Pinellas County Needs a New Sheriff
By Rick Smith, activist and resident of Pinellas County
Our community is not safe. If you’re Black in Pinellas County, you can be shot dead over a parking space and the Sheriff’s Office will decline to charge your murderer. If you’re an immigrant in Pinellas County, you can be picked up for any reason whatsoever and the Sheriff’s Office will hand you over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be deported or to languish in a detention center for years. If you’re poor in Pinellas County, you can be forced to sleep on the floor of an overcrowded cell as the coronavirus rages through the jail simply because the sheriff’s office won’t release you and you cannot afford bail.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Our community is diverse and we share a desire for a sheriff’s department that keeps all of us safe. Polling from Public Policy Polling shows that only a third of Pinellas residents approve of Bob Gualtieri’s performance as sheriff, and that number declines when voters learn his true record. In fact, more than half of voters don’t know Bob Gualtieri at all despite his efforts to seize the limelight. Too often, the role of the sheriff in making our community unsafe gets overlooked, and too often we take for granted that someone like Bob Gualtieri has to wear that badge. He doesn’t.
If we dream big, we can have true safety. We can have a sheriff who:
- Wants to see more people getting healthcare and housing and fewer behind bars
- Applies the same standards of justice and accountability to all people regardless of their skin color, immigration status or whether they wear a uniform
- Sees our community’s safety as their highest priority and responds accordingly in the face of threats like the coronavirus
- Refuses to invest our community’s resources in separating families, mass surveillance or advocating for arming teachers
But realizing true safety will only happen if we demand it. That means reimagining who we believe should run the Sheriff’s Department. It means encouraging them to run, organizing our neighbors to support them, voting for them on November 3rd, and then holding them accountable each and every day after that. Florida law does not require that the Sheriff come from law enforcement. But no Democrat is in the race, and we need a candidate who believes in this community to register by June 8.
So, here’s a real question: Who do you think should be our next sheriff?
Nominate them here. We’re taking submissions from all Pinellas residents. Tell us who you think would make a great sheriff and help us find the best candidate to take on Bob Gualtieri in November.
We can have real safety, but it starts with you.
