BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS— One of the deputies now patrolling the Lake Region for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office brings with him a wide range of experience, including a stint as chief of police for Camp Blanding.
However, he said one of his biggest advantages is his upbringing in a small eastern Kentucky town, a community much like Keystone Heights.
Keith Pendleton followed his father into law enforcement and began his career in the Blue Grass State.
After moving to Daytona Beach in 1998, he joined the Holly Hill Police Department, where he remained almost two decades.
He spent 2015 and 2016 in Afghanistan with the Florida National Guard.
“While I was deployed, I was offered the job of chief of police for Camp Blanding,” he recalled.
He said the job at Blanding was slower than what he was accustomed to. However, the intensity of the work ranged widely, depending on the activity on the post.
“It’s 73,000 acres,” he said. “During one summer you can have a thousand soldiers come through or you can have 10,000.”
Pendleton said that while at the military training instillation, he supervised 10 MPs and handled missing property, stolen property, wildlife poaching and trespassing incidents, in addition to a fatal plane crash.
He said the biggest problems his MPs faced at Blanding were people trying to gain unauthorized access to the post’s beach and recreational areas.
When Pendleton later joined the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, he started in Orange Park.
“Then a couple of senior deputies moved to other agencies and based on my experience, they moved me to Keystone Heights,” he said.
Pendleton said the incidents he handles now are typical for north Florida rural areas: domestic battery, narcotics, property theft and criminal mischief which includes vandalism.
The sheriff’s Keystone Heights area starts at the intersection of State Road 21 and County Road 315, also known as Sharon Road.
The region then follows the boundary of Camp Blanding and the Bradford County line south to Melrose, then east to Putnam Hall, then north to Belmore.
“A lot of people don’t realize how big of an area this is,” he said. “It’s not as populated as Orange Park or Middleburg, and we usually manage it with three deputies.”
Pendleton said that as in any community, cooperation from the public and the willingness of witnesses to speak out are critical to the sheriff’s office’s success in the Lake Region.
He added that good people skills make his job a lot easier, and his background allowed him to fit in quickly with Lake Region residents.
“I grew up in a small town a lot like Keystone,” he said. “If you make everybody feel as if you are there just for their problem, they tend to open up more for you.”
He added that if residents don’t see him as a part of the community, if they don’t believe he is truly there to help them, then they will not trust him.
“That’s a big thing in law enforcement,” he said. “If we lose the public’s trust, then we lose our ability to do our jobs.”
Pendleton said that patrolling in the Lake Region is more rewarding than in an urban environment.
“When I worked in Daytona Beach and Holly Hill,” he said, “we were going from call to call to call, and from report to report to report. We were always behind because everything was always happening right now. Unfortunately, we got very callous.”
“I love Keystone to death because it’s a small community and a southern community and I’m from eastern Kentucky,” he continued. “If this makes sense, I like it because it seems like it’s 20 years behind everywhere else.”
Pendleton said the high proportion of lifelong Lake Region residents also makes policing easier.
“You will be looking for a person and someone will tell you, ‘Oh, that’s such-and-such. I know his cousin,’ or ‘I went to high school with that person’s mother. Call her and she will tell you the truth.’”
Pendleton said one of his biggest concerns is that the Lake Region will eventually lose its small-town feel and charm.
He noted that the north end of the county, along Wells Road in the Orange Park Mall-area is already experiencing rising crime and blight, while the Lake Asbury-Green Cove Springs area is undergoing rapid growth.
He fears that sooner or later, that growth will reach Keystone Heights.
“I’m afraid that Keystone won’t be the sleepy little town that it used to be,” he said.
Pendleton said he is hopeful that the presence of Camp Blanding to the west and Belmore State Forest and Gold Head Branch State Park to the north will insulate the region from some of that growth.
He added that he has heard the same concern about growth from Lake Region residents, who moved to the area for the small-town atmosphere and tolerate the 25-to-50-minute commute to Gainesville or Jacksonville.
“They would rather have the drive and live in a place where the schools are great and the people are country,” he said.
