If You’re a Criminal, This Is the County to Avoid
POLK COUNTY, Fla.—Throughout a six-decade profession, starting as a 16-year-old ambulance driver to his ascension as America’s most famed lawman, Grady Judd has made one factor clear.
He’s that man, that old-school sheriff whose tough-talking press conferences garner nationwide consideration, however he’s additionally a lifelong scholar of integrating new-school strategies with rising applied sciences, a pioneering innovator in administration, and a conscientious mentor who lives as he leads.
And so, on this April afternoon, Mr. Judd, 70, is trying again on 54 years in public service by doing what he’s all the time finished, trying ahead.
He’s prioritizing targets for his sixth time period as sheriff of Polk County, a 2,000-square-mile sprawl of Central Florida sawgrass savannah between Orlando and Tampa that’s doubled in inhabitants in a decade.
His new time period formally begins in January but it surely really started the February day he filed to run, immediately clinching his third-straight unopposed re-election.
There’s loads of time to speak concerning the previous however, proper now, he informed The Epoch Occasions, “There’s loads of work to do over the subsequent 4 years in conserving crime down.”
Mr. Judd mentioned the 1,800-employee Polk County Sheriff’s Workplace (PCSO), which incorporates 1,100 deputies, 1,330 automobiles, and a 2,500-bed jail with a $236 million price range, will probably be busy doing simply that daily, all day, whereas taking over two initiatives.
He’s launching a program to assist maintain the mentally unwell out of jail, a continual nationwide urgency that defies straightforward options, whereas coaching a unit to fight the subsequent nice world crime problem: synthetic intelligence (AI).
“Proper now, AI is able to emulating voices. Proper? So we’re going to have to guard the group from false AI allegations and maintain evil parasites from attacking us from inside in addition to internationally,” he mentioned, noting it’s the primary such unit created by a neighborhood legislation enforcement company in the USA.
A urgent focus in every single place, he mentioned, is to “scale back the necessity” for first-responders to be roadside therapists in defending the mentally unwell from themselves and others, and to seek out alternate options to utilizing jails as main—and infrequently solely—sources of remedy for a lot of with psychological well being points.
As a newly-minted deputy in 1974, he remembers, these arrested exhibiting psychological issues have been housed in a regional hospital the place inmate sufferers have been handled.
“Quick-forward to right this moment” and his deputies don’t have that choice, Mr. Judd mentioned.
“The state and federal authorities did away with psychological hospitals. So the place did these mentally unwell find yourself? They ended up in jail, in county jail lockups. They ended up beneath overpasses, sleeping behind buildings, out within the woods.”
Institutional choices narrowed as pharmaceutical options expanded, he mentioned. Advocates for the mentally unwell argued, “They’ve a constitutional proper to not be incarcerated’ and, ‘Oh, we have now these new medicines. They only should take the medicines.’”
Good idea, Mr. Judd mentioned, unhealthy plan.
“The place do we discover them to offer them their medicines? And, oh, you’re not going to offer medicines? How’re they going to afford it? It’s very costly” particularly for mentally unwell folks residing “out within the woods,” he mentioned.
So he has a plan—and $1 million in seed cash from Polk County commissioners to offer court-mandated drugs for itinerant offenders.
“We’re within the toddler levels of that. We’ve gotten whole cooperation from everybody,” Mr. Judd mentioned of a coalescing coalition that features suppliers, the courts, state legal professional’s workplace, public defenders, and advocates for the mentally unwell. “That’s fairly outstanding that everyone says, ‘Sure, let’s do that.’ It’s a win-win for everybody.”
In an age of polarity, a “win-win for everybody” is a uncommon air that Grady Judd exudes.
He’s doing what he’s needed to do since he was 4, what he believes God put him right here to do, to guard the place the place he was born, raised, and lived his entire life, the place he married his highschool sweetheart and raised two sons, the place he pioneered crime-fighting ways in a altering world whereas by no means wavering from elementary truths comparable to proper from flawed, good from unhealthy.
In alternate, Polk County bought the appropriate sheriff on the proper time, a frontrunner to fulfill the challenges posed by development because it developed into an urbanizing I-4 hall the place 100,000 new folks have arrived every of the final three years.
And but, unincorporated Polk County’s 2023 crime charge of 1.06—one per 100 residents—is lower than half the state’s charge and lowest because the metric was created in 1971, decrease than when it had 3 times fewer folks and 88 % lower than when it had half as many individuals.
A “win-win” for all—besides criminals.
“I’m blessed to stay God’s mission for me,” Mr. Judd mentioned. ”All I’ve ever needed to be was sheriff—the sheriff of Polk County.”
Sheriff-in-Ready
Raised in a Lakeland subdivision of cinder block properties with out air-con, Mr. Judd reveals workplace guests a black-and-white 1954 photograph of him sitting on an uncle’s lap. His uncle was White County, Tenn., Sheriff Joe McCoy, but it surely was Grady Judd carrying the sheriff’s star.
He was the cop when taking part in ‘cops and robbers’ with childhood associates, grew up watching TV reveals comparable to ‘Dragnet’ and ‘The Andy Griffith Present,’ and was scanning police radio frequencies and mastering codes at 12.
Religion, his “guiding gentle,” compelled him to be a relentless teenager in informing the sheriffs workplace he’d be becoming a member of them quickly and sometime be the boss.
As a highschool junior in 1970, he was employed as a $1.65-an-hour ambulance attendant in Winter Haven. He helped ship a child at 16 and at 17, satisfied the notoriously recalcitrant musician George Jones, in a drunken rage, to get into his ambulance, later admitting he had no thought who the world-famous nation star was.
After going to highschool by day, ending his ambulance shift at evening, Mr. Judd frolicked on the sheriff’s workplace, successfully forcing them to rent him two months after commencement as a dispatcher regardless of a minimum-age requirement of 21.
He remembers July 21, 1972, a damp, storm-stirred Friday evening, his first shift at Bartow’s Corridor of Justice, which “housed your complete justice system” and “one teletype pc.”
Richard Nixon was president, Reuben Askew was governor of Florida, fuel was 34 cents a gallon, ‘The Godfather’ was a field workplace hit, Invoice Withers’ ‘Lean On Me’ topped the charts.
Two months later, Mr. Judd married his fiancé, Marisa, additionally 18 and in addition newly employed at a municipal finance division. They lived on mixed salaries of $550 a month. They’ve been collectively since.
When legislators waived the 21-year-old requirement to be a legislation enforcement officer. Mr. Judd satisfied Sheriff Brannen—the icon of his youth—to ship him to the state’s police academy. Simply earlier than he turned 20, he was sworn in because the first-ever PCSO deputy beneath 21.
He hit the street as a 19-year-old deputy in February 1974 in a green-and-white Ford Galaxy and a pistol his father had to purchase as a result of state legislation precluded him from doing so. Nonetheless, as Mr. Judd says, “The remaining is historical past.”
The Showman Sheriff
Mr. Judd superior to corporal at 22, sergeant by 23, lieutenant at 25. He was a murder captain at 27 managing a $1 million price range and 44 workers, a serious at 34, survived Eighties political tumult to emerge as a colonel who spearheaded the company’s Nineteen Nineties’ modernization.
After serving beneath 5 sheriffs, Mr. Judd was elected sheriff with 64 % of the nonpartisan vote in 2004. He was reelected in 2008 and 2012 with 96 % of every tally. In 2016, 2020, and 2024, he ran unopposed.
Over the past 20 years, the gregarious Mr. Judd has risen to nationwide prominence with a “biggest hits” parade of blunt press convention and social media commentary, together with his 2006 response to why a person who’d killed a deputy and Ok-9 canine was shot 68 occasions: “That’s all of the bullets we had or we’d have shot him extra.”
Truly, 9 officers from three businesses shot the gun-waving killer 89 occasions and had greater than 400 unexpended rounds on them, in line with an investigation by the Florida Division of Legislation Enforcement.
The message, nonetheless, was clear.
Mr. Judd made nationwide information once more in 2010 when his detectives bought Phillip Greaves’ “The Pedophile’s Information to Love & Pleasure,” requested him to autograph it (to point out it had been in his fingers), and mail it to them.
After detectives obtained the ebook within the mail, they flew to Colorado, arrested Mr. Greaves—when no company would—flew him to Polk County, and charged him with promoting obscenity dangerous to a minor. He remained in jail for 4 months till pleading no contest to time-served, probation, and court-mandated psychological well being counseling.
Mr. Judd’s quips have garnered a large social media following for PCSO, together with 100 million Tik Tok views.
Mr. Judd has served in lots of peer-elected management posts, comparable to Florida Sheriffs Affiliation president (2013–2014), and Main County Sheriffs of America (2018–2019) president, and been appointed to quite a few boards.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who Mr. Judd vociferously supported in his failed 2024 presidential bid, appointed him to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty Public Security Fee (2018–2023).
President Donald Trump, who he overtly backed in 2016, supported with out fanfare in 2020, and infrequently instantly mentions now—segueing as an alternative into criticism of President Joe Biden—appointed him to the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2020–2023).
Whereas the “win-win” confluence of self-determination and religion are the motivations, Mr. Judd’s ardour for training is the gas driving his pursuits in expertise, innate organizational expertise, and gregarious persona that demonstrates media savvy, is a potent crime-fighting instrument.
Previous Faculty, New Instruments
Whereas a dispatcher, Mr. Judd satisfied Lakeland Neighborhood School to create a police science program, ultimately incomes bachelor’s and grasp’s levels from Rollins School beneath the now-defunct LEEP (Legislation Enforcement Training Program).
“It modified the best way I seemed on the world. It modified the best way I policed. It modified the best way I rationalized and considered and interviewed and talked to folks,” he mentioned. “It gave me extra instruments in my toolbelt.”
Mr. Judd satisfied “a sheriff a very long time in the past that we wanted to fund training since nobody else was” to equip deputies with educational fundamentals whereas studying the most recent in crime-fighting strategies, ways, and applied sciences.
“I knew how a lot it helped me and we needed to professionalize the group,” he mentioned. “As time went on, just a few extra folks voluntarily took their lessons and bought levels” till it turned an unofficial customary for development.
Upon election, Mr. Judd made faculty levels the official customary for promotion. “Should you don’t have a bachelor’s diploma, you possibly can’t be a sergeant or a lieutenant. You may’t be a captain, a serious, with out a grasp’s diploma,” he mentioned.
He requires PCSO officers “go to ‘ending faculties,’” such because the FBI Nationwide Academy, Southern Police Institute, and Northwestern College’s Heart for Public Security.
Fixed publicity to main crime-fighting theories and strategies have translated into quite a few applications and ways Mr. Judd—and now others—have utilized in Polk County.
He remembers a mid-90s seminar taught by then-New York Metropolis Police Division Commissioner Invoice Bratton and his deputy commissioner, Jack Maples, who created the CompStat methodology that will develop into PCSO’s customary of operation.
“Crime was out-of-control within the subways in New York, rapes, robberies, murders, you realize, beat-downs,” Mr. Judd mentioned. “Invoice Bratton and Jack Maples, they mentioned, ‘Okay, right here’s what we’re going to do to: we’re going to cease the toll-jumpers.’
That drew criticism and mockery.
“Properly, guess what occurred after they stopped the toll-jumpers?” he mentioned. “Murders went down, robberies went down, every part went down as a result of the morons committing the minor crimes have been additionally those committing the main crimes.”
That’s why there’s no tolerance for minor crimes in Polk County. “I introduced that philosophy again right here and we adopted it and our crime charge went down like 88 %” within the late ‘90s.
There’s a “outstanding” statistical correlation between implementing “minor” crimes and stopping “main” crimes, he mentioned, noting “our crime charge is remarkably low as a result of it’s the place you set the bar.
“We don’t enable folks to shoplift and get away with it,” Mr. Judd mentioned. “We lock them up. So, in case you get caught shoplifting in Polk County, you’re going to stroll out of the shop in handcuffs and also you’re going to jail. Each time.”
The zero-tolerance ideology is supplemented with technological advances Mr. Judd put in, such because the Proactive Neighborhood Assault on Issues (PROCAP) initiative, a “data-driven group policing program” specializing in the place crimes happen every day.
Amongst natural applications Mr. Judd created is PCSO’s Nationwide Innovation Academy, “a dream of mine I’ve had for a very long time” in partnership with Polk State School that “teaches the foundational management and administrative qualities and strategies” others do however “our academy is STEM-based and focuses on expertise.”
Innovation is a continuing course of, he mentioned.
“We’re updating our pc system proper now,” he mentioned. ”We have now a 911 system we simply launched the place a deputy within the subject can ‘geofence’ his work space. When somebody dials the 911 emergency heart, we are able to hear the transmission within the automotive and begin our response even earlier than we’re dispatched.”
Instructing to Study to Lead
He could also be an old-fashioned lawman by divine inspiration, however Mr. Judd is a brand new faculty trainer as a result of he discovered be one, and a modern-day chief as a result of he discovered be one.
And since he did so, he now teaches others lead.
Earlier than turning into sheriff, Mr. Judd taught 23 years as an adjunct professor at Florida Southern School and College of South Florida. He “can’t carve the trip” to take action anymore, however he’s nonetheless instructing.
“My fundamental philosophy now’s as a coach,” Mr. Judd mentioned. About as soon as a month, he greets “our new class of workers” with a lecture that lays all of it out.
“I say, ‘Good day to working with the sheriff’s workplace. You’ve bought to be trustworthy, moral, and ethical all-of-the-time. You’ve bought to ship customer support with a way of urgency all-of-the-time. You’ve bought to speak to folks and deal with folks such as you’d need your mom to be talked to and handled all-of-the-time.’
“‘It is a job to resolve battle,’” he mentioned. “‘When folks can’t resolve points on their very own, they name legislation enforcement and we’re mandated to resolve it. There will probably be events the place we have now to make use of protecting drive. However make them make us try this.”
Assured accountability assures accountability, he mentioned.
“Will we maintain folks accountable? Completely,” Mr. Judd mentioned. “However we don’t pull rabbits out of hats. All people is aware of what we anticipate right here the day they arrive to work right here.”
He’s “learn every part relating to perception programs and processes and motivations” and located what he’s all the time recognized to be true.
“You must love your work, love your workforce, earlier than you possibly can lead them anyplace,” Mr. Judd mentioned. “Should you don’t love them, in case you don’t imagine in them, in case you don’t belief them, then why ought to they imagine in you and belief you? So, I belief the women and men of the Polk County Sheriff’s Workplace first.”
Mr. Judd will quickly have “a brand new class” to encourage. They’ll be part of a legislation enforcement company with a ready record of recruits when many police businesses are struggling to rent.
He’s happy with that.
Throughout a 90-minute tour of PSCO’s headquarters and adjoining Emergency Operations Heart, the place 25 businesses subject 911 calls in a high-tech nexus surrounded by cow pastures and ponds, he made a degree of displaying “inspirational artwork” that includes workers and deputies, employees wildlife and panorama photographs—he’s an avid photographer—and a wall honoring those that’ve made their careers with the PCSO.
He’s happy with that, too.
Not many served lengthy sufficient to qualify for retirement when he joined 52 years in the past, he mentioned. Now, they arrive to be taught, to guide, to hitch an company he molded, and, he beams, to remain as a result of it’s a superb job in a superb place defending good folks.
“I’m simply the coach now. They do the heavy lifting,” Mr. Judd mentioned. “I’ve all the time bought their again. However they’ve bought to do what’s proper they usually’ve bought to care about this group.”