections and some cases out of fiscal and I worked a case out of um purchasing so I learned about that and and uh Glenn was right the bulk of the work that we did was documenting what our staff did and that yeah we did use force and the force that we used was appropriate um and there was times unfortunately where we had to um you know investigate misconduct and there was a couple times where we had to uh the sheriff terminated uh the employee and those were tough but I always felt like it was handled appropriately we handled it appropriately you we were professional with the the staff member um made sure that they were treated fairly and were exited appropriately and went on from there yeah I think I think think a lot of people we obviously don't talk a lot about Aid because it's not not the difficult yeah exactly right I mean we you know PR Pio specifically when those bad things happen we do put it out but you know people we touch on a little bit with some of our public education programs like this is a law enforcement agency within a law enforcement agency for sure and there is there is no stone left unturned with with what we're doing so a lot of you know there's a lot of rhetoric out there and a lot of conversations about oh well you know police investigating police it's you know whatever but that's nonsense because I you know as as supervisors here at the sheriff's office we have the opportunity to sit in to uh an administrative reviewboard hearing where they kind of talk through it with the member there I mean it's the most har it's the most harsh I wanted to crawl under the chair when I was in there but it is a it is a harsh process and there's a lot of I mean I feel like you you know everybody has a fair shot everybody has every opportunity to tell their side of the story but if you're not going to take accountability for what you did it's just not going to go well yeah and that's true and I I tell people this you know um we have to investigate allegations of misconduct and we have to do it fairly and partially and transparently and if somebody comes in afterwards and says we want to take a look at that file and we give it to them and it needs to be transparent and you need to be able to sit down as a member of the public or a member of the media and read it and say okay they can investigate themselves they can do it properly they can get to the right conclusion and they can police themselves and I tell people if we can't police ourselves then someone's going to come in and police us for us or police for us and that's not what we want right um so I think we we have a history of been able to demonstrate that we can do it correctly we can do it fairly we can do it transparently um and we do that and if our you know members are wrong they're wrong and when they're right they're right and you know I think sheriff gter and and Sheriff coats and Sheriff rice before him before them the other sheriffs I've worked for have all operate that way if it if we're wrong we're wrong and we're right we're right and that's a lot of what Aid does is you they investigate and um you know they make those those decisions up there if if the they documented out and what we did was appropriate then it's appropriate if not then the members will be held accountable for what they did MH and that's really the that's the important the part of it and I and I agree with us being able to investigate ourselves I do because there's nuances to this job that if you just don't know how can you investigate it be like me try and investigate a medical malpractice case and and say that a doctor didn't perform surgery correctly I don't know how to perform heart surgery so how do I know if it was performed properly or not right um so it was good that experience up there opened my eyes to a lot um I got to learn a lot about employment law and see the disciplinary process and that really kind of laid the foundation from my career going forward because I learned all about that I learned about it's a lot easier to deal with problem employees or deal with employee issues not necessarily problem issues but just any issues on the employment side once you've worked in that unit I would imagine I mean you you know and you probably have a better understanding of how on the employee side too if you ever have to go through one you know not for sure for sure balanced everything out but luckily we you know luckily as a whole you know we don't have a lot of issues here sure every agency has issues there's things that come up there's things that have to be looked at but by and large we have a great agency and um we don't have a lot of cases that come through there we don't have any corruption cases or anything like you see in the movies or or TV or anything like that we don't have a corrupt agency or a rogue agency most of the stuff that comes up is relatively benign things that anybody else has now we get sometimes get some wild allegations that come through but really what's been a benefit to our members is the is the uh body cameras and the dash cameras because these people at times will call in with a wild allegation and we're able to look at it within seconds and go well that's not what happened right yeah yeah I know it was a it was kind of a tumultuous journey to body cams uh for us but as you know as technology changed and it be kind of became more applicable um it was huge we were just talking to Citizens Academy about it uh last week it was like yeah I mean they they really do more to get us out of trouble uh and to clear allegations than anything else because there's it's indisputable you know the days of somebody whooping their F saying hey we're recording this it's like okay we you know too we are too sure I'll be honest with you then you guys have seen me I mean I wear mine uh obviously I don't wear it in the building but when I'm out even to and from work if I'm in uniform or I'm out in public I have mine on I wouldn't want to police in this day and age without it yeah I really wouldn't it's not a gotcha thing I I like having it running and it helps us and really is when you're handling a situation or a call you're dealing with somebody it's running so you can go back and watch it and say what they exactly was the statement or what exactly they say it just helps you with your accuracy and plus the technology is so great that I mean short of of smelling it you're there when you watch these these films MH and then if we have an incident where we have multiple cars and multiple deputies there you each car has a dash camera and then each Deputy has a bodyw warn camera so you may end up having a dozen or more angles of something MH and it just and and you can multiscreen it and play it back and you really I mean short of like I said short of smelling it you're there right uh for the most part so it's it's very good it captures a lot of evidence for us and I tell you it captures a lot of the heroic work that our people do and and it's it's it amazes me sometimes when I see it and I watch our folks doing this heroic stuff and I'm like right on that's what we that's what we sign up to do and just yeah sometimes I watch it I couldn't be more proud of what our folks have done when I see it um I'm assly this is that's what you did it you like I said it a few minutes ago it was about 90% skill and about 10% guts and you showed the 10% guts right there and it's it's good um so I I you know I I think they're great I've uh like I said I wear mine when I'm out of the office it's on um because you just never know and it captures a lot of a lot of evidence for us a lot of good stuff a lot of the good yeah for sure absolutely we we're always we're always perusing looking for good stuff you know that we can we can put out because there's so much but that does happen um so you you make it to Lieutenant at some point yeah so I uh you do the you do the shift Commander thing which is probably also one of your favorite jobs had I guess yeah yeah so uh it's funny whenever I got uh whenever my wife got pregnant I got promoted early in my career so uh she was pregnant I decided I was going to study for the Lieutenant's exam and then um when she was pregnant with my son my second child um shortly after he was born um I got promoted to Lieutenant and then when I got promoted to Lieutenant um we used to have a relief shift which was uh great shift in a sense but it was terrible on your on your body and personal life so the relief shift back then is you worked uh 8 hour shifts it was Monday night I'm sorry Sunday night and Monday night you would work eight hours uh midnight shift then you would double back on Tuesday so you got off Tuesday morning at 8 you double back and work 3: to 11: Tuesday evening Wednesday evening you'd work 3 to 11: and then Thursday you'd double back and work 7 to 3 Jesus so you had two double backs with only eight hours in between so by Thursday night you were you were gassed it was like you're going to sleep at like 6:00 600 p.m. um so I did that is that like the r of passage for all new lieutenants back then yeah back then you made lieutenant you went to patrol and you're on relief and and until there was another opening you were just the relief lieutenant and the relief lieutenants back then didn't have anybody any Personnel assigned to them you were really just the caretaker so you know the midnight shift Lieutenant was off Sunday Monday the evening shift was Tuesday Wednesday and the day shift was Thursday Friday um so that's how that's that's how we did it so I I enjoyed that because you have to see all shifts you have to work all three shifts and each shift had its different personnel and it's different things going on um but then it from a sleeping perspective it was oh from a sleeping perspective not so much yeah so it was not not good but I did that for almost a year and then a spot opened up on midnights and I went to midnights permanently up in the north end so I was back on midnights in the North End as a shift Commander um as a theme but that's a great great job I enjoy thoroughly enjoyed that uh I think that's I think that's a job that's really uh underappreciated for sure because and and even the public like just doesn't realize it's like yeah I mean you got the sheriff and and his Command Staff but as far as what's happening on the streets of penis County north of gol de Bay or south of Go De Bay there's one person calling the shots and deal with all the shenanigans yeah and there was nights where the other Lieutenant would be off so the way that we we do it is you have a lieutenant working North Lieutenant working South like you said north of gol de Bay and south of gol de Bay and at the time Mike ring was the South lieutenant and I was the north Lieutenant on midnights and we were on permanent midnights so we didn't rotate like on the TW like they do now so there was times where Mike ring was off and I was like me I remember the first night I was like I'm the highest work ranking person working midnights I'm like this is okay hopefully it's a quiet night and there's times where it's like okay there's no one else above you that's working you I got to wake somebody up um you know order to to elevate something so there's a tremendous uh amount of responsibility in that position and we still view it that way now when we put a lieutenant on midnight shift um even in the roll and now I make a point of telling them remember you're the you're the man on midnights you got to make good decisions and think things through and and and take care of your people um you make a bad decision you can impact a lot of a lot of different things you during the day there's a lot more people working a lot more people that can you can bounce stuff off but midnights in the middle of night your midnight shift lieutenant 3:00 in the morning you got to make a decision you got to make a decision so MH any memorable situations during that time um we had a house fire up off a su Road it's one of the few times in my career I activated the SWAT team um so I was in read offs we had read offs and I at the time wore an earpiece so I got the earpiece in and myself and the sergeant uh Bill Bird were sitting in read offs at the time and we're listening to a call come out over in Squad 7 Office uh sunset Port Point Su Road there's a that Cemetery over there mhm so there's a call of shots fired and there's a people calling multiple people are calling in they're hearing shots they don't know where it's coming from so deputies get on scene there's a lot of radio traffic about shots coming and they think it's in the cemetery but they keep hearing rounds going off but they can't identify where they're coming from so bird and I are listening to this and the rols are kind of rapping I said let's we I said you going to head down there said I'm going head over there I said I'll be down there in a minute let's see what's going on and then a lot of radio traffic so we get down to Sunset Point Road and the deputies had closed off Sunset Point Road and kind of set up a little bit of a command post so I get down there and um that was before we had all the fancy downl equipment that we have now back then we had a a a an overgrown tablet that had these antennas on it and it would down link to the helicopter camera it was in black and white so it was like the early version of the downlink system for the helicopter well bird at the time had one of those like one of two that existed so he had called for the helicopter and he's trying to view what they're seeing and we're thinking this whole time that's coming from the cemetery so we're trying to figure this out we got we're on the phone with a bunch of different callers it's like I'm hearing it from the north I'm hearing it from the south and while we're standing there you're just hearing rounds go off so um the helicopter gets overhead we can't figure it out and then uh vctf at the time V Crim's task force happened to be listening they get up there and Paul hlee was the lieutenant so he gets up there goes hey what do you got I said we can't figure this out I said I think it's coming from from the cemetery I think there's someone in the cemetery shooting he go we're going to get out on foot we're going to go into the cemetery and see if we can see you know start doing some peeking and I said we got a kind of a 360 on this block range and it's in this block range so next thing you know uh helicopter camera view wasn't working we didn't see anything then Hal gets on and I can hear the shots in the background and he goes activate the SWAT team I'm like say again he goes activate the SWAT team we got the guy he's in a house and he's firing out the front window I'm like okay so uh I activate the SWAT team and I called Captain heggins who was my captain I said I just activated the SWAT team and he goes all right what's going on I said there's a guy in the house he's firing out the front window I said I don't know what's going on but I said H's up there and said to activate SWAT so then hie comes back on and he goes uh disregard s FD the house has gone up in Flames so the guy uh turns out long story short um the guy was uh it was an older couple that owned the house this was their nephew he was an adult the older couple were gone he was house sitting he'd been drinking all day found some guns and he's just shooting out the front and back window and then he decided once he do yeah as you do then decided at one point to light the house on fire oh so he lit the house off and then came running out and when he came running out our deputies were nearby and they downed him and grabbed him and drag him away from the house the House burn to the ground um no no else inside no one else got hurt and and he didn't get hurt but he burned his uh I think it was his aunt and uncle's house to the ground he wasn't a bad guy he just was drunk and found some guns and yeah drunk and found that was probably the most marable call because it took us it probably took us two almost two hours to figure out where the shots were coming from and we're on with all these callers and I tell our Communications uh Center did a great job that night I went in a couple nights after and talked to him because they were on with all these callers and they didn't get off the phone and no we just couldn't figure out where the shots were coming from but you could hear them they weren't like you know Bam Bam Bam Bam Bam was like You' hear a shot then silence and you'd hear a shot and then silence and then we had uh on the on the laptop screens we had Maps up and we're trying to pinpoint okay did you just hear that one okay where did that come from and of course it was a middle of night so it was dark and we're right beside that cemetery and then you could tell that it was um you know gunfire it wasn't fireworks and it took it took us a while to sort through all that but uh when before H retired we joked about that night or laughed about that night because funny we got on the radio was It was kind of quatic it was AC at the SWAT team and I'm like what activate who yeah then I called Haggin back and I said disregard on the SWAT team I said the house has gone up he goes I'll be down there in a few minutes I'm like all right the house burnt to the ground that's crazy some people have no business getting drunk for sure if that's what you are going to do some people just call their ex some people shoot guns and start fires could you imagine you have your nephew house it and you come back and the house is burnt to the ground and he's in jail and your ammo yeah and your ammo is gone your guns are gone I drank too much what yeah so you uh speaking of of Hy and vctf that's where you ended up yeah so um not long after that uh I'm asleep at home working midnight you're sleeping during the day phone goes off and um Sheriff gter had just gotten into office at that time so the phone goes off and it's sheriff gter and I was a pretty good sleeper during the day I was I got adjusted so I remember having a conversation with him I remember him saying something about 410 and he was moving me but I didn't know where at the time I didn't I didn't understand I didn't cuz you're half asleep I was asleep so I hung up and I thought I rolled back over and I started to drift off again then I woke up I did I just dream that or not I'm looking at my phone I saw that I had a phone conversation so then I'm now I'm awake so I get up and I make myself a cup of coffee and I'm waiting for the memo to come out to see where I was going because he said 410 I'm like what's on 410 that that's all that you caught was that's all I caught was oh no going somewhere no idea where yeah so then the memo came out shortly thereafter and it said you know volent crimes task force um and hie was being promoted to captain and I was going down to the volent uh being transferred over to volent crimes task force so I left midnights and uh went over there was over there for about a year um that was another great job probably from a a a purely policing perspective like going after bad guys that was probably the best job I've had just for going after the worst of the worst that was at a time when there was a lot of guns on the street a lot of illegally possessed guns on the street and we were we were just humming uh we were paired up with the St Petersburg Police Department and we were just humming and going after the worst of the worst in the worst areas of the county and we were taking two to three guns a week off of criminals and it was just and then when I took it over from H hi had started that unit it was supposed to be a temporary um project if you will temporary assignment and the foundation of that is they they taken a group of St Petersburg officers a group of pelis deputies we deputized the St Petersburg officers and they formed this task force so they had a sheriff's Sergeant a um St Petersburg sergeant and then a sheriff's lieutenant and it was kind of a mixture of undercover personnel and uniform personnel and the way that it was set up is that we worked one problem at a time so you weren't spread out like a traditional policing model where you have deputies spread out and it's you know one deput everybody on every on every issue so if we were going to stop a car the whole unit stopped the car right if we were going to check out with uh people on a street corner the whole unit checked out so we were set up at the way that it was set up was that we were self-contained we usually would have a k9 with us and we were set up to win every encounter if you will and when I say win it's like the bad guys wouldn't run because they were overwhelmed by the the amount of people number the number the number of people yeah and if they did try to run we had some fast guys that could run and we had canine with us and we could set our own perimeter and we could set it we could handle we were self-contain we could handle it and then the guys on in both agencies that were on the U Task Force at the time were a lot of SWAT guys a lot of tactical type guys and they worked together every night every night that they worked it was the same group working every night so they got when I got in there hi had been in there about a year I took it over from him and it was a welled machine and when I say that they could decide that we're going to stop a car and there was very little radio traffic everybody knew their role everybody knew what to do we could have a car stopped and everybody out and in custody in seconds it was like it was almost Wasing like a symphony if you will it was just Precision a lot of people speak really highly of bctf just just so many people we've interviewed that talked about it and that makes perfect sense why cuz you know there's a lot of gratification that comes from that it was and the guys out there were just great guys and girls I mean there was guys and girls both and it was just they just it's just the the the personality of the people just made it fun we had a lot of laughs at what we did and and uh we did a lot of things and and and it was just fun you know we we were able to just do things and then we made mistakes and when we made mistakes we laughed about it and learned from it and it was just a tight-knit group and it was all type A personalities so imagine coming to work every day and you really have your dream team you're working with when I say your dream team it's people that are just just you have to hold them back that it's any profession could have these type of people it's just your go-getters your Runners you're just you got to slow them down you know and it's just that that's what that whole entire unit was from both departments and it was good too because I had never worked I mean worked around but never with the St Petersburg Police Department and I got a lot of learned a lot about that department I got a lot of respect for what they do and how they do it and we got to work together and it and it it built a lot of bridges that still exist today from from a communication standpoint and a working together standpoint and it it really um those relationships still exist and and I still talk to the guys and girls from that unit that are down at St Pete we still communicate and share information when it's appropriate and it's it's a good thing so it was good so that was your last Lieutenant assignment before you got the next phone call no uh so I'm I'm having a ball out there I'm working nights um time to go yeah so um I'm I'm enjoying that position I'm asleep again um believe it or not and the sheriff calls me and uh once again I was in a deep sleep and I wasn't exactly sure once again where he said I was going there a history of pattern of this I guess two times it's happened but I heard him say Monday through Friday and day shift and I need you type thing and I said okay so got off the phone memo comes out and I was going back to IIA now as a lieutenant and that was um a culture shock that would be like um going from uh like when someone does a Polar Bear Plunge it was like that that feeling because I say that because I went from a high energy unit where we're we're in a tactical uniform we got uc's out we're going after people like I mentioned a few minutes ago Gregory John's we're pitting cars we're we're getting guns we're going after robbery suspects we're we're just doing all this stuff and then the I lieutenants job is very much an office driven paper flow driven job so remember the first week I got up there I replaced Glenn luin who was a lieutenant he got promoted to captain and I go in there and I'm like whoa I sit down and then I at the time would always have my radio on my desk and be listening to what's going on and I still had the vctf channels on my radio so that first workday they were back to work I got the radio on and I hear them all checking on and they're going out and they're setting up on a car and I'm sitting there on with a stack of paperwork and I'm going oh my God how did I end up so when the sheriff calls are you allowed to say no does anybody say no yeah you can um you just don't get that call again ever yeah you can no and people do and they do for for various reasons and they people have said no to me you know I've contacted people before and say hey we need a favor we need you over here and they um they've said no and given a reason so PE people do and they can um I I didn't mainly probably because I was asleep but is that why he calls you at midnight all the time he called me during the day I was just asleep because i' been working yeah so he he was calling me during a reasonable hour I was just the one that was asleep because I've been working during the night um and I think he said to me on the first time he said well I was going to leave a voicemail I'm like I heard the phone so wasn't a big deal but um you know I didn't say no I mean I could have but you know I always like to move around a little bit and and vctf was fun I can tell you um my wife did not like me and vctf at all cuz I was working long hours I was working at night she was home with the kids and then the whole thing you know out there I come home in the morning I'm like oh we got four guns off the street last night and wrecked three cars and caught four armed robbery suspects you know from a safety perspective right but then I would tell her don't tell me yeah exactly but I would tell her I'm like well I'll tell you this I am safer with this group than I would be out there by myself anywhere else yeah cuz I mean we did everything as a group you going there was 10 of us there m so you were never alone it wasn't like that you know police officer pulling somebody over on the desolate Highway in the middle of the night you know it was we were a group and we moved everywhere as a group right um so yeah that uh so I was I was it was a culture shock going back to that world but I embraced the change of it I could have said no right but I embraced the change of it um so I was up there again now in the Lieutenant's role um so had a group of Sergeants up there um back to the IIA not much had changed like we like we discussed before I was just in a different role and then um so I got promoted to Captain out of there and what had happened with that that story if you will is um we had had a sergeant unfortunately that was resigning in Li of uh an investigation and I was we were still in the old building so we had the two buildings I was in the 400 building and then the main chair office was in the the other building so I was over in the main building and helping this Sergeant out process and my phone goes off and it was the IIA major we had a major and I at the time called me and said hey are you still here I said yeah I'm next door what's up he said hey the sheriff's over here can you come can you come over here real quick so I thought it had something to do with the IIA case we were wrapping up so I literally jogged back over because I thought we had screwed something up on the paperwork or whatever the situation was so I jog back over to the office I come up the stairs and the uh Sheriff's in the Major's office and uh Sheriff says uh let's go out to your office I go okay so we out to my office door goes closed and sit down the sheriff goes uh so how's it going and I'm out of breath I'm like well excuse me I'm out of breath we just ran I said what's going on he goes well I'm going to promote you to Captain I said okay cool Captain you know where he goes that Central District I'm like perfect I appreciate it and that's kind of how that went but it was kind of funny cuz I ran over there it was like the furthest thing from my mind at that moment you're out of breath was out of breath but the good news was it wasn't in the middle of the night yeah that you actually heard what he was telling I heard what he said yeah um so I got promoted to Captain at Central District again uh loved every minute of that position and that was a a really unique time in a sense because we were still doing some hiring and back then we were we were kind of uh coming out of the recession if you will so we Consolidated some things so as a central district Captain I had the police academy and field training under me so we were doing hiring back then that's right yeah yeah so that was you were only captain in Patrol before you went to major right yes cuz I want I want to talk about that one because you know you get promoted to Major over iob yep and your only iob experience was burglary for correct so something that's that's unique obviously about working somewhere like this you're obviously getting moved around at the sheriff's whim um for sure but you can be put in situations where Well you ended up at the jail too as a colonel but you're put in situations or of yep and people approach that in different ways here um how how do you navigate that I mean you are literally the boss and you know because we've all I think we've all been in situations where you know somebody some new person comes in you know that you're working for um even perhaps a position that you're passed over for you know whatever but you know how do you how do you work through that it it's challenging and I think it's you you build relationships and you do a lot of listening and a lot of uh show me how you do this type stuff and and a lot of um what do you think you know we would sit down um so like when I when I got promoted to Major I'd never worked homicides I never and now you know homicides under me so I remember the first couple murders we worked you know we we were at a point in the murder investigation you know the first 8 10 hours into to and it comes time for the first round table of what do we have you do we know who did this do we have a a clue do we have a pointer and a lot of well what do you think what do you think and what do you think and just listening and and paying attention and then you know at times you don't have to make a lot of decisions because it's just vetting through it and listening to what the guys and girls are telling you and then this when you do that the decisions a lot of times come easy because it's they have the experience they know what they're talking about and then that experience then be then builds and then builds and once you've done one you do another one and another one it just kind of starts to build from that point um you know I've always viewed it as as this I'm I'm I've never been the smartest person in the room and I've always believed in just you know surround yourself with good people and let them do their job let them figure out you know let them let them teach you and you learn a lot along the way and um you that's I've been blessed to to to to work with some great people you know I've I've never personally Sol solved the homicide um as a case agent but I've watched it done and watch the folks up there do it and it's like okay this is they know what they're doing and let me help support them and let them show me how to do it and then a lot of times when you do that the decisions are they come they come pretty easy in a management position um it's not it's not as challenging I guess at times I think where people run into problems is where they go into a role like that and they think they have to be the boss they have to make the decisions and they have to tell you what to do like if I stepped into your guys's world I I have I don't know how any of this equipment in here works you show me right right and then and if you need something you're going to tell me hey by the way while you're here we could really use a new whatever okay well why well because it doesn't this doesn't connect to that okay that makes sense well let's go do it MH instead of coming in and trying to say well what I was on a podcast you know yeah I would have used the uh right Mega mixer 300 right you know that's where people I think run into running into problems yeah we got a lot of good people here that are subject matter experts on what they do MH and if you just let them do it um they'll do a good a darn good job at it so you spend you invest all this time learning how to do homicide investigations and all this you get comfortable and then guess what and and you also only have two kids so there weren't any other kids no kids yeah which is good so you get shipped to the jail yeah and that was a fun conversation too uh so the sheriff called me which wasn't unusual said could you pop up to my office which as the iob major Is Not Unusual um we're working high-profile cases and things and sometimes he would have a question or want an update so I pop up there and he says uh hey we're going to make some moves it's okay and he says I'm going to move you out to the jail and I said the jail he said yeah the jail the jail the jail jail yeah the jail just looking at me and I said you mean like and I point like to the east the jail were you hoping there was some other jail yeah sure talking about the one the only one we have the one out there off of 49th Street and he says uh he says yeah he's looking at me like are you something wrong with you you know he's looking at me and I said you realize I've never worked there I was never I never worked in the detention side of the house he goes yeah I know and I said I'll be honest with the sheriff I said I can't remember last time I was at the jail it's been a little while it's been a hot minute he goes yeah I know you'll figure it out I said all right thank you appreciate it um yeah I think so I go downstairs and uh there's a theme here too uh Paul Hy who ID followed into vctf was now the jail Colonel at the time so I go downstairs and I call hlee I said hey I said if you talk to the sheriff he goes yeah understand you're coming out here to replace me I said I am I said let to come out and see you this afternoon he goes great I'll be here you're free you're free yeah great so I got one question to start he goes yeah what's up I said where's your office so I don't know where your office is so he described how to get you know through the checkpoint to where his office was and then um so I went out there um having never worked out there and that was probably the one of the if not the most rewarding assignment I've had here um and I've told uh others and I just had this conversation with the new colonel out there Garvey before he went out there uh that that's a untapped great place to work untapped secret I guess so to speak uh from the law enforcement side anyway for sure from the law enforcement side yeah um I was just I couldn't have been uh more impressed by that group out there the work that they do um the way that place operates you don't no I don't think people understand how big it is you a lot of people and when we do some of the Public tours out there and this citizens would come out of the public too where they would say I had no idea all this was back here or how big it is it doesn't look that big from the road but it's a big place and there's a lot going on and it's a 247 operation and you it's really a a a a hotel if you think about it with 3,000 guests a day and 9,000 meals 9,000 meals yeah and you've heard me say it before if we were a restaurant we'd be the largest in penel County you know and it's there's a lot of logistics that go into run that place and a lot of movement and it's all on timing and it's all on and part of the the challenge is is that your your hotel guests don't want to be there so um there's that there's that yeah and and and there's some very very very bad people that are there that I I sleep comfortably at night knowing that they're there that they're locked up um so it's it's challenging it's a challenging environment um you the deputies out there I tell you what what impressed me out on the gate out there is the camaraderie that the deputies have out there yeah that's they remind me of vctf in a sense is that if there's a problem there's a group there's it's not one Deputy one problem it's there's a group if there's a fight out there there's a group if there's if they're going to move a high-risk inmate there's a group um they work together and there's very much a sense of caderie teamwork um a spree decor if you will they celebrate birthdays and holidays and it's very much like an old school Police Department used to be before take home cars and different things and Technology entered into it and there's just some good just some good people out there they do what the work that they do I think a lot of times goes unnoticed by the public but it's it's important work it's valuable work and and they do it quite well and I used to tell you know I'd walk the Halls out there and I would I would say you know this is the best damn jail in the country I used to say that a lot it was kind of my Mantra mhm probably shouldn't say damn but I really felt that way when I worked out there watching those folks work and then learning about corrections and getting to go to some conferences and some things and they just do a good job yeah I'm sure that was a another obviously situation just like iob going out there but getting out there and about and talking to the Troops is yeah yeah we I got to interact a lot with the corrections response team which is also a probably an unsung group around here that a lot of people don't realize but we we have a response team which is like the SWAT team for the jail MH and the way that they're structured out there is you have team members on call 24/7 that are on on shift so it's a little bit different than SWAT we could have a SWAT activation and a lot of those guys and girls are coming from home well with CRT we always have CRT members on duty so there's a CRT activation they come off their post and they go to the CRT room dress out and then go deal with the the situation so I got a lot of respect for those folks I got to see them work I got to to some of their training MH um and see that they do and and you know they could have two or three activations in a week and nobody would be none the wiser of it from a public perspective and meanwhile they've dealt with you know a violent inmate that is not following instructions is flood in their cell and wants to fight and they got to go in and extract them from the cell and deal with them um so it's a different environment um for sure but those folks do a great job yeah it's definitely a favorite for Citizens Academy and stuff when they do their demonstration because it's terrifying well cuz there yeah and a lot of your citizens have just never been there they've never been in that environment and there's not a lot of television shows that feat drama you know there's drama cop shows like your Law and Orders and things that focus in on what and then then obviously the show Cops and different things that focus in on that but there's not a lot of shows there's a few but not a lot that show what goes on inside of jail so that's why I said those folks out there A lot of times don't get the recognition that they deserve but they do a great job and um I I I enjoyed uh I didn't want to leave at the time uh it's funny too my wife and I at times have reflected on my career and she said to me a couple times she said you I think you were you're happiest or you enjoyed the most working at the jail and I said yeah it's I think you're probably right when we talk about different things she used to come home with a smile on your face from the jail and I said yeah I just I just enjoyed it because it was fun it was it was the camaraderie and the people and the the work that they do something totally new probably you probably still learning something every day up the day you left for sure for sure I felt like I was in a different department it really is I mean you're out there on 49th Street and it's just it's just different and um it was just fun and to your point the learning part of part of it was a lot of fun I I got to learn what what Corrections is and how we do it and it was cool so from there obviously you come back over you were in you were back in IB for a minute yeah for a little bit and then to ACD yes assistant chief which is uh a little bit of a jump there for sure yeah for sure um so I started off uh assistant chief and I started off on the law enforcement side if you will so I had iow in Patrol again I did that for a couple years um that was a jump for sure MH um but not not entirely different than you know being a major being the colonel just another step another step up and you and because those are relatively new positions in the big scheme of things in the agency because you just had the sheriff Chief and then straight to Majors so the assistant Chief's kind of in there just to kind of help help B it out a bit and kind of be another layer of filter um and just kind of help with that workload because it is a lot I mean when you when you think about it I mean of course it's more significant now as Chief but you figure all the Personnel that that you all have in those areas it's just there's just a lot going on yeah and I don't know and I said this I said this yesterday I don't know how back then the chief Deputy did it with just the majors and I guess we've evolved so much with technology and we've grown so much and there's so much going on here in a good way I say going on I mean we have so our hands in so many things and there's so much that we do that I don't know how they did it with with with just the chief Deputy the sheriff and some Majors the role of Chief uh I mean I feel like I've been on the journey with them just trying to get through all of it but yeah um I mean that's got to be kind of the that's the ultimate uh well not quite the ultimate but you're one step away One Heartbeat Away from the Sheriff's Office huh pen penultimate yeah penultimate I guesstimate um so what what does does the chief Deputy do well so this is uh my second week so uh well but you know what have you accomplished so far you you work directly for a chief before so you got an idea so you really it's it's um this is a big place and there's a lot that that comes through a lot that we do and really what I'm what I'm learning so far is I'm the um I have I get information on just about everything that we do and I'm kind of the last pass through before stuff goes to the sheriff so I I get a lot of information I go through that information I make sure that it's correct and right before I get it over to the sheriff um you know make decisions keep him in the loop and then some stuff comes down from him to me hey I need you to handle this I need you to handle that um you know they say that the title of Chief Deputy is you're responsible for the day-to-day operations of the agency and I would so far that's what I'm seeing you we have a lot going on and all the components and in one way shape or form it either comes via email or by phone call or by stop the office it comes through my office and we just talk about things we make decisions we go forward and then really the sheriff's doing his thing and he's busy at you know here locally and sometimes at the State national level sure so part of my job is making sure that stuff's getting done around here and then keeping him in the loop of what's going on and just dealing with projects and and um it's just a lot I'll say this it's a lot of stuff that comes through there I'm learning um but the good news is is we got a good group of assistant Chiefs and majors and a good group at the executive level level directors that all are competent and do their job so it's so far it's been good there's you know everybody's doing their thing and we the penel county sheriff's office is responsible for for the public safety and it's a it's you know that's a big responsibility and there's a lot that goes into that it's a 247 operation we deal with serious situations serious people life and death situations you our deputies are are are out there on the front lines protecting the public so you know we I when Chief comar and I and now Chief Cary go and speak to the to folks we try to bring a little bit of lightheartedness to things and not be so rigid in in what we talk about and what we we talk you know we try to make some jokes and give everybody a chance to breathe when we talk you know it's it's serious business what we do and there's times to be serious but there's also times to have some laughs and um it's not a bad thing yeah it's not a bad thing at all as we kind of wind down I just I'm ious about your perception of deputies today you know with the time that you've been here um you know what a good Deputy looks like but more so like what your perception of of dep modern law enforcement is or or specifically here at the Sheriff's Office that's a good that's a good question you know um I think this this generation sometimes gets a bad rap the the the younger generation the 20-y olds that have come on they're technology driven they don't want to work the work work ethics not there and I really feel the opposite at least with we've been lucky and the deputies and and both on the detention side and the law enforcement side not just the deputies but the staff all the staff we've been able to bring on we got some some good hardworking tough I don't mean physically tough but just get her done people here and um so I always believe in I'll get back to that in a second but first and foremost I say this all time treat somebody the way you would expect to be treated and I can remember just like I described earlier the Clear Water police officer that pulled me over and wrote me that ticket it was almost 30 years ago now um I can still remember how he looked he had a mustache the glasses he had on the car he was driving and the just about the whole conversation we had as luckily I've only been pulled over a few times in my life and that's the case for most people so if you live in this County and and you have charged us the penos sheriff's I was with protecting you and you call 911 what is what what level of service what level of professionalism do you expect in return so if you're that person and you've called 911 what what do you expect do you expect someone to be empathetic to listen to help you to solve the crime to to push your car out of the road you know I tell people all the time and the the public call us we're here you know people sometimes I don't want to bother you guys no bother us that's why we're here right so you know that's and I think the group that we have does that I think it's it's a good thing I think we have a good group of Staff members here that really care and if you look at what we've been able to accomplish under Sheriff gter over the last 14 15 years with crime rates and programs and things that we've done and things that and I'm excited about the future places that we're going and things that we're doing I think we've created that environment here and I think it's a good thing and I think um the deputies and the staff should be proud of what we do what we accomplish every day you I tell people we have a a historian that comes through and the historian does a great presentation on the history we've been around for 113 years I think this year so and the historian does a great presentation and she collects a lot of um pictures and in your guys's calendar this year there's pictures of old Old-Timers that did old things and wrestled alligators and did these things but the the group we have working here now if you think about it if you've been with us since 2000 you started off you're you we lived through the only pandemic in modern times so think about how things were during the pandemic so we had to police and run and I was at the jail at the time run to the attention facility where we have 3,000 people living together through a pandemic and all the social distancing that had to go into that and then the fear of covid and the masks and the all that went into that then we come out of that and we're barely at the tail end of that we have our first line of duty death in our history right so then that the same group the same generation we come out of that we have our second line of duty death we're out there on the interstate highway we haven't even gotten the suspect in custody yet and a hurricane briefing comes through from the National Weather Service that says we have a storm coming so we get the suspect in custody on that case and we got to put that on pause and put funeral planning on pause and do a hurricane get through the hurricane and go back and do a line of duty death funeral so fast forward to two years later and we just did backtack hurricanes the worst that we've had in Modern Times And that's in fouryear that what I just described you occurred in a fouryear time span fiveyear time span so you think about the group of folks that been with us for these five years and what they've been able to accomplish I would take the group we have working for us right now up against any group that's come through this agency since our Inception yeah and and they're tough when I say tough I don't mean physically tough I mean they're just tough hardworking people and they do a great the staff does a great job and they've been able to manage all those situations and most recently the Hurricanes M you know working in those conditions and and seeing the flooding that we had and the deputies out there you know up to their waistlines in water up to their shoulders in water fishing people out of flooded homes and there wasn't an ounce of back down from anybody here it's like what while their own homes were in while their own homes as you know yeah for sure um um and I mean and also beyond all that and that's cool to hear you say but I mean beyond all that policing is a lot different than it was it's more complicated I mean there's more tools but it's more complicated you're I mean even in 1994 when you you know walked into the pass office yeah um you know you weren't planning on being a social worker a guidance counselor mental health professional all the things that have been thrown at you over your career that's all that's all relatively new back in the day you couldn't just handle things the way things used to be handled yeah for sure yeah when I started you had a baton and some pepper spray and yeah that's what you needed yeah for sure you did go because I know all about this because you had a great presentation for CTI Association but the FBI Academy which was a big thing a fun thing but you talking about being getting excited what we do here and coming to work I got a text from you one day while you were at the FBI Academy correct yeah so I was uh fortunate enough to to be selected to go to the FBI National Academy so back for the summer of 23 so that's the whole story of itself I kind of was somewhat out of shape when I got the uh selection to go and part of of of going up there is you have to meet certain physical requirements and there's a whole physical portion of the FBI National Academy it's the only Leadership Academy in the country for law enforcement where they have a physical component to it there's a big physical fitness component to it so I was getting in shape and and um got up went up there for the summer of uh 23 so it's 10 weeks so one of the classes I took it was called um seminar on the law enforcement image which for slang the slang term of that they call it up there was the Pio class but the class was much more than that um and it was a very sought-after class it was like they told you when you got accepted like when you go to register like pick that one first because it fills up but everybody wants this wants this class so it was a very good class and I I got a lot out of it and they do um the class is taught in like a television studio and they have a Podium and it's all about um not just the traditional Pio stuff but all the stuff that you guys do too so they um they have you do Facebook aach Facebook post they have you do uh an interview like a surprise interview they have you do a press conference all these different things what they did at the start of each class the two instructors at the start of each class would would go into Google and bring up stuff that was going on in the country and they would lead into different Trends and different things so was it the SEC second or third class only been up there about a week and they started talking about um Trends in law enforcement and they throw up a slide and it's your guys' slide from the 56 podcast and they said if anybody's familiar with this agency they've just started this podcast we listened to the first couple ones I think the first one you had was detective chers chmer yeah so they had listened to Chalmers and they were talking about your podcast and they said is anybody and up there you were an academy uniform so they said is anybody familiar with the with this particular agency so I raised my hand I said those are my people I said yeah that's those are my people I said so it was pretty cool I got a lot of questions about it afterwards about the podcast and and what you guys had done and and how it was set up and then you got some listeners out of that group um so it was cool it was a cool moment when I was sitting there pretty cool that was cool that was a good that was a good text to get I've always wanted to be I've always wanted to be on an FBI watch list so yeah know but it's you're probably another one yeah you're probably right yeah so when you're not working yeah what do you like to do for fun so uh I mentioned earlier that you know my wife uh likes the outdoor so as a side note my wife's a prosecutor here in the six trucial circuit um so we're like an episode of Law and Order at home um is that all you talk about over dinner so people ask us that do you talk about work a lot and and believe it or not we don't talk about work at all it's really odd in a good way I guess yeah that's healthier to be able to sh it shut it off it really just is and last night was prime example I got home late and she got home late she said how was your day I said good how was your day good and we just moved on to other topics it's just like I think it's for her and I when we get home it's like we've been um we've been people all day we just don't want to be peopley anymore it's like we don't want to talk about like work anymore and we just talk about other things and we're blessed with two uh great kids my daughter's a senior at high school my son's a freshman they both play sports um both of them are in travel Sports organizations so we spend a lot of time with them um we take trips with them on for sports and other things so we we when I'm not at work we try to if we're not at a sporting event with one of our kids we try to be at the beach or on the water we have a boat um we spend a lot of time with the beach we have a golf cart um so we get down on the beach a lot we get out on the boat a lot we like to travel um and really we try to disconnect ourselves from here uh which is a from where our works not just from here but from her work also which is a good thing um but it's good so we like that traveling and and being outdoors is probably our favorite thing but and my wife and I are both I guess Foodies in a sense we like to try different restaurants and we really enjoy living here you know we plan on retiring here eventually this is not a a stop for us we we like living here and like all that Tampa Bay has to offer um we try to take advantage of it all it's really a special place to live and there's so much here to do and see um so we try take advantage of all that yeah you said your wife's a prosecutor yeah uh we've kind of had similar past in our career um you know she's been out there a long time and then there's there's been some times where um when I was iob Major and she was has been the on call State Attorney overnight and my phone's got off we've had a homicide so I'm answering the call and then uh I'm you know getting my wits about me getting ready to get up and get dressed then she wakes up and starts asking me questions I'm like what's up with the question she goes well I'm the on call State I'm like oh all right well here's the deal she think you know a few times she's like well you better not need a warrant CU I'm not going the right one I'm like then there was one time we were out of the scene and I forget what scene it was we were out of the scene and it was one of the ones the sheriff would come by it was in the morning and at one point the sheriff's like has anybody brief the state on this I said yeah I talked to her before I left the house I said she said we better not need a warrant so yeah our our work actually are cross paths at times you know it's uh I got a no file letter from her one time when I was out at vctf sent a no file letter through I can't I brought it home I'm like really I said you're embarrassing me in front of my people we not talk about this it's a good case that's awesome yeah you're incredibly positive you're reminding me a little bit of Sergeant forner just the way that you talk about the agency and everything and it's really inspiring um despite like what law enforcement sees dayto day like you see like you said the worst of people you see a lot of that how how do you keep that mindset that just that you have I I'm just curious because I guess it's just how I'm uh I guess for me personally I guess it's just how I'm wired you know even uh you know being a father being a parent like I've my kids have learned this from me it's like I I'll I'll tell him I said insert problem here you know I'll say to him okay if you see me upset then you can be upset if I'm not upset it's not that big a deal we'll figure it out we'll work through it um I just I'm just eternally optimistic that things will work out and people are good and um that's how I feel about our staff too it's just you know I I deep down I just I love I love people I love coming to work I love what we do it's never been this has never been a job for me it's just always been who I am and I just I get excited about I get excited coming to work every day there's really you know I tell people there's I really had two bad days of work in my career it was the days that we lost deities you know short of that I've never I've never really had a bad day here now some are better than others you know but I've never really had a bad day at work I just it's just I think no one in working with Jimmy forner I think he's he's just wired in a sense like I am too he's a people person he likes coming to work he believes in what we do and the way that he interacts out there with the the St and the even in the inmates I mean the inmates even love them I mean it's like the in the inmates will come into the jail and they want to see Jimmy I mean so Sergeant forner you know it's like who does that who wants to go to jail and see somebody but um I just enjoy what we do and I enjoy the the people and the um I like seeing people succeed I like you know I get excited when we make promotions and you know I was sitting with some of the new sergeants that we just made the other day and I just you know I remember being them being new and I was excited for them because I'm thinking about all that I got to do since I've made Sergeant they're on the front steps of that now and it's like I'm just excited for them because it's like it's it's going to be a heck of a ride you're gonna get to do some amazing stuff and mold some people and it's just fun it's just a fun this is a great profession you get to help people it's unpredictable and you get to see a lot of good and and bad but but even in the bad there's always good with the bad you know it could be a horrible situation but you get a lot of satisfaction and pride in making it better for somebody else you know or c for me it's catching the bad guy especially if it's a elderly victim or someone that was harmed through no fault of their own you know it's like you get to catch the the bad guy it's just it's it's fun we also try to offer all of our guests an opportunity like if there's something you can share with the public that you want them to know to make your job easier or make everybody's jobs easier what would that be that's a good one now lock your cars now yeah we've heard that one time no I think I think that question I've been asked that question a few times and I got to asked that question during during the Hurricanes a lot people said you know what can we do for you guys we see you working and I tell you what goes a long way and I think it goes a long way with the deputies and it's always gone a long way with me is when someone comes up to you and just thanks you they give you a handshake and then said hey you know we saw you your guys out in my neighborhood and most recently during the Hurricanes I I had so many people just from different Community groups and people that I know and circles that I travel and come up to me after the storms and say your guys were great thank you thank you thank you you know you were in my neighborhood you were here your guys were there and I think it goes a long way and I remember after working in the in the days and weeks after 911 and people just coming up to you and just thanking you you know you couldn't get out of your Cruiser after 911 without somebody coming up to you and shaking your hand and saying thank you for what you do every day so I think sometimes that gets forgotten but the the deputies here on both sides the detention side on the law enforc side get dressed every day and come to work and we ask them to do a noble and dangerous thing and sometimes people take that for granted and you know from the from a public perspective just a thank you and I think it goes a long way it does with me it always has with me and when someone does that you know if I'm out in uniform when someone walks up to thank me for my service always make sure I stop and take a second and acknowledge that and say well thank you for acknowledging that and always reminded me of call us if you need us and how are you and right um I think that's important The Human Side The Human Side of it for sure for sure well uh Chief we really appreciate you coming on and and chatting with us it's um it's great to hear uh the experiences you've had your perspectives um because I think it's you know there's a lot of folks between there's a lot of folks between the sheriff and and our deputies and um you know there's you've been in a lot of those roles and it's great to get some insight and tell some stories so appreciate you taking the time Laura it is your time to do your thing that we do at the end of every episode my thing well despite what I said before we don't have a live call in line although maybe we should uh should work on that could be fun you'd be calling if comar was on yeah for sure oh comar would be blowing the lineup right now I tell you right now oh but lacking that the best way to contact us if you have any thoughts about our show or any recommendations for future guests is at let's 56 at PCS et.com that's l56 pcs.com you can also catch us on Instagram 56 podcast spelled out another opportunity so thanks everybody for listening we'll catch you next time