With more than 30 years of law enforcement experience, Chief Deputy Sheriff Jim Coats is a good choice to replace retiring Pinellas County Sheriff Everett Rice.
Published August 7, 2004
Few decisions Pinellas County voters face this primary season will be as easy as the one for sheriff. Everett Rice is retiring after 16 distinguished years in the job, and he has helped groom an administrator, Jim Coats, who has worked more than three decades in law enforcement. Coats is challenged by a private security supervisor whose sole law enforcement experience is as a deputy nearly two decades ago in an Ohio county a fraction the size of Pinellas.
If experience counts for anything, this one is no contest.
Coats, 60, has a degree in criminal justice and has spent 33 years in the Sheriff's Office, working his way up through the ranks to reach second in command. He has served as chief deputy for the past nine years, overseeing the agency's $225-million budget and the coordination with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies. He and Rice have pushed in the past two years to increase the pay of deputies, so their salaries are competitive with other agencies.
Coats supports some of the same progressive law enforcement ideas as Rice. He wants to expand the use of alternative methods such as Tasers to subdue dangerous people, and the use of high-tech monitoring alternatives to pretrial detention. He also has worked with the public defender in trying to direct more community resources toward nonviolent offenders who suffer mainly from substance-abuse problems.
Though the recent shooting of a 17-year-old St. Petersburg man has raised fair questions about the actions of the deputies involved, long-time Pinellas voters will recall that Rice was thrust into office in 1988 following a dark period in the agency's history. Under the previous sheriff, Gerry Coleman, the agency had been the subject of investigations by the FBI, the U.S. attorney, the state attorney, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, grand juries and the U.S. Department of Labor. The accusations ranged from cronyism and political intimidation to rampant officer brutality. Rice, to his credit, challenged the powerful sheriff and beat him at the polls. Since then, Rice has restored professionalism to the department.
In this Republican primary, Coats is the candidate who has spent a career preparing for the job, the man Rice says has "proven himself to be a great leader." His opponent, Tim Glassburner, is the private security guard. Glassburner may mean well, but he's not in the same league here. We strongly recommend Coats.
