State of the Office January 2014

January 21, 2014

As we start off a new year, it seems appropriate that I should provide you with a “State of the Office” message.

My first year as your Charlotte County Sheriff has been eventful. The most traumatic event was the loss of one of our own, Sgt. Michael Wilson, in August while he was responding to a domestic disturbance. As deeply as we felt his loss, we also felt the tremendous outpouring of sympathy and compassion from our Charlotte County community.

When I first took office, I placed certain people within the agency in particular command positions as part of a larger plan for the future of the Sheriff's Office. As we continue to move forward, we have to plan for future events, which includes the retirements of several people in key command positions.

Rather than waiting until the last minute, we are taking steps now to make sure the future leaders of the Sheriff's Office are as prepared as possible. One way to do this is to make sure that, in an agency as large and diverse as the Charlotte County Sheriff's Office, the people managing it have a diverse and broad-based knowledge base.

We can accomplish this by periodically rotating our commanders into different areas so they gain even more experience and knowledge in managing this fine agency. So, as part of our plans for the future, effective Monday January 20, we are moving some of our commanders to different areas within the agency.

One of the first retirements we must deal with is that of our Executive Officer, Chief Deputy Dan Libby. Because this is such a key position, we have already promoted someone as the Executive Officer Designee. For the remainder of Chief Libby's time here at CCSO, he will be working closely with newly promoted Colonel Thomas Rodgers to ensure that there is no disruption in operations when he leaves.

This does not mean we are in any way ‘beefing up' our command ranks. We are simply preparing for the future with no ultimate change in the number of command officers. I still prefer to keep as many ‘boots on the street' as possible to serve our community.

Over the past year, we have seen an overall decrease in the crime rate for Charlotte County. I credit this to our Intelligence Led Policing efforts that allows us to use various technologies to all sorts of tips and other information to come up with a plan to deal with problems.

The men and women at the Sheriff's Office have done a tremendous job for the community this past year and will continue their efforts in 2014. We will continue to target narcotics activity, which is often at the root of so much of our crime. And we, as always, we thank the community for their continued support.

Thank you,

Sheriff Bill Prummell

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