A Times Editorial

Commission chooses well for Sheriff's Office review

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 16, 2000

Pasco County commissioners are right to keep a tight rein on a study of the Sheriff's Office personnel and financial needs.

Tuesday, commissioners agreed to pay for the review, rather than split the cost with the Sheriff's Office as previously suggested, and appointed Commission Chairwoman Pat Mulieri to be the board's representative on a panel that will help select the consultant.

Mulieri is the proper choice. She is a registered Republican but is non-partisan on most issues. More important, she owes no political allegiance to Sheriff Lee Cannon, a Democrat. The same cannot be said of Commissioner Steve Simon, another likely candidate to scrutinize the Sheriff's Office with an unbiased eye.

Simon was elected to office in 1998 with a big assist from Cannon and the sheriff's resources. Simon's participation could bring catcalls from Cannon's political opponents, a needless risk considering rebuilding confidence in the Sheriff's Office requires public faith in the objectivity of this study.

There are other reasons Mulieri is best suited for this task. She is a strong proponent of technology, even pushing last year to give Cannon extra money to hire a computer specialist after other board members were intent on funding mostly road patrol deputies. And, Tuesday, she asked the most substantive questions of Cannon and County Administrator John Gallagher about the scope of the examination.

Does it address salaries, technology needs and allegations of top-heavy management? Will there be a large enough pool of consultants from which to draw proposals?

"Everybody who retires from law enforcement suddenly becomes an expert, as we can see from reading the newspapers," Cannon replied to the last inquiry.

His sarcasm does little to answer the questions surrounding his management abilities. The public scrutiny to which Cannon referred comes on the heels of his own admission the department used inaccurate data two years ago in an attempt to sell voters on the needs for a new property tax to expand the sheriff's patrol force. If experts abound, perhaps the sheriff should have made use of them before asking for that tax increase.

Cannon also said the administration is not top heavy, saying such accusations "make good copy." Tuesday morning, he routinely referred to the resources of the Marion County Sheriff's Office and its dozen majors compared to the more heavily populated Pasco County and the four majors in its Sheriff's Office. Cannon made it quite clear he coveted the public commitment to law enforcement in Marion County, yet he neglected to mention the existence of a substantial municipal taxing service unit there to cover the costs.

Cannon's use of bogus numbers in his own ill-fated campaign for a similar district in Pasco is what spurred the staffing and efficiency study. A series of stories in the Times last month revealed that Cannon's department didn't know how many calls for service it receives, how long it takes to respond to priority calls, how much of their work shifts deputies spend answering calls or how long it takes to get an officer to back up a deputy in danger.

George Sullivan, a nationally known police management consultant retained by the Times, suggested Cannon did not need a substantial boost in personnel to meet the 10-minute response time the sheriff set as a goal in 1998. Additional training of dispatchers, reallocation of personnel and setting better priorities for incoming calls would cut the time it takes for deputies to respond to emergencies.

Cannon downplayed the newspaper's published findings, but he will be unable to do likewise on this latest study, which he requested and which is being conducted in an apolitical atmosphere under commission control.

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