Petek announces candidacy for Sheriff

Big Pine resident and 24-year veteran of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department Tom Petek Wednesday announced that he is seeking the county’s highest law enforcement office.

After 24 years as a deputy, Petek said he’s running because he wants to see the department return to its community policing roots.

“I want a professional department where our officers interact with the people they are sworn to protect. I want a department that is more proactive than reactive,” said Petek.

Petek said his vision is that of officers who routinely patrol neighborhoods, make frequent business checks and treat people with complete professionalism and compassion. “I want us out in the community solving the problems the people in that community believe to be problems.”

Petek will be in his retirement window when the election rolls around next year in November, and he says he doesn’t “want to look back 10 years from now and regret not having run for Sheriff. I believe Monroe County can be a model agency for areas like ours, but I think we missed the boat in some respects.”

Petek said he doesn’t have the urge to tell the people of Monroe County what he thinks is best for them in a police force.

“I want to listen to them and have them tell me where we need to improve, what we need to do,” he said.

What he has heard thus far is that the MCSO needs to become more responsive to calls, and to make training more consistent so that each officer responds in the same way to certain non-life threatening situations.

“I want us to become part of our community, and have our community trust us enough to know what they’re going to get from us,” he said. “I want to get the community involved, and we do that by presenting a professional demeanor and treating people fairly so they come to trust us. When they trust us, they will help us with suspicious person reports, watching out for their neighbors.”

Crime in the Keys has been trending downward over the last few years, “But if we become more proactive, perhaps we can bring those numbers down even further.”

Recruiting and retaining officers has long been an issue for Monroe County law enforcement, something Petek thinks he can change.

“The Florida Keys are like few other places in the world. We can use that as a selling point to recruit top-level people. With some expansion of our training, we can make our officers more effective and perhaps get them to stay on longer,” he said.

He said he would expand the marine patrol, using grant monies and savings from other areas.

“We are a community surrounded by water, but we lead the nation in boating accidents and deaths. By expanding our presence on the water, maybe we can get out in front of that and bring those numbers down,” he said. “The commercial fishermen say they have an issue with trap robbers. By increasing our presence on the water we can help them save some of that catch and increase the economic impact of the fishery.”

He wants to expand the SO dive team. “We can be the premier training facility in the world for divers. We have a world-class facility on Fleming Key run by the military. Maybe we can work out a training agreement to utilize the resources we already have in place.”

He said the department needs to take a more no-nonsense approach to the creeping “Miami effect” on crime in Key Largo.

“We need to enlist the help of our community to make sure that when folks come down thinking the Keys are an easy target, we make them pay for that mistake,” he said.

He said it’s also time that the department ramps up its attack on drug dealers in the Keys at all levels.

“If you’re dealing drugs in the Keys, I want you to know that we will come after you. I want the days of everybody but the police knowing where the local drug dealer’s house is located to end,” he said.

Though he doesn’t as yet have a firm grasp of the department’s budget, he says he will by the time the election heats up.

“Our budget needs an accountant to figure out what’s in it. I want to change that. I want the common person to be able to come in off the street and be able to find out what we spend and where we spend it. There’s a lot of community expertise out there I’d like to put to use,” he said.

He said a long-range plan for pay and benefits will also help with officer retention. “If a recruit knows where he will stand financially 10 years from now, he can plan, he can make a life here. He can stay here and return some of our investment in training him to be an effective police officer.”

He says he also wants the non-sworn personnel who make up about 20 percent of the department, to be able to have the same comfort levels.

“There are going to be some serious budgetary issues that come up in the next few years. The state is building a new jail on the mainland that could take some serious money away from our jail revenue. We need a plan to combat that, or a plan to adapt to that sooner rather than later,” said Petek.

He said there are 30 sworn officers in the department right now that “ride a desk. We need to get those officers out on the street more, in a car, responding to calls, using their combined experience and knowledge to make our other officers more effective. If we have a knowledge base somewhere, I intend to utilize it to make us more efficient.”

In other areas, Petek said he would like to get a traffic unit on every shift, as well as a detective.

“We have a responsibility to make US 1 as safe as we can for our people and our visitors. It’s not the goal to increase the numbers of tickets we write, but an aggressive presence lets people know that safety is important to us,” he said.

“If we have a detective on every shift, they can get first hand reports without sometimes unintentional delays of four or five days. The earlier we can jump on crimes where a detective is needed, the earlier we can begin to solve them, bringing crime numbers down and sending a message,” he added.

Petek believes he can set a tone for his officers by his own actions.

“I’m not a politician. I believe in getting into the fray and getting my hands dirty. I want to be an on-the-ground sheriff, riding shotgun with deputies, responding to calls to see how things are being handled, and holding our front line supervisors accountable for training needs,” he said.

Petek, a Democrat, has no challengers on the Democratic ticket as yet. State Attorney Investigator Edwin Grove, an Upper Keys Republican, and current departmental second-in-command Col. Rick Ramsey have filed to run on the Republican ticket and will face each other in a primary in August. The winner would move on to face Petek.

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