At his ninth annual Addressing Crime Together presentation last week, Sheriff Rick Staly said crime in Flagler County has fallen 54 percent since 2017, with fraud, scams, domestic violence and traffic issues–despite 6,800 tickets issued–topping the list of concerns.
The sheriff said he will be asking for 13 new deputies in the coming budget season, nine from Palm Coast and four from the county. Each deputy adds about $150,000 to the respective budget, so Palm Coast’s additional cost will be close to $1.4 million.
The sheriff only lightly alluded to one of the agency’s most successful achievements since 2013–an unbroken record of not a single law-enforcement-involved fatality. “I want a culture that is appropriate for this community,” he said. “And one of the things that I tell my prospective deputies is that even though you have the legal right to use deadly force, it doesn’t mean that’s the right decision.”
“I sum it up this way: we police with the community. We don’t police the community,” Staly said. “So just by changing two words, is a completely different style of policing.”
Matters of particular public interest included the helicopter the agency just acquired, the use of drones as first responders, and the use of the deputies and the county jail to assist the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sweeps of alleged undocumented migrants.
The sheriff spoke in more detail than he has until now about the Bell 505 helicopter he acquired from Dan Newlin, the personal injury attorney and a staunch supporter of the sheriff. The helicopter is at an airport in Lakeland. It won’t be flying in the county until July. The Sheriff’s Office paid $700,000, of which $125,000 was from the asset forfeiture fund (confiscated money from drug dealers). Since the helicopter has a value of $1.42 million, Newlin donated the balance. The 2018 helicopter has 525 flight hours on it. Newlin “wasn’t using it anymore,” Staly said.
The sheriff did not discuss the specific operational costs of the helicopter, but said: “The two pilots and the two tactical flight officers were already in the budget, like they have been for the last two years. I just didn’t fill them because I was hoping to have this thing done like a couple years ago through the full donation. But it just took longer than I thought. And so no additional cost for funding it or operating it, because I already had it in the budget and there’s no payment to it because we paid cash for the helicopters.”
Staly said the agency uses drones, but there are times when a helicopter is necessary, especially when FireFlight, the county’s emergency helicopter, goes off duty from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., or when it is without its infrared and spotlight systems for night viewing. “We’re going to try to not overlap FireFlight hours so that we are available when FireFlight is not,” Staly said, “but that will frankly depend on if they are keeping the law enforcement gear on it, because if they’re not, then that doesn’t make sense.”
Shannon Martin, who used to be part of the sheriff’s public information office, asked him if he would have ride-alongs for the public on the new helicopter. “No, we’re not doing those. Sorry,” he told her. “I know you’re in the public information office for the city of Palm Coast. If you get a hurricane and you need to see it, to know the damage, then we’ll consider that. But it has to be really official business.”
The agency has five drones. It will be using them as first responders. They are being positioned in specific areas of Palm Coast and the county (in a partnership with Palm Coast government). “From our Real Time Crime Center that is here in this building up on the second floor,” Staly said, “our analysts will actually be able to launch one of these drones and fly it to where the call is remotely.” One such recent deployment had the drone at the scene, beaming back images before deputies got there.
The county jail is averaging 200 inmates a night, with a high of 330. The sheriff did not include the number of those jailed as part of the ICE sweeps, though by mid-March, FlaglerLive found, upwards of 205 individuals had been detained for ICE at the jail.
The sheriff did not address the arrangement with ICE until a question from the audience at the end of the presentation, when he described the mechanics of the federal law allowing for–and the state law requiring–local police agencies to collaborate with ICE. The system deputizes local law enforcement to have the authority of ICE agents in some regards. It does so at the local law enforcement agency’s expenses and liabilities. Staly said the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has “a number of deputies” with that authority.
“So in effect, they’re a federal agent when an ICE detainer comes in, because you have to be a federal agent to serve an ICE detainer,” the sheriff said. “They’ve had to go through the training, get the credentials from ICE. They don’t get paid by ICE. They get paid by us. But that allows us to serve the detainer. Then ICE has 48 hours to come get them. If they don’t come in 48 hours and we don’t have local charges, by law, I have to release them. We have not had to do that.”
He said the agency will not be “like other cities across the country that forbid their law enforcement to work with a federal partner. I’m not going to do that.” By state law, no Florida law enforcement agency is allowed to decline participation. All county-level agencies are part of the system,, as are the National Guard, the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Staly noted: “I do have another agreement with the federal government, but under federal law, I’m not allowed to talk about it.” (See the sheriff’s 2019 agreement with ICE here, and the 2025 agreement here.)
The sheriff discussed the half dozen education and rehabilitation programs that have won the jail accreditation and awards, including partnerships with Flagler Technical College, inmate work crews, parenting programs and the celebrated Successful Mental Health and Addiction Recovery Treatment program known as Smart that local judges rely on and applaud. “Since the program’s inception in May 2022, 203 inmates have graduated from SMART and have returned to the community,” the sheriff’s presentation noted. “109 of them – or 54% – have stayed on the path to successful recovery.” (Relapsing is an almost inevitable part of recovery.)
“I’m a law and order sheriff,” Staly said. “If we can help somebody turn their life around to become a productive citizen, that’s my preference.”
The sheriff underscored the fast pace of growth in a county that was ranked the sixth fastest-growing in the state between 2020 and 2025, adding 25,000 residents in that span, and he projected that, according to the University of Florida, the county’s population will be 172,200 in 12 years. The latest projection by UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research BEBR, issued in February, puts the “medium” estimate of the county’s 2035 population at 172,000, the “low” estimate at 150,400, and the “high” estimate at 193,600. BEBR’s low to medium estimates have generally been its more accurate ones over the years.
Leave a Reply