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Pasco County's Sheriff Grounded In The New Reality

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By TOM JACKSON

tjackson@tampatrib.com

Published: March 6, 2009

Sometime during my junior year in high school, my mom hauled me to a men's store to have me fitted for my first suit. This, despite my protestation - when was I ever going to wear a suit? - which was feeble in the face of Mom's withering logic.

"You have gotten to the age when you will go places where a suit is required," she explained. "You probably won't wear it often, but a suit is one of those things that when you have to have one, nothing else will do."

The tale of my first suit - brown, with an elongating herringbone pattern - springs oddly, but not entirely illogically, to mind in the wake of Sheriff Bob White's decision to shut down the airborne division of Pasco's foremost law enforcement agency.

Once upon a time, the argument for an aerial unit would have echoed my mom: You don't need it every day, but when you have to have one, nothing else will do. When it comes to manhunts, missing-person searches, car chases or surveillance, to mention just a few realities of public safety, flying deputies provide unmatched advantages.

Dissolving the unit represents the latest in a series of "last resort" measures White has taken recently against "vital" agency sections. Clearly, some decisions are more last resort than others, just as some agency activities are more vital - that is, essential to executing constitutional duties - than others.

But we get the point. The whacking and rearranging accomplished by the sheriff in this year's first quarter reflect a pair of realities against which even the brilliant Dee Jackson's exquisite logic cannot prevail.

First, so long as John Gallagher gives marching orders to both the county's financial wizards and county commissioners, the sheriff's office will account for half of budget outlays gleaned from property taxes.

Second, the sheriff's half is steadily shrinking. This, of course, is a squeeze felt throughout county government. But unlike other portions of county government, policing activity tends to fluctuate inversely to the region's economic health. Even as Wall Street tanks, Main Street cowers and unemployment surges, the law enforcement business is booming.

Tough, As In Rough, Times

This is not surprising. Folks are on edge, and edgy folks lash out. And it's not just modern Jean Valjeans shoplifting bread to feed hungry kids. It's family disputes escalating into battery, rival neighbors taking up rakes and shovels - a man sharpening an ax taking violent exception to someone critiquing his technique.

As a rueful east Pasco criminal defense lawyer told me the other day, "We've never been busier."

In such an atmosphere, what is essential, vital, key, crucial and necessary is simple: the largest possible mobilization of ground forces. Boots on the ground. Rubber on the road. A surge of presence.

In exchange, what once was unimaginable - a large, modern law enforcement agency assigned a sprawling geographic area getting along without airborne assistance - becomes the new reality.

Man Who Wears The Star

Until constituents demand a shift in priorities, whoever wears the big badge in Pasco County will be expected to achieve more with less. How will that shift become known? When a declared candidate for county commission gets traction by daring to challenge the 50 percent solution, is how.

Pasco residents and business owners are advised not to hold their breath, even as they add extra deadbolts and price out security systems.

Keyword: The Jax Files, for more musings on the state of things, in Tom Jackson's blog.

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