FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – When a naked man in southwestern Florida recently raised a ruckus outside his house and threatened a deputy with a kitchen knife, the SWAT team swooped in and apprehended him.
Soon afterward, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno stood on the man's driveway in combat gear for a news conference while the suspect went to the jailhouse that the sheriff likes to call the “Marceno Motel.”
“He’s an oxygen-stealer and a scumbag, and I’m glad he’s outta here,” Marceno told reporters. “I’m proud to say that in this county, if you present deadly physical force ... we meet you with deadly force every time, and we win. It’s pretty clean, pretty quick.”
The Sunshine State has become internationally notorious for the oddball miscreants who populate its police blotters and local news reports - known collectively as Florida Man. There are murders and mayhem, like anyplace else, and then there are the only-in-Florida incidents like the man charged with assault with a deadly weapon for throwing an alligator through a Wendy’s drive-thru window in Palm Beach County in 2015. But an equally eccentric cast of hard-boiled sheriffs make a career of going after these guys. Florida Man, meet Florida Sheriff.
All but one of Florida’s 67 counties have an elected sheriff, and they wield enormous influence in part because they’re often the only countywide elected official. They head agencies that typically patrol unincorporated portions of their county but also provide backup to city police departments and sometimes patrol small cities that lack their own force. Many, like Marceno, hold made-for-YouTube news conferences and use TikTok and other social media — frequently going just as viral as the perpetrators.
Take Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson, in Florida’s Panhandle. During a recent news conference about a burglary, Johnson, elected in 2016, said a homeowner had fired shots but didn't hit the suspect. Johnson encouraged that homeowner to take a gun safety course offered every other Saturday at the sheriff’s office so he could better take matters into his own hands.
“Learn to shoot a lot better,” Johnson said. “Save the taxpayers’ money.”
On the Atlantic Coast, near Cape Canaveral, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey makes a game of crime — literally. His weekly “ Wheel of Fugitive ” videos feature the sheriff spinning a wheel with photos of 10 of the county’s most wanted.
“Everybody watches it. Even the fugitives watch it” to see who becomes “fugitive of the week,” Ivey said. The lucky winner of one recent episode was a 32-year-old white male accused of petit theft and failure to appear. The sheriff, first elected in 2012, looked into the camera as if speaking directly to the man and urged him to surrender: “Stop messing up and stop breaking the law. Get all of it behind you.”
The Twitter account of Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco - who has starred in A&E Network’s “Live PD” show - made a splash with local “Sad Criminal of the Day” posts. His agency also copyrighted the now-viral hashtag, #9pmroutine, a reminder to lock car doors and homes every night.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/09/10/florida-sheriffs-office-warns-people-not-shoot-hurricane-irma/650909001/
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Our local Sheriff (Gator DeLoach) rides a horse.
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