Stories From A Florida Sheriff – Rick Staly

this is Things Police See firsthand accounts with your host Steve Gold welcome to the podcast that interviews active and retired police officers about their most intense bizarre and sometimes humorous moments on the job guys thank you for being here i’m glad to have you all listening thank you to everybody who recently found the show you’ve been downloading and binge listening to the show that’s always that’s always wanted and appreciated and just a reminder if you um if you love the show and you want to uh support it monetarily which I appreciate uh like you’ve heard all the free content and you think “Let me give Steve a couple shekels,” you can do that um through the link in the show notes of Patreon and on Patreon there’s there’s different levels you can choose from patrolman all the way up to captain but if you go Sergeant or above you get a shout out on the show and you get additional cops in the news a live stream that we do um and you get the the replay of that so and it goes into the podcast and on YouTube also if you want if you just want a heads up when the live streams are going to happen um go to things.com scroll down and enter your email um just subscribe i don’t send out a ton of newsletters or anything like that but I will every couple weeks when a live’s going to happen you’ll get an email um with links to it and the time and and uh in date it’s going to happen so it makes it easier to to catch it and you don’t need to um be a member of the Patreon for that you can watch it live um just anybody can watch it live so that’s just a just a heads up so today’s guest very excited to have him he is a sheriff head of an agency an elected official he did um three years municipal when he first started then went over to Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Florida he rose to second in command it’s the fourth largest um sheriff’s office or fourth largest law enforcement office in the state of Florida in I think he said 13th largest in the country so uh pretty big job he then retired started a very successful private security company sold that um became the under sheriff for Flaggler County and sheriff and uh sheriff’s office and then was pressured by the community into being the sheriff of the uh of the county which he is now he also is on the show Booked on A&E he he’s done 50 years in law enforcement and he’s still going which is incredible without further ado let me bring on the great Sheriff Rick Staly rick hey good morning Steve no sir thank you so much for joining us i I told you when right before we came on I said “You’re these Florida sheriffs they’re like you know we up here in the Northeast we see you guys and we go number one we go geez looks like these guys are having a lot of fun.” Number two how do we get one in office in the Northeast would that ever happen well uh you’ve had a couple over the time i the Milwaukee sheriff uh David Clark uh years ago uh was a Florida style sheriff uh but you know I probably would not be successful uh in the north you know sheriff’s office in the south is a law enforcement uh full service law enforcement agency uh just like a city police department uh we do law enforcement most agencies in Florida do corrections uh and then uh the court system whereas the northern sheriffs tend to be relegated to courts and maybe jails those kind of things not always but um you know it’s a very very different way of of policing plus we’re in the free state of Florida and I’m a constitutional officer which means that um I’m elected by the people the people can remove me or the governor can remove me but I don’t I don’t report to anybody other than the people uh once I’m elected I get my budget from the county commission uh but once I receive the budget frankly by Florida law I can do anything I want with it after that move money around so I have a total independence so I don’t have to ask permission to go do something um if I think it’s right for this agency right for the community I just do it and so far it’s been very successful uh you know I was reelected unopposed in uh 2024 and in 2020 I was uh reelected at 70% of the vote 2016 campaign I call that the spirited campaign of 2016 there was nine of us running for sheriff so wow uh it was uh quite chaotic uh but I survived all the challengers and uh community seems to be very happy that’s awesome man yeah we have you’re right about the jail thing up here of course that is with police reform Massachusetts went through and our need for um certified post officers and how the standards have changed we actually are some sheriffs in Western Mass are starting to supplement their giving deputies who have been academy trained to larger agencies to kind of supplement their patrol so it kind of that kind of is changing i always thought that was weird about the Northeast where because you think sheriff growing up you think Wild West you think law man you think all that and then you know when you learn in Massachusetts you learn that the sheriffs are really relegated to um prisoner transport in in managing the prisons it’s very odd to me it’s it’s so odd actually that there is a court case where they taught us about an academy where it’s not really clear their authority in the law um but one a sheriff did stop I think on the way back from a detail stopped a drunk driver and arrested him and the judge did say in his disposition he said it would be ridiculous to say a deputy sheriff couldn’t stop a motor vehicle for OUI just he he couldn’t even process it although couldn’t cite the law so it went through fine cuz Yeah that’s it’s just weird and then the other piece for you is the sheriffs we have now in Mass i mean there’s a lady lawyer who wears pants suit that’s sheriff of the Cape Cod of Barnes County she’s never been a cop but she’s the sheriff of the county well my predecessor that was a situation with my predecessor which so I think that’s why the community asked me to to run for sheriff and uh because he was a lawyer never been a cop and the agency was in shambles coming from a big agency I knew what this agency was supposed to be doing uh so you know in Florida uh under the statute a sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer of the county and legally I have two small police departments in my county legally I could go in if I didn’t like the way that they were handling a call i could say the sheriff’s office is taking that call and there’s absolutely nothing they can do about that uh but I have a good relationship with my two police chiefs so you know we have handled some high-profile calls for them because they’re very small police departments um but uh we worked that out in advance you know so fortunately I haven’t had to use that but that that is the authority that a sheriff in Florida has yeah yeah that’s great yeah you don’t want to have sour grapes with your chiefs you know cause all kind of problems and all our deputies are state certified through the Florida criminal justice standards and training so it’s not like uh you know decades ago when there was no requirement our requirement now is over 800 hours of training for a law enforcement deputy and almost 400 hours of training for a detention deputy so you know we do have standards my agency is a five diamond uh agency we’re accredited by five different uh accreditation uh bodies uh so we’re we’re a you know really a professional high level uh sheriff’s office yeah yeah sounds like Yeah sound mass is the same now i think it’s over 800 hours to be to get into to get your I guess now with post it’s your your license or whatever um so Sheriff when you were I have to ask you about this TV show because it it it always like I put myself in in the in the seat of being an administrator and being approached and the first thing I would think is like you want to videotape in my jails and on the street with my deputies um it just feels very exposing even if you have the utmost most con confidence in your in your agency it it doesn’t it did you feel a little bit of pullback at first like whoa let me see what the terms are of this well I actually I did not but my division chief did and in fact he recommended against doing this and I overruled them um I’m a very transparent sheriff we tell the agent or the community what’s going on in our community and that includes the jail and I thought it was important to highlight and showcase the men and women that work in our detention facility uh because they’re unless you get arrested and we arrest about 300 people a month um they’re never seen the law enforcement you know they get all the focus right because body cameras car cameras you name it they’re handling those high-profile incidents but yet you got just as equal uh a team that’s in the detention side and I thought the community uh in our county and of course across the country uh should see what it’s like to be a detention deputy what they have to deal with their responsibilities not just for the inmates but the booking but for their fellow deputy and what what they have to deal with because you know uh most uh detention facilities deal with a lot of characters uh and sometimes they’re on drugs or drunk you know and people react differently and so I just thought it was important uh to show it a spin-off that I really didn’t count on is that while a lot of agencies across the country are having a hard time hiring people um I don’t I’m actually overhired in my jail and I’m overhired in my law enforcement side nice and I attribute that because not only are we a professional agency and pretty well known by what we do in this agency um but uh Booked and the other shows that we’re on have helped market our agency across the country that’s great yeah that’s a nice little side uh side piece of that that makes sense people get to see it a lot of optics on it and they want they want to join up so you got overhired you you got approved for um or I guess you already have the budget so if it’s in your budget you can do it correct so you know I’m the one that makes that decision and there’s always a lag time uh in the hiring process and we know that annually we’re going to turn over whether retirements resignations whatever the reason about a dozen and my law enforcement side and about five or six on my detention side and it takes really close to a especially if you have to send them to the academy for them to be fully trained and so I have the capability uh in my budget and being an independent constitutional sheriff I authorized uh overhire in in both of those divisions so that I can keep my staffing levels up and uh so far it’s worked out great in fact we have a waiting list right now uh to join our agency i love it let me just say anybody listening to this if they’re interested they can go to joinfleriff.com and learn more about us nice i like it that’s excellent yeah hopefully you don’t get any of these uh Tik Tok cops on there trying to get in just so they can get on video you know hopefully not um can you can you go way back in your career and tell us about the first hot call you responded to the first call you responded that really like gave you an adrenaline dump so um I I guess what I would say to that there’s you know in a 50-year career there’s uh a number of hot calls right but back early in my career with the Orange County uh sheriff’s office um we had a lot of issues with motorcycle gangs uh occurring and of course Orange County Florida is where Disney World is SeaWorld the theme parks if you will and back then we did not have portable radios so we had a joke the city police in Orlando had portable radios and we used to tell them you know you wanna you want to be a real cop come to the sheriff’s office where you have to fight your way back to your car to call for help little rivalry between the two agencies right um so one day on South Orange Blossom Trail which is a pretty uh uh at the time pretty uh risque part of the county and high crime uh area I pulled over this motorcycle and uh go up to the driver and uh the most prevalent gang motorcycle gang that we had in Orange County at that time in Central Florida was the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang the local chapter president his name is Crazy Joe Spaziano and he’s been convicted of multiple murders uh he’s still alive he’s in prison so the guy that I pulled over of course I didn’t know at the time was his brother and he was driving a stolen motorcycle didn’t know that at the time either and he was also wanted for a homicide so imagine me up there on this what I hate the word routine but you know just a a normal everyday traffic stop uh for a traffic violation and I find out I have Crazy Joe’s brother and so I’m having to keep an eye on him i’m having to walk backwards to my car to be able to uh call for a backup because of who I got they’re generally armed uh but he actually uh surrendered without any any issues but uh you know it was certainly uh a little bit of a shock when uh I found out who I had he didn’t have any ID but he actually told told me his real name which was even crazier that’s wild yeah that’s cra It’s funny that’s what’s so tough about police work and you might get somebody you think you can totally trust it seems like a guy going for a weekend ride who who attacks you you have this badass and he’s compliant correct you just never know i mean when you make arrests and you know I’ve made a lot of arrests in my career the suspect the person that you’re going to arrest has to make a choice and there’s one of three choices they can make they can surrender they can flee or they can resist now many times the way you handle yourself because the dirt bag’s going to size you up right and if you handle yourself where they don’t think they can get away with it then the likely it’s more likely they’re going to make the right decision in there but that’s not a decision that you can make for them every person you arrest has to make that own decision yeah and that goes a lot with with command presence and you know even just how your uniform looks i remember we had a class in that police academy where they they they talk they interviewed the FBI interviewed people who murdered cops or or horribly assaulted cops and that’s exactly what it was it was like the watering hole at the Serengeti you know they the hy hyenas and the lions they look at the lion they go does he look mangy is he dirty does he look like he’s been exiled from his from his pride or is he or is he put together polished boots tucked in shirt not a soup sandwich you know what I mean correct and they kind of decide that way yeah um Sheriff can you describe a strange the most strange or most bizarre thing you dealt with on the job well again you know when you’re in this career you know for 50 years uh all of that kind of runs together but uh I I think probably one of the the funniest things that I had occur is uh back in those days in Orange County again in that same Orange Blossom Trail area um we had CB radios that we installed in our our patrol cars so deputies we would talk amongst ourselves mainly to so our supervisor wouldn’t really know what we were doing frankly back then and uh but I kept mine on CB19 which is you know back in the day it was uh what truckers use it was like the emergency channel and somebody got on there and said you know any police around and I picked it up and they alerted me to a burglary in progress uh and I was just a couple blocks away so as I rolled up on it uh I see this guy coming out uh the broken window pane of this seafood restaurant had something in his hand i I couldn’t really tell what it was at that point i had a civilian rider with me civilian employee that was riding with me that day so I challenge him draw my gun challenge him he drops what he has in his hands and takes off running i chase after him and back in that era you could use deadly force for burglaries okay you can’t do that today under the Gardener decision but back then you could and and I started to uh fire you know a shot at him and I just thought you know I’m not going to shoot this guy in the back for a burglary and he ran across South Orange Blossom Trail i went into this big u uh storage area of heavy equipment and I lost sight of them so we did a perimeter and uh couldn’t find them had canines out actually the sheriff was out that night and came to the scene he wanted to know why I didn’t shoot him he told me that he could afford a 29 cent bullet uh in there but uh so later so then I go back to my patrol car and I ask my rider what did he have in his hands well he had stolen um about four lobster that he had in a in a metal canister and I said “Well where where are the lobster?” He had put them in the backseat of my patrol car and so now my car smells like a lobster but later on that day that night my sergeant had gone home not feeling well and I’m picking up paperwork and I’m checking reports and one of the guys on the perimeter had gone to a disturbance call at the dollhouse which was a a topless bar on South Orange Blossom Trail and he arrested this guy for disorderly into talks and I’m reading the description of this guy that was and it was a guy that ran from me and so I went to the jail and I said you know is this guy still here yes he’s in a holding cell with like a dozen other people and I said well don’t don’t tell me which one he is just take me to the holding cell and let me look so I looked and I pointed at this one i said I want him for burglary and uh I arrested him and he plead guilty so you know it just goes to show that you may not get them initially but they are eventually going to get caught and so that what this guy had done was not only had he stole the lobster but he stole the cash he went he took the cash went to the dollhouse he got drunk caused caused a disturbance there and got himself arrested and uh you know so we still we still got him but that was it was kind of a memorable case because of the lobster and the dollhouse connection and then him pleading guilty to the burglary charge bogles of mind you imagine put committing a felony for for lobster you know yeah you didn’t even get a chance to eat him of course I wasn’t real happy with my rider that day because now my car I had just cleaned my car we had take home patrol cars and now it smelled like a lobster so I had to clean it again uh you know the next day so I didn’t smell like a lobster everywhere I went but but it was kind of funny that guy by the way is now my chief of staff at the Flaggler County Sheriff’s Office the guy that put the lobster in the back of my car so obviously I didn’t hold that against him yeah well pretty proactive for a civilian rider he got out and grabbed the grabbed the lobster and threw it in the back yep that’s true that’s great um can you now you got the governor’s medal for heroism um for a big incident and I’m the next question I ask is the most intense or terrifying call i’m assuming this would be the call yeah it was actually that the call that I’m going to I’ll talk about and then one about 30 days later okay um and they kind of tie together so I was the acting shift supervisor uh Orange County um back in that era when I was a young deputy sheriff much smaller agency uh than it is today or even when I was under sheriff there um so we get this call uh about an attempted uh firebombing at the Exxon gas station in West Orlando and uh so myself and another deputy uh go there i’m his backup when we get there that the suspect is gone and uh we find out later that a trooper had been flagged down by the the gas station owner and pointed out this guy and the trooper’s trying to follow him radio technology is not like it is today there was not good communication especially between agencies and so we couldn’t find a trooper where their dispatcher was telling us where he was so the deputy and I split up and uh the other deputy finds him down in a impoverished area of uh unincorporated area on the southwest side of Orlando and so he calls out I now drive over there and this guy is just raising all kind of cane and said that they had worked on his car and and now his car didn’t run it turned out later he didn’t even own a car and uh so we told him to calm down or we’re going to arrest him for disorderly conduct well remember what I said earlier you got to make a choice right the suspect has to make a choice whether you’re gonna fight flee or surrender yep and so the other deputy uh went up to him now this guy had already told us he was going to fight us so I perceived him right i’m not sure this other deputy did he did not stay much longer in law enforcement after this incident and so we went up to him and said “Sir I’m afraid I’m going to have to arrest you.” Well this guy decided to take off running he’s a faster runner than I am the deputy is and so the deputy tackles him and uh as I’m running up I see the deputy on the bottom the guy’s on top of him and the deputy is frantically pushing this guy off of him he had grabbed the deputy’s gun and now I’m within uh six feet i’m going for my gun um running you know very fast during that time I wore steeltoed uh boots and uh I’m basically on top of and as they teach you in the academy you’re you should turn make yourself a smaller target and all of those kind of things so I was in the process of doing that now Steve everything I’m telling you happened in 11 seconds okay from the time I called in a foot chase to the time I called in that I’d been shot 11 seconds so that’s how quick a relatively minor call can change so as I’m running up grabbing my gun back then we just carried revolvers and um I kicked him in the chest which diverted him away from the other deputy he pointed the gun at me i’m still pulling my gun out he fires uh three rounds two hit me in my gun arm and the uh the third one hit me in the chest and um the one in the chest just knocked the you know what out of me okay because I’m basically on top of this and I went down and now I’m struggling my in fact you can still see the scars on my arm today if if you look and you can still see the chest impact um but fortunately well let me back up i’m a little out of out of order here so when I go down I’m struggling to get my gun out and he comes uh running up pointing the gun down at me and I hear all those gunshots and I remember thinking I was 20 22 years old wow and I was thinking I always wondered how I was going to die now I know and I’m struggling and I hear this gunfire going on what I didn’t know was another deputy that had heard the foot chase was down the road and had come into this gravel parking lot and saw my actual shooting proforce law enforcement the best damn cop shop in the nation whether you’re purchasing for an entire agency or you’re an individual officer looking to buy firearms or duty gear these guys are the best in the biz proforce has law enforcement exclusive pricing and is the place to be buying your guns and duty gear they carry all the top industry brands and the guys and gals that work there understand exactly what law enforcement officers need special discount link tps.proforceonline.com um it’s u deeply discounted items just for the listeners of this show or you can go to proforceline.com and shop the whole place place is unbelievable you can also visit Prescott Arizona in person or Brea California in person to get hands-on with the gear all the context up is in the show notes thank you Proforce and he reached for his shotgun we had shotgun mounts uh that mounted going straight up like dash mounts back then and when he reached for his shotgun it diverted the guy from me and he was shooting at this other deputy in fact the bullets were going through the windshield uh at this deputy they get out exchange gunfire uh the trooper uh fired one shot and uh we hit him seven times did not kill him he was doped up on Purple Haze and LSD derivative uh and the ambulance people tell me that uh uh the only thing he complained about because we knew we were hitting him because we could see the the marks coming on his shirt uh but he wasn’t going down and the only thing he complained about was where I kicked him not not the seven holes that were in him um but what’s what’s ironic and and fortunately you know back then as a Orange County deputy sheriff I was making $10,300 a year in a take-home car i had bought my own protective vest which turned out to be the best life insurance I could have ever got because the agency had just started issuing protective vests but they didn’t think deputies would wear them in the heat in Florida so they were only issuing front and rear panels he got me in the chest as I was turning to make myself that small target had I been wearing the departmentisssued vest the ER doctor said that round would have killed me because it would have missed the vest uh so it caught the side panel and that’s the only reason why I’m still here and um after that incident my grandmother said uh you know I’d really scared her and that she would pay for me to go to law school and I said I said “No Grandma i uh this is what I want to do it’s you know this I got to get back on that horse so many many years later I thought maybe I should have taken her up on that but and made it you know a bunch of money or something but um so I was out of work for about 30 days uh healing up my arm and and cracked ribs and I came back to work so this time when I came back to work they put me in a quieter uh quote unquote uh zone it included the theme parks in Orange County in the hotel district basically my first call back I was on the midnight shift was a man with a gun at the Hotel Royal Plaza in Lake Buista so the whole time and we were very spread out back then you didn’t have backups very you know my backup down there was 20 25 minutes away and so uh the whole time I was going down the interstate with my blue lights on going to the Hotel Royal Plaza my entire shooting uh kind of like visioned in my mind I bet uh and I get to the hotel backup is still probably at that point 15 minutes away and I take a gun off the guy and uh and arrest him so I guess that’s a way you know it’s a quick way to get back on that saddle wasn’t really what I was expecting you know but uh uh you know hey I’m still here 50 years later right yeah the uh big guy’s got your back god’s looking out for you brother with without a doubt that guy had me uh when I was down on the ground and God looked out for me there is no doubt in my mind because he had me and uh you know I mean well the scars on my arm you know and I was smaller back then too i was skinny as a rail and um you know but I was able to save the other deputy’s life he went to prison he was sentenced to 20 years only served six uh because that was back when uh prison uh Florida’s prisons were overcrowded so they were letting everybody out he was arrested multiple times after that he’s now dead uh in there and uh you know I survived it got the Governor’s Medal of Heroism not the way you want to get it um you know and a bunch of other awards uh Kevlar Survivors Award Medal of Valor you know from the agency stuff like that but you know I think as as sheriff um that incident makes sure that I equip our deputies properly um that we train them well um I don’t know if you can see my badge but I’m the only one that wears a two-tone badge it’s silver in the center and gold on the five points uh because I never want to forget where my where my roots were i still go out on Friday nights patrols i make my own arrest i will admit my deputies probably have to help me with the paperwork when I make an arrest i don’t do that that often um I write my own tickets uh in fact I just wrote one last week um you know so and I require all my command staff uh to to serve as a watch commander i have permanent watch commanders but I don’t want them to forget where they came from and make uh decisions that impact people that they’re commanding and they don’t know they don’t remember what it’s like out there and so you know and as sheriff you know my story gives me instant credibility with my team oh yeah in fact my the vest that saved my life is hanging up in our museum at our operations sorry no kidding i mean and vest back then my dad was a cop 32 years when I was growing up and uh I remember the early bulletproof vests they hated them they were thick they pinched you they were not my They were you know um you know an inch thick level three you know they they were And I remember my dad every five years would get a new one and every five years it was a little bit thinner a little bit more flexible you know and the guys were more willing to wear them correct you know but there’s a lesson for leaders if you have leaders that are that watch this podcast is that ask your employees what they will wear you know we had the bureaucrats of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office back then make a decision on what they thought we would or would not wear we were never asked and you know who knows what who knows what the opinion would have been i can just tell you that if I hadn’t bought my own vest that was like 200 bucks but when you’re only making gross $10,300 a year that was a lot of money lot of money it turned out to be the cheapest life insurance policy I could buy absolutely yeah the the um the best thing I think for that’s happened in the evolution for vest has been and it’s controversial in some places and I get it but the outer carriers man they are um so much my back and hips used to kill from wearing like if you go on a K9 track with a full duty belt and you’re chasing the K9 officer the whole time um my hip flexors my lower back would kill and then they um slowly but surely agencies started going to to allow the outer carrier and a lot of it was they were getting um they were getting approached by the police unions and the police unions were armed with um information on back injury and hip injury and after a while although it doesn’t have that nice traditional look I can do a 16-hour shift now and my hips and back do do not hurt because of that so this has been a little controversial in my agency candidly um so my tactical teams have that my canines have that things like that um I authorize an outer carrier vest that looks like a uniform shirt right uh but not the tactical vest uh for uh my deputies that are on patrol my community doesn’t want that military uh look as a daily wearer and when you think about most interaction uh with law enforcement comes either victim of a crime or a traffic stop or a traffic crash you know our community is 140,000 population we arrest 300 people uh a month and not all of those are residents so 3600 a year um so there’s a balance that you have to do now my HR director’s wife is a um uh chiropractor and what she will tell you because the studies aren’t done yet is the outer carrier vest is just going to change the type of injury from the gear so instead of instead of the hip and lower back issues you’re gonna have shoulder and neck issues i guess time will tell if she’s right but right you know so I’ I’ve tried to balance the the need uh by the agency’s request by the employees and what the community’s expectations are yeah it’s a tough one i have a buddy who’s a chief who had the same thing where I had one and I sent him a picture and he was like I don’t know and he did do the like the um um the one that looks like the uniform like a lot so when guys take reports they can take it off and correct you know breathe and all that but I’m with you like I said when I when I started the statement like it’s controversial and I’m I to this day when I see an officer who has a traditional belt and uniform I always think in my head that looks sharp and when I see what I’m wearing on other people I go you look like you’re about to repel uh in Afghanistan out of a helicopter yeah and it it just depends on the community too um you know and what kind of relationship you have with your community uh because sometimes that appearance can be a barrier and if you want to do community policing in our agency what we use is guardianship policing which is a hybrid of community policing uh guardianship policing meaning that you’re working in partnership with the community to be guardians that might be the guardians of that one street that neighborhood you know a big section of the community um and we recognize that law enforcement officers are guardians also but you can’t do it alone so we use a hybrid of community policing called guardianship policing i like that i like that a lot better yeah because there I know there was always um controversy with saying uh cops calling themselves warriors or whatever you know like because that’s kind of doesn’t really like you were saying with like 90% of what their job is that doesn’t really we’re not on a battlefield we’re in our community so guardianship that’s a that’s a smart um term to use i like that yeah thank you um Sheriff can you tell us about a positive or heartwarming call or situation you dealt with well first I I would just say personally uh the birth of my daughter was probably the most heartwarming thing because she almost died at birth so Oh geez and and now she’s married and very successful beautiful but but as far as heartwarming I’ll just talk about as sheriff if that’s all right sure um you know there are many kids that uh have to you know the cards that they were dealt with just really weren’t great right either their parents aren’t great or they have a medical issue like you know cancer and they’re young kids and and they want to uh go into law enforcement uh and chances are they’re not going to be able to or they may not even live uh long enough to do that and uh so I get when I find out about them in my community uh I make them an honorary uh deputy uh they come into my office they get a ball cap they get a badge they get a certificate nice uh and just to see their smile on their face and they just light up in fact this uh this Wednesday I’m going to be in Tallahassee and uh myself and a number of other sheriffs are going to make uh DJ uh DJ is the young man yeah that President Trump made an honorary Secret Service agent um we are making him honorary sheriffs in the state of Florida that’s great and uh so you know that’s going to be a great time in fact I cleared my day uh just so I could go to Tallahassee which is about four hours away each way uh to be able to present this to him because he’s such an amazing young man you know I I hope God heals him um but you know it’s uh it’s I guess it’s a you know it’s in God’s hands I guess is what I would say that’s beautiful i love that that’s so cool man yeah that was really um I mean that was a tumultuous um address that the president did anyways but um that was really telling when a certain side wouldn’t stand up wouldn’t applaud a sick kid i mean that was that was absolutely and in hindsight I’m glad it happened because I’m I’m I hope it didn’t hurt his feelings but I’m glad that everybody saw that yeah I would I would guess you know he’s young enough that he probably didn’t realize the the political aspect of of of what what that segment of elected officials did but I think it showed the country what was going on obviously I’m a Republican so I’m you know I’m biased and right you know same here i have a photo u I don’t know if you can see it on the back of my uh my desk there with uh President Trump President Trump and my wife and I and that was taken on April 10th of last year before he was reelected as president but uh he’s just a downto-earth guy and just you know an amazing uh change agent if you will for our country yeah totally um sheriff really popular question on the show get a lot of mail about it advice to new officers a lot of people that listening are on the fence they I even I even get emails of people say they heard you guys tell your stories and they became cops because of which is amazing um what would you tell people for advice getting into the profession well I’ll tell you what I tell people in the academy uh because it would apply to this question police work is the same uh no matter where you go okay so a burglary is a burglary a car crash car crash DUI arrest DUI arrest so all of that’s the same homicide so forth uh so what you really need to look at is what community do you want to serve do they support you or my community does um you know uh so look at the community on where you want to serve and look at the leadership in that agency because you know I ask my deputies to make split-second decisions and we train them well and we hope that they make the right decision uh but every once in a while you know you’re gonna have to make a fast decision on the use of on the vehicle pursuit if you will or use of deadly force or even a taser will the leadership back you and I ask my deputies to be you know let’s be as correct as we can i’m asking you to risk your life for me as a sheriff because they work under my authority as a sheriff i have they’re considered the alter ego of the sheriff uh when they’re on that scene they are the sheriff because I can’t be at at every uh 122,000 calls that we handle a year right so are they willing to back you when the chips go down when you have to make that fast decision so look at look at the agency look at the leadership look at the community is it an agency that’s going to give you opportunity or are you just going to be a number um and depending on what your career goals are can they provide that so you know that’s that’s what I tell people i I’ve had a great career um you know I’m fortunate enough to be one of 67 sheriffs in Florida uh never dreamed of that quite frankly when I started my career um I thought I might be a police chief somewhere that wasn’t in God’s uh plan and uh and I’m thankful that frankly it wasn’t because I have a lot more fun and I’m much more independent as a sheriff than a police chief ever is uh but but that’s what I would say is look look at the community uh are they going to support you or everywhere you go is it going to be a fight you know because they don’t they don’t like law enforcement or you know what we what we uh right stand for so because other than that the job’s the same uh no matter where you go yep i see that on the show interviewing people from all around the country and the world um it is the it is cops are the same it’s the same mindset you know the same very very similar type of people um some of the guys from overseas I’ve I’ve interviewed is oh man are they handcuffed with what they can do it it’s it’s crazy but yeah in America in Canada especially it’s it’s very very similar I’ve been to Brazil I’ve been to Costa Rica I’ve seen the policing there when I was in Brazil it was at uh uh an invitation by the colonel of the state police in in this one state in Brazil and you know it’s very different policing down there uh in their equipment when I went down there it was like they were in a time warp that they were stuck in the 1960s uh compared to what you know America policing was so you know it’s very different you know and we may not be perfect uh in America but we really do things right yeah it is it is so different my buddy went down to um South America i I can’t remember what country but he put it on Facebook he um he’s standing there at like their country store or whatever with his hands up like this like and on either side of him is a local cop with their gun pointed at his head real gun for a for for a funny picture and the gun is like a World War II surplus like 38 revolver so you know what I mean like and I was like damn man that is incredible and you could tell just by what the like old um really long um pancake holsters on a swivel just a gun no other use of force i mean and they were dressed like in green like fatigues almost it was just crazy but they’re very proud that’s the one thing I noticed was how proud their police officers were and um but their equipment was you know very very old like you just described i was staying in a four-star hotel the four-star hotel was maybe a twostar in America and still had a black and white TV that’s incredible um can you can we circle back to the very beginning when we were first talking uh you said you were you were under sheriff and then the community I mean mo you see people run for sheriff and they are really going for it and it’s like a pit that pit it against somebody else or whatever contentious but you had the community kind of push you into it how did how did that happen well I had uh been the under sheriff in Flaggler County for two years uh didn’t really know the sheriff the sheriff was an attorney that had been elected there were two guys that had traded off uh the role of sheriff for 16 years because they didn’t like each other and that that so there was not stability in the agency and uh and I left after uh two years with this guy um just not somebody I could work uh with okay and so I had no intentions of running for sheriff and uh my wife and I were traveling the country and a community started calling me will you run for sheriff and I said no uh the community leaders kept calling me uh because they they knew my background from Orange County but they also knew I’d been a very successful businessman before we sold it our security company to a national firm to total package right and so they kept calling finally the lo the owner of the local newspaper called me and he said “Uh we need you to run for sheriff.” And I said “Look I would make a great sheriff or a good sheriff i don’t want the hassle of getting there and he said “Have you looked at who’s running for sheriff?” I said “No I’m in my motor home i’m in Montana.” And he said “When will you be back?” And he said “I’ll be back we’ll be back in about two weeks.” And he goes “Okay before you close that door will you promise me you’ll look at who’s running for sure?” I said “Okay I’ll do that.” So we get back two weeks later and I’m looking at who’s running for sheriff well the incumbent sheriff’s running for reelection he’d been convicted ethic law violations while in office the former sheriff’s running for reelection because these two don’t like each other and he had been convicted of ethic law violations while in office oh my gosh and then there were people that frankly just weren’t qualified okay some that didn’t even live in this county which you can do in Florida okay um and so my wife and the community kept calling i’m doing the research my wife is saying “You need to run for sheriff for this community and that agency.” Now how many spouses want you to throw your hat into a political arena who wants that headache right so you know finally she said “Look if one of these eight other people there are eight people already running um if any of these people get elected we’re moving because none of them are qualified to protect me.” And then um the incumbent sheriff who was afraid I was gonna run actually pushed me over the top because I read I opened up the newspaper um and he had thrown me under the bus I guess because he was afraid I was going to run that actually sent me over the edge and I looked at my wife and I said that’s it she said what since you’re on podcast I won’t say exactly what I said but I said I’m running for sheriff and I call it the spirited campaign of 2016 um the most in this county that’s ever been raised for a sheriff’s race or really any race in this county 50,000 i raised 286,000 wow and there was nine of us running so we’re partisan races in Florida so there were uh six Republicans of which I am two Democrats which is what the incumbent was and an independent and I never had to run against the uh incumbent because he lost in his own primary and the sheriffs have a saying in Florida that there are uh good um there are successful sheriffs and one-term sheriffs so in other words you have to be reelected one time to be considered a successful sheriff amongst your peers so the guy that was my predecessor he was a one-term sheriff twice in this county and lost in his own primary each time which is totally unheard of so if that gives your viewers any indication on what was going on in a community in the agency and uh so that’s that’s how I got in to run uh and here I am now start you know I just started my third term uh in January and I’m going to run again in 2028 and hopefully the community uh you know will will keep me because I’m having fun uh we’re doing great things in this agency my crime is down over 50% since I’ve been elected sheriff we’re now a professional cutting edge modern agency i would put my real time crime center up against anybody’s in this country uh not only for the technology that we use but my employees and I’ve got a motivated team that just works really hard and and delivers for our community my philosophy is this Steve we’re we’re the third fastest growing county in the state of Florida right now okay uh just because we’re growing doesn’t mean we have to accept crime and increases and our job actually is crime reduction that’s what our goal should be is to reduce crime not to accept any crime absolutely and and you know so we focus a lot of energy on that uh we have a weekly crime maps meeting kind of like the old commstat if you will that New York City did decades ago uh I can tell you that you don’t want to get on our if you’re a suspect uh you don’t want to be in highlighting our uh crime uh maps meeting because you’re going to be in my hotel but probably by the end of the week i like it man that’s great fantastic and all I mean so it’s no it’s no wonder that you were contacted by a a producer for a TV show with everything you got going on um tell us a little bit about the show it’s 109 central it airs and you’re on the third season correct booked first day in so is it primarily what people go through when they’re getting processed and learning their fate correct and uh so um you know it’s been a great partnership quite frankly uh it highlights the men and women that work in our detention facility and what they have to deal with some of the characters uh that we we arrest uh sometimes they’re funny sometimes they’re just mean and angry um but it really gives you the inside view of a jail and the booking process and um and how people react to that and I think it also shows how professional our uh detention staff is um and it’s not the stereotype you know it’s not a dark dungeon facility it’s ours is a very clean facility uh that we treat people with respect we’re not going to let them you know attack us or beat up on us uh but we try to deescalate the situation uh because they may have had an encounter during that arrest and they’re round up from that and agitated and our goal is to get them to calm down let’s get through the booking process uh you either bond out or you stay uh for an arraignment hearing uh before a judge the next day um you know we average about uh 200 inmates a night in our jail um we had been as high as about 330 uh but frankly our crime is down so much our population uh in the jail is down which is not a not a bad thing might be a little bit slower for booked first day in for recording yeah uh you know but uh uh but you know when I when I see our men and women on this show I just couldn’t be prouder because uh they’re delivering the vision and what I expect absolutely yeah it’s great man um Sheriff it was an honor to have you on the show the link um will in the will be in the show notes for booked first day end also I’ll put your uh Instagram on there and if anybody’s looking for employment we can point them towards your your website and come join the team um like I said thank you so much for coming on i got to do the outro to the show can um you hang out for like two or three minutes sure awesome the great sheriff Rick Staly um really really fun episode thank you to him for coming on a&e booked first day in 109 central i’ll put a link like I said to the to the episodes on there they’re in season 3 now fantastic show guys this is a time in the show when I thank the Patreon sponsors you go sergeant or above you will get a shout out on the show who I’m talking about is these are the lieutenants let me say first the great and powerful Andy Biggs Kyle Roberts everybody thank you Kyle michael Roach from Roach Machines check them out ai solutions there the great Thomas Connell thank you Lieutenant Connell now to the I almost said sheriffs now to the sergeants adam Alexander Adam McMahon Adam Mihal Ben Peters Bentley Barnett Brad Thompson Brett Lee Dan Carlson from Burley Boards great woodworker check him out on Instagram sherry Finch thank you clark Luff thank you Dave Elman Doug and Kelly Newman love you guys hope you’re 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for listening to the men and women of law enforcement i love you guys and I will see you next week