BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Clay County Sheriff Michelle Cook said crime continues to trend down in the Lake Region and throughout Clay County. Cook made her comments during a July combined meeting of the Clay Chamber’s Lake Region Prosperity Partners, and Sheriff’s Net, one of Cook’s community outreach platforms.
Fentanyl is out, meth is back in
Cook reported that overdoses in the Lake Region are down by 20%.
“Right now, it looks like we have one confirmed overdose,” she told the audience at First Baptist Church in Keystone Heights, “and there may be a second overdose that we’re still waiting on the medical examiner to come back with a ruling, but overdoses in general are down.”
Cook added that her office is seeing a spike in methamphetamine use.
“Fentanyl’s out,” she declared. “Meth is back, but we continue to fight the fight.”
The sheriff added that traffic continues to be the Number 1 complaint she and her deputies hear daily, and in the first half of the year, her officers made 19,810 traffic stops throughout the county.
Cook said that although calls for service are up, both violent and property crimes are down this year.
Deputies, technology, community
“There are three reasons why Clay County is safe,” Cook said. “The first reason is because of the men and women who wear this uniform every single day who come out and work and put in the work. They’re dogged about the pursuit of bad guys, dogged about making sure that they follow up on cases, and they truly have a heart of service.”
Cook said the second reason crime is dropping in Clay County is the use of technology, including her office’s Safer Watch smartphone app.
“I think we got 1,100 tips last year through (Safer Watch),” she said, plus all the information that we push out. So, it’s a two-way communication.”
Cook said license plate readers allow her deputies to quickly respond to stolen vehicles and wanted individuals entering the county.
“Within minutes, we know and we’re on them,” she said. “We have built a reputation in Clay County that other criminals want to avoid us because they know we have the license plate readers and we also have the cameras, the community connect program.”
Cook said that although her office does not have “a ton” of cameras, businesses and organizations may voluntarily connect their cameras to the sheriff’s office’s network, which gives her office a wide range of surveillance capability.
“In fact, I think this church is on our program,” she told the First Baptist audience. “If a 911 call were to go out here right now, we would immediately pull up the cameras for this area. We can see what’s happening. We can see the bad guy leaving. We can see which direction they’re heading, what they’re wearing, and what kind of car they’re driving. It is a game-changer when we’re getting this real-time information.”
Cook said the third reason Clay County is safe is because of an engaged community.
“When you have an engaged community, when you have a community that’s willing to show up and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a problem,’ or ‘Hey, I’m seeing this in my neighborhood,’ or ‘Hey, I have this concern,’ then we have an opportunity to work it,” she explained.
“If everybody in this community just gave up and said, ‘You know what? We’re not calling the police anymore,’ crime would skyrocket,” Cook declared. “But because all of you are engaged and you come to meetings like this, you call us when you need something, that’s how we keep this community safe.”
A whole lot of young deputies out there
Cook also said that if anyone does not get the service they expected from the sheriff’s office, they should complain.
“If you don’t get the service that you expect,” she said. “If we don’t show up because of whatever reason or you didn’t get the response that you thought you should, call and let us know.”
The sheriff said that with over 280,000 calls for service in a year, things will occasionally go wrong.
“They’re not all going to go perfectly,” she said. “We’re human. . We get distracted. We get pulled to another call.”
“We will fix it,” she continued. “We have a whole lot of young deputies out there. Boy, they’re very young and they’re learning and they’re really good. They have a good heart. So, we can’t fix an issue unless we know that something’s not right.”
Inexperienced patrol officers was a theme Wayne McKinney, Cook’s director of patrol and community affairs, built upon after Cook’s presentation.
“Last year we did a study,” he said. “I think 70% of our patrol was under two years (of experience. As a deputy sheriff, that’s very young. You’re learning how to be a deputy sheriff. You’re learning what it’s like to go deal with the community. They’re learning to deal with the stressors that they’re faced with.”
McKinney said the Clay County Sheriff’s Office is still suffering from the exodus of senior and mid-level deputies when the office failed to keep pace with the salaries of surrounding jurisdictions.
“We lost them because we weren’t being competitive in salaries, and the neighboring counties were outpacing us,” he said. “Now there’s been a lot of huge strides, and Sheriff Cook’s come a long way in working with our county commissioners, and we’ve taken some huge steps to keep us competitive in a rough environment right now because it’s a struggle.”
Like Cook, McKinney asked the crowd to be patient with his young officers, but to report any problems to the sheriff’s office.
“We want to fix it,” he said. “I want to correct it. I want to use it as a teaching moment. In some situations, you never know what they just faced, what frustrating call they just left, what they just dealt with. Maybe they didn’t talk the right way. I want to correct it, but please give us some grace in that too.”
Petit theft and vandalism
McKinney said the Lake Region’s top reported crimes are petit theft and vandalism. He added that much of the theft is retail shoplifting, many times fueled by a drug habit.
“There are some (thefts) from homes and things like that,” he said, “but if it’s breaking into a house, it’d be burglary. So, burglary is not even really on the Top 10 list down here.”
“Since January, the last six months, we’ve only had 15 auto burglaries in this area,” he said. We’re down 48% this year compared to last year in auto theft. Crime stats don’t drop that high very often.”
McKinney said that his agency’s push to make more drug arrests has resulted in decreases in the crimes that are motivated by drug dependency.
“We’ve had a 61% increase in the drug arrests that we’ve been making for drug and narcotics and the equipment that goes with it for this area,” he said.
McKinney said the Lake Region’s isolation from the rest of Clay County also causes problems.
“When somebody makes an arrest,” he explained, “that’s one less deputy down here, and it takes a little while to drive to Green Cove, drop them off at the jail, and get back.”
McKinney added that with only three deputies covering the portion of the county south of State Road 16, one less officer can make a difference in response time.
