The Martin County Sheriff

welcome and we're off to a new year and we're off and running It is a new year and consequently that means it's time where we have our uh annual renewal of membership So if you're out there and you haven't please keep us in mind uh we'll be mentioning in our newsletters and uh your support is vital important vitally important to our ongoing success At this point I'm going to invite uh Sheriff John Bud to uh come up here and tell us a little something about what he's got going on John is a native uh Mark County He sounds you're looking through his biography looks like he's sort of held every hat there is at the

sheriff's office from road patrol on up through the SWAT team First of all I want to find out who I'm talking to tonight I know you're all Martin County people and this is not a trick question I'm not asking your ages but how long have you been in Martin County Has anybody been here 155 years like Mr Leighton Anybody like that You got to be around here a long time to get two parks and a road and all kinds of things named after you But that you've lived here that long almost So you take you win hands down All right So 98 Anybody close to 98 now You're giving up ages though 70 years here

in Martin County 70 50 Steve and I are 48 years old Both of us are 48 So any 40 or so these are real Martin County 40 Any down to 30 30 You 62 All right These are Martin County people I know who I'm talking to then So you can probably tell some of the stories that I'm going to tell better than I can tell them because you've lived them And I was like I said Steve and I were kids running around helping the deputies do their job efficiently back when we were younger But I thought about what to talk about And let me start off by saying this The uh we just lost the

number one historian in the Martin County Sheriff's Office Uh Sheriff Crowder he knew more about Martin County Sheriff's Office history than anybody Keeping in mind he got he got hired in 1965 He was 19 or 20 years old He lived here in the county his entire life So he had the better span of the the existence of the sheriff's office that he uh either worked at the sheriff's office or was the sheriff himself or just knew what was going on And honestly I had always intended on sitting down with him and picking his brain and hearing his stories I've heard some of them from him but as time has it I didn't And I regret

that But we lost him this year He was a great uh historian I thought about what to talk about though and I figured I would just do what cops do We tell stories but they are very much like fishing stories throughout the years They grow Curry was one of my bosses back in the day I know the stories he told were mostly fabricated stories But tonight I'm going to try to tell you tell you stories as close to the facts as I can and just kind of talk through Martin County who we are as Martin County and what I grew up as a kid experiencing Thank God we've never lost a Martin County Sheriff's Office

deputy but we have lost a deputy here in the county in 1924 One year before we uh became the county of course we just went through our centennial We lost deputy Fred Baker from Palm Beach County who came up to Martin County to chase the Ashley Gang and lost his life in a in a gun battle right down the railroad tracks at Frera Crossing right behind Mariner Sands And I'm not going to talk about the Ashley Gang too much because you all know about the Ashley Gang but that's the only deputy that we've lost in the line of duty here in Martin County And thank God and keep us in your thoughts and prayers because

it's by the grace of God because we've had a lot of close calls A a lot of close calls In fact we have them regularly But one of the closest calls happened back in 1976 In fact in two weeks it'll be 50 years Anybody know Glenn Lockwood Y'all know Glenn Lockwood He's crazy by the way just so y'all know that But uh I I talked to him today just to get my just make sure I heard the story right But back 50 years ago he uh was was a deputy just a deputy He turned he retired as a captain but he was just a deputy and he was responding to a call here in Stewart

He picked up a young chap named Eddie Glazier who ended up being a captain up in Indian River County But Eddie Glazier was a Martin County High School kid at the time He was 18 years old interested in being a deputy And Bill Curry's brother-in-law Bill Curry was one of my like I said bosses and the chief of Jupiter Island back in the day Really is irrelevant to what I'm trying to tell you I got to not wander too much but his brother-in-law called in a suspicious person at 7-Eleven on Monterey Road Now the 7-Eleven I remember was right there at Caner Highway where the car wash is now but this 7-Eleven was at the

foot of the Palm City Bridge many many years ago And so Bill Curry I'm sorry uh Lockwood and his ride along pull into that 7-Eleven They get out and they start talking to these two suspicious guys uh just trying to figure out what they're all about And they're getting lied to the whole time They're giving a fake ID And while Lockwood standing at the front of the van talking to one of the suspects Eddie Glazer who's not a deputy has no gun has nothing is standing at the back of the van talking to the other suspect And Lockwood sees a little bit of marijuana on the floor and he's intrigued So he does what cops

do He starts digging around finds some more marijuana and then finds a gun under the seat And as soon as he finds a gun he turns around to confront the bad guy But the bad guy is already standing there pointing a gun in his face He's had Glazer's got a bad guy pointing a gun on him So he's had too So now we've got a wannabe cop a kid and we've got a deputy being held at gunpoint They took Lockwood's firearm away from him He uh was ordered by the by the kidnappers at that point to drive the van And uh so Lockwood drives hops up in the driver's seat His kidnapper hops in the

passenger seat holds him at gunpoint and poor Glazer is thrown into the back of the van and the other guys covering him with a gun scared to death obviously Lockwood one of the few moments of clarity he's probably had in his career I wish he was here so I could pick on him Um was thinking fast He didn't quite shut the driver's door all the way He knows he's in trouble He knows he can't get away without getting shot And he's really worried about Eddie back there who he's responsible for He's thinking fast And he tells the guy that's covering him with a gun I can't I can't figure out how to drive this van

I can't figure out how to start it In a moment of time the bad guy reaches over to try to help him start it Lockwood bolts out the door He's running He's zigzagging He's know he's going to get shot at any minute Doesn't get shot Bad guy just simply jumps in the driver's seat and they take off Lockwood gets back to his car Keep in mind he doesn't have his handgun anymore He's now got a singleshot shotgun in his car And so he's trying to load that driving down the road He's got his lights and sirens on He's yelling for help He's calling everybody that's anybody And they go over the Palm City Bridge And

I guess uh Martin Downs Boulevard didn't even exist at that time He gets to the foot of the bridge He bangs a left They go down Cornell Avenue They make it all the way down to the dead end of Cornell Avenue which you know none of those roads a lot of those roads didn't even cut through at the time where he runs into the back of the suspect and uh makes him mad So the suspect starts shooting back the wind back out the window at him Shoots through the windshield misses him shoots through the door misses him thank God and eventually crashes Uh both bad guys get out they take off running Lockwood's smart enough

at this point He's holding his singles shotgun knowing he's completely outgunned and he grabs poor Eddie out of the back of the car and Eddie's fine Really traumatized but he's fine And then Sheriff Holt shows up with his posi and he does what he did best He tracked those guys for a day all the way to the C23 which you know where the C23 is nowhere close to that location all the way to the C-23 and he takes the offender into custody You would think the story would stop there but it really doesn't So the offender goes to Martin County Jail and he goes through the process and and Judge Trobridge after he's convicted Sentence

him to the longest amount of time he could sentence to That's 20 years Gives him 20 years And at sentencing Judge Trobridge if you if you knew him he was a super methodical wonderful judge good for our county He asked the offender the defendant if he had anything to say and he said yes If I had pulled the trigger on that gun I wouldn't be here right now basically saying if I have killed that deputy I would have gotten away So he gets sentenced to prison They ship him up north Rafford I think is where he ended up and he lasted two years before he escaped and immediately fled the country and went down into

South America And as God's providence would have it and I do say God's providence because it does seem like sometimes things work out for us he is killed down in South America He's got warrants for him up here Everybody's looking for him He's killed down in South America because he's now gone down there and married a woman and has a daughter and and a a bad guy sees him as an American and murders him buries him his wife and his daughter in the yard and then does a quick claim deed on their house to get possession And that was the crime that this individual was committing They didn't know where the bodies were They just

knew they were gone and that this person had assumed the legal right to this house And uh fast forwarding one of the friends of the victims including our bad guy had taken care of the dog and they noticed that every morning that dog would get up swim the creek and just lay down in one area of the yard every day And so they finally went over there they exumed that area and they found they found the wife and the daughter and they kept looking They found our suspect That dog knew where they were buried and would go over there every day And uh that wraps up a extremely close call that one of our deputies

had uh way way back in the day but a super intriguing story Um moving on there's there's one thing that I think put Martin County on the map and you guys live this and that was the uh drug smuggling era that took place in South Florida You know Miami got credit for the Cocaine Cowboys and Griselda Blanco and all the 600 shootings in Miami The the county of Miami 600 homicides actually within a year period of time It was rowdy down there but because there was so much pressure there Martin County became a real hot spot for these drug smugglers to hit And as you know Sheriff Holt was at at at the tip of

that ice or at the tip of that spear uh fighting that th those drug wars as they took place from maritime smuggling Boats were coming in the St Lucy inlet regularly Our our marine deputies would notice boats that were bowheavy follow them in search and find bales of marijuana At that time cocaine wasn't even a thing and make arrest uh so much pressure was put on the water that they started uh flying smuggling uh dope in by airplanes and a lot of the places they went to weren't traditional uh airports like Witherfield They did land at Witherfield and I do have reports from Sheriff Holt where he made arrest at Witherfield but their preference was

Bridge Road Caner Highway and some of the rural grass strips in Martin County And I'll give you one of those accounts and there are there are numerous numerous accounts Uh but for the sake of time I'll give you one of them Um back in let me get my date straight 1982 Sheriff Holt received information that a DC3 big airplane by the way if you've ever flown these are massive airplanes was going to land out just east of Port Maka on Caner Highway So he sends all his crew out there and they're hiding in the bushes out there and they've identified the ground crew that was already in place out there Now the ground crew remember

it wasn't sophisticated back then So the ground crew's job was to go there make sure law enforcement wasn't there If it was night time which in this case it was not they would put up either headlights car to car or they would put out uh temporary lights and then their job was when the plane landed offload them as rapidly as they could and then collect everything and the dope and go elsewhere So the dope coming into this county wasn't staying here It was getting shipped really all over the eastern seabboard So it wasn't destined for here A lot of it actually went south before it went back north In this case Sheriff Hold had the

information His deputies and detectives are out there They're hiding in the woods in the bushes and they're paying attention and they see the offload crew seven guys out there and they wait and they wait and they wait and finally the offload crew gets bored and thinks that they've lost their load and they leave Well Sheriff Holt if you knew anything about him he didn't leave anything He stayed there till the job was done And in this case he did it And what had happened was as that plane was leaving Colombia loaded with 8,000 lbs of marijuana and quaudes which I've never seen a quaude in my life it headed north and got stuck in a

headwind So it just took a lot longer for that plane to get here But with that that plane was burning fuel at a rapid rate And as that plane approached Caner Highway our uh our deputies detectives are hiding in the bushes They hear the plane start to sputter and then they see it just go in the straight nose dive as it runs out of fuel Truly if it had been 10 more minutes they would have survived But that plane ran out of fuel and nose right into Caner Highway killing both pilot and co-pilot right there on the spot Our deputies and detectives that were there were showered with quaudes millions of quaudes that were spread

all over the road And uh somehow that plane was on fire because they recount that Sheriff Holt he was fixated on the case which was his job to prove the case So so he had other guys that were catching the the crew that they had eyes on that had left Those guys are being detained The planes now crashed It's on fire and he needed certain amount of bales of marijuana to prove his case So he was fixated He was running into the fire pulling bales of marijuana out and saving enough to prove his case You all know uh I'm going to transition to another case another person actually in Martin County who just passed away

two years ago and that's Mr Brady Frank Brady Anybody know him Have you heard of him There's a lot of family members around Martin County Still really good people uh friends of ours I know him personally But Frank Brady back in 1985 uh owned a large ranch that still exists out on 710 in any town And he was a no notorious cocaine smuggler So marijuana had kind of the the dopers had realized that marijuana didn't make as much money They transitioned to cocaine Frank Brady was was one of the main guys that was was smuggling cocaine in 1985 They did a search warrant on his place They arrested him and indicted him for tax evasion

not cocaine smuggling because they couldn't prove it But let me tell you what led up to that arrest of tax evasion Frank Brady owned a ranch So he already had money He was a promoter a boxing promoter so he had money He was an adrenaline junkie and was wellliked by a lot of people Since he owned the ranch and since smuggling was such a big thing here in Martin County and across South Florida Frank Brady was approached by a couple guys that said "Hey we'll give you $10,000 per plane that lands on your ranch No questions asked We'll give you the money Don't ask any questions." So Frank went along with that for a little

while but Frank wasn't stupid He realized $10,000 if you got the money to give me 10 grand which back in n early late7s into the early 80s was real money he thought you know what I can I can do better than this So he did what a lot of these dopers did He he jumped all the middlemen and ended up dealing actually directly with Pablo Escobar and the ooas down in Colombia If you know anything about Pablo Escobar he was the man that FARC and the CIA and our special forces end up killing down there in 1993 because he was a naroterrorist But back to Frank Brady So Frank Brady ran loads for years and

years and years and never actually got caught His loads got caught In fact the sheriff's office seized multiple loads of hundreds and hundreds of kilograms millions of dollars worth of dope coming off of his property But he was smart enough to insulate himself and never actually get himself arrested Frank's number one problem became "What do I do with my money?" And he'll tell the story years later He would bury his money He would dig it up and it would be moldy He had so much money that he couldn't put in the bank and he couldn't buy any more toys He did not know what to do with it And he lost a lot of his

millions of dollars based on molded money Couldn't do anything with it I wish I had that problem I know you have that problem Mr Lead So um Frank gets indicted in 1985 He's indicted by the IRS They put him in federal prison They had fined him $11 million to as part of his sentence And of course he wanted to shorten that sentence So he does something that I don't remember ever really being done before He negotiates with him and says "If you let me out of prison for one week out of federal custody for one week I'll pay you your $11 million." So they did They negotiated with Frank Frank's out I don't know where

Frank dug that money up but Frank showed up a week later with 11 million in cash negotiated with him He still did his federal prison time but he he did a lesser amount of time because he ended up giving uh actually videoing Pablo Esco Escobar down in Colombia loading his plane full of cocaine I was hired in 97 and when I got hired they were still worried about the Colombian cartel coming up here and killing Frank at his ranch out there in Indiantown Of course that never happened He lived and died a natural death But Frank Brady was probably our largest smuggler in the uh in the country and certainly in the state at that

point During all that cocaine and marijuana smuggling era the state of Florida did drug traffickers a huge favor They built them a 25 mile runway 25 mile runway just for the smugglers Like where in the world did that take place Well you all know this huh No No it's close I'm going to tell you where it is 25 mile hour runway They built it right here out west of town It's called I95 That was their number one spot It was It was finished in 1987 but all the big cocaine smugglers and marijuana smugglers used that as it was being built from Fort Pierce to Palm Beach Gardens They would land every size of aircraft out

there And Sheriff Hol and his deputies made numerous major drug trafficking arrests out there And they scraped up a lot of dead bodies of people that didn't quite make it They crashed their planes They ran out of fuel Something went wrong And uh and life didn't go real smooth for them Moving into the mid 80s into the '9s uh smuggling kind of tapered off and uh crack hit the streets here in Martin County And the reason why I'm talking about drugs because I know a lot about drugs because that was my job That was my preferred job That job was more fun than being the sheriff by the way Narcotics was a good job Steve

and I worked it together It was a fun time But crack cocaine was an epidemic on the streets of Martin County I read Facebook I hear people say regularly "Oh Martin counties it's so bad now I got to move away." It's really not Back in those days it was bad There's neighborhoods you didn't go in There's streets you didn't drive down There's people you didn't talk to because crack cocaine was that bad And I'm not picking on any particular race because every part of every race was guilty But our predominantly black neighborhoods African-American neighborhoods were where the guys were selling and our white people were driving in there and buying it and the Mexicans were

fueling the African-Americans and so everybody had their peace in that crime and that cost a lot of people their lives and a lot of people went to prison because of the violence But back you can remember Sarna Road anybody remember driving down Sarna Road and there just being prostitutes out there walking down the road I mean I knew them all by name Well why didn't you arrest them Well we couldn't because they knew who we were So we go out there and try to do stings and figure out how to arrest them and they they knew us We all knew each other first and last name basis Same went for the crack dealers But crack

cocaine was an epidemic here in Barton County that affected us in every way and affected many many many families And that was from Hope Sound where I live currently still always have all the way through Jensen Beach the Tick Ridge area all that area that is so beautiful up there now It was it was off the chain And I know that's a a younger person's term but it was busy I tell our new deputies you have no idea how bad it was when when when uh I first started And truly it was that bad And they would try our deputies all the time They called it the boo game A new deputy would go in

a bad neighborhood and and the crack dealers would try you Period They would threaten you They would threaten to to fight you They would threaten to beat you up Several of our deputies turned tail and left And we all knew about it because all those drug dealers would tell us that that deputy is not a deputy you want to have at the Mar County Sheriff's Office So it really was a way that you uh you made your bones at the Martin County Sheriff's Office Moving on a little bit and this is my my uh my last story actually is uh I'm going to talk about something that Sheriff Crowder haunted him until the day he

died and it shouldn't have haunted him In fairness Sheriff Crowder did a good job but when he was the uh I'll say the interim sheriff right after Baker was taken out of office Sheriff Crowder was appointed by the governor He's 28 26 years old I mean he was a kid The responsibility even with the size of Martin County he was a extremely young man And he hired a guy in 1972 in June of 1972 named Gerard Schaefer Anybody recognize that name Know who he is Gerard Schaefer I went back through that file just to like read up on Gerard Schaefer Really is a fascinating story that I would imagine others would want to pick up

So Gerard Schaefer came from Wilton Manners Police Department He was already a cop He uh he had quite a bit of experience down there Sheriff Crowder saw that saw that resume hired him and uh he started his work Actually LJ come up here I need your help I'll put you in jail Pass these out if you don't mind He he probably shouldn't listen to this but this is I'm giving you I'm giving you his uh Gerard Schaer's the front page is his personnel file which is only a one pager Shows you the date hired the date he's fired which is the date he got arrested And then it shows you the report that Sheriff Crowder

wrote back then for an abduction case And I'm going to explain that abduction case to you So Sheriff Crowder is a sheriff but Martin County is much smaller And he gets a call from Deputy Schaefer at that time Deputy Schaefer tells Sheriff Crowder "Hey boss I think I made a mistake." Sheriff you know he's very methodical Well Gerard tell me what happened And uh Deputy Schaefer goes on to tell him "Uh well this morning I picked up two girls in Jensen Beach that were hitchhiking young girls and I dropped them off in the middle of Jensen Beach and told them they shouldn't do it." Okay well tell me more Well later I saw him hitchhiking

again and I picked them up and I drove them over to a place called the Spanish house It's somewhere between Stuart Beach and Jensen Beach It's not there anymore I don't I I don't remember ever seeing it myself but I drove him to the Spanish house and I was going to teach him a lesson Well what was the lesson Well I I handcuffed him and I left them in the in the woods for I was going to keep them there for five minutes just to scare him but they got away So he's now called Sheriff Crowder and and explained this really weird scenario Of course Sheriff Crowder he's a young young man He immediately calls

his watch commander and says "Hey go find Schaefer and get him with you right away." So the watch commander does Lieutenant goes out there gets Schaefer Now Schaefer's riding with the watch commander Thank you LJ Appreciate it Now Schaefer's riding with the watch commander and Sheriff Crowder is flying out to Hudson Island to figure out where these girls are Well as they're driving they get near Stewart Beach and they they see a man with a white pickup truck and he's got one of one of the girls One of the girls is still standing there She's handcuffed She's got a a white some apparatus around her and she's petrified She's mosquito bitten She's scratched up and

she is petrified Remember this is a sheriff's deputy that took her put her in the woods in handcuffs and now she's now interacting again with sheriff's deputies So Sheriff Crowder gets her side of the story that Gerard Schaefer did pick her up and did take them out there and did start the process of binding them and and uh putting a noose around their neck and starting to hang them in the woods The other girl's still missing So Sheriff Crowder and and Gerard Schaefer he's still with them at this point Now he's half a half suspect but he's still a deputy So he's riding with his watch commander Now they're all three looking for this other

girl And they find her in the swamp also handcuffed also petrified of deputies and also in this same state of mind extremely petrified And they get her and she shares the same story that Gerard took him in the woods He wanted to show him a house He ends up binding them and and uh putting a noose around their neck Sheriff Crowder knows he's got a problem at that point and he orders his lieutenant to arrest him So Gerard is arrested taken to the Martin County Jail and he's booked but he bonds out Um fast forward a couple years later like two years later they find two girls in a very similar state that are now

deceased up on the St Lucy side of Hudson Island And they do a search warrant on Gerard Schaefer's mom's house and Gerard Schaefer himself and they find all kinds of evidence that links him to and and I've read all kinds of narratives about it in not those notes but in some I read today of Gerard's own handwriting The there's there's a guesstimate of between 30 and 70 females that he might have murdered throughout his career Gerard Schaefer one of our deputies may have been the most prolific serial killer in the state of Florida ever of all times beating out all the rest of them We don't know that We can't prove it They could prove

however that he killed the two girls in Hudson Island Same scenario as the two girls I was just telling you about He put the noose and what he would do and I'm not trying to be too graphic Is he allowed to hear this Okay But what he would do was he would normally pick girls up in pairs Normally they were hitchhikers He under the guise of being a law enforcement officer he'd pick them up and then take them to remote places put them on a pedestal with a rope around their neck handcuffed and gagged and then he would do things that you would expect a sexual predator to do and eventually murder them um the

period of time between his arrest for the kidnapping of those girls in Jensen Beach and then the homicide he went out west and on that same route where he was that he traveled they found two girls similarly murdered Immediately after the two were found up in Hudson Island deceased they found two same exact emo out in in Orange Grove in Port St Lucy murdered Wilton Manners has a whole list of girls that were kidnapped in pairs and found in the same manner In fact last year down at Dub Boy Park in Jupiter I think it was last year the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office was just able to identify uh who the girl actually was

She's been a Jane Doe for years and years since the 70s and she ended up once they identify her they found out she was from Wilton Manners at the same time Gerard Schaefer was down at Wilton Manners So what I gave you there was the report It's the the front sheet is his personnel file The second three pages are Sheriff's Crowder Sheriff Crowder's uh reports which by the way he did a good job writing for being the sheriff and a 26-y old And then the last two pages are pretty gross but there there are there are uh out of the search warrants I did there's there's hundreds of pages of handwritten girls hanging from a

tree with notes and body counts and and the list goes on and on And then Gerard will also write stories about uh maybe fantasies maybe something that he actually did but he would write stories and different characters And some of the photos I didn't include him or of a deputy actually standing there with these girls hanging So that's the biggest black eye of the Martin County Sheriff's Office Uh and Sheriff Crowder felt that his entire life was because of Gerard Schaefer But I would turn that around for Sheriff Crowder just out of respect for him He solved he saved a lot of girls from being murdered Yes he hired a killer He didn't know it

He's only here for a month but Sheriff Crowder figured it out and arrested him We're able to solve at least two homicides and then Gerard Schaefer was put away Now again back to poetic justice Groward got what he deserved in 1995 Uh him and another guy were arguing over one versus two glasses of water from the water fountain And the other guy stabbed him 43 times brutally murdered him probably because he was a sex offender but brutally murdered him And that was the end of Gerard Schaefer and his uh and his life But again uh if you depends on what account you read and if you go home and Google there's all types of different

versions of of how uh Gerard Schaefer affected this state of Florida not just Martin County I've told a couple war stories I could keep going on and on and on and on but I that was a negative but I'm going to go back to the positive from very first sheriff we have hopefully through me All the sheriffs have been steadfast in protecting the community here in Martin County They've all kept their reputation intact They've all all worked hard They've all been boots on the ground employees Uh they've all played themselves They've all been true to their oath and that's to protect the citizens of Martin County And they've left me they left all of us

a legacy to to try to keep They really did establish this community for what it is If I had a dollar for everybody that walks up to me from Brower County Palm Beach Miami and says "We moved here because it's safe." Well that didn't start with me It didn't start with Steve It started a long time before we got here with with all the former sheriffs and his deputies creating the legacy that we have here So we owe a lot to them And it's my privilege just to stand here and probably regurgitate stories that you've already heard but they're to me they're fascinating Again there's a lot that can be told 100 years of history

There's a lot of stories that could be told but these are interesting to me So with that I know I rattled through a couple things Anything related to the sheriff's office you want to ask me Why you got me You did a beautiful job telling us the history Yes and the great sheriff that you're following behind all I had What are your greatest challenges today in operating in the county My greatest challenges So there's a bunch of them There's several of them Not a bunch but there's several of them One is who we hire at the Martin County Sheriff's Office We just got done talking about Gerard and that really did put us on our

toes all the way through where I currently am I'm keenly aware that that could happen yet again And so hiring is a big deal from us for us We started hiring people from all over the country because they're moving here and we wanted good people And I quickly learned that's great to have people here but you need people that are from Martin County that understand our culture understand who's who understand how to navigate Martin County I've done a huge push to get our youth coming out of high school or coming back from the military or college or whatever they're doing to come back here and work in Martin County and be invested in our community

And that's not that easy to do But we uh we're paying them well and we've really pushed hard for for parents to take that stigma away from law enforce because remember we came through 2019 20 it was a rough time for law enforcement I think we're getting through that now with with different politicians in office but hiring and retention is a big deal for us AI computers is a devil for us is a big deal I mean right now you would expect me to tell you what's going on in the county and I do I mean I do my best to tell anybody what's going on in the county But sometimes I only have the

opportunity to do it because somebody will drive past a fatality crash or a crime scene or whatever They'll snap a photo they'll put on Facebook and they'll create their own narrative and then I'm Well Sheriff I can't believe you didn't tell us about it If you to give me like one hour to actually ascertain what's going on I would tell you what's going on But but it really has wre havoc on us and and the insatiable appetite of people wanting to know every little detail right away makes it extremely difficult for me And again if I come out and give you the wrong information and then I have to backtrack on it I'm liable for

uh for maybe slander or saying something wrong So that's a big deal AI the the other side of AI is is all the crazy things people can do with it Like put people in the wrong places doing the wrong things and and that affects us in a huge way And then traveling criminals are very real We've hit that for years now We have the wrong exit motto but those guys are still hitting us hard Uh I think tomorrow we're going to release an arrest we got Friday night into Saturday morning of a crew out of Miami coming up and stealing GPS's off boats 18 burglars that did back to back to back here in Martin

County And those GPS's are anywhere from 5 to $15,000 a piece Huge loss to our community Thankfully we caught them but the traveling criminals are still very real That's a long answer for a short question No Can I bring this up Yes Go ahead Um this seems kind of trivial maybe to some of the things that you do but I have found that the noise is coming from these little bitty cars and these crotch rocket motorcycles Do we not have a noise ordinance in Martin County Yeah And he told me to repeat the question so I'm not being Yes So do we have a noise ordinance in Martin County And are these little bitty cars

with these little bitty guys in here And they are all little bitty cars They are And they have these loud loud noises which you literally if you're sitting dining outside anywhere and these cars go by you have to stop what you're saying and look It just it interferes with everything Almost the same as the jet airplanes I don't complain about the jet airplanes of course but these little cars with these little guys in them and these little people on these little crash rocket things Is it do they are they not breaking our our sound ordinance They really aren't cuz not really cuz that ordinance doesn't kick in till later at night time and and by

then they're all in bed and they're really not So they start at 6 a.m I know But we used to have we used to have state statute against decibel levels with stereos and we wrote citations on that and push back on that and we lost So noise is kind of something where we have a problem with a lot We have a problem with the bars especially down there at the end of Sarno road Those things get rocking and rolling and go late into the night and the people in Rocky Point are calling us saying can you do anything And we have but they don't always like our answer because on the weekends those bars can

go later and later So yeah I know it's a whole different thing why anybody would drive those little cars Why don't you go get a a car with a big engine Then you don't have to have a little car with a loud muffler to try to offset your manhood I don't know I don't get it Thank you Yes Yes I don't have a question I just want to say thank you for what you do Oh absolutely You and your staff do a stellar job Absolutely In Martin County And as most of you know I'm supervisor of elections and we have a great partnership I appreciate you lending me a captain Um during the election cycle

you may not know it but his deputies are out in unmarked vehicles on election days and during early voting protecting you protecting your vote So thank you John for what you and your staff do Well thank you And I'll echo that How many hanging chads have you heard of in Mark County Zero Your supervisor of elections is on it all the time So we thank you for what you Yes ma'am Would you ever go to Would you go to the doctor you keep your gun on inside If I go to the doctor that's a very I never thought about it but then I Well you know some things you got to take your gun off

for and so depends on what doctor you're going to why you're going to but I do take it into the doctor's office Yes I'm not going to strip and just walk in with just my belt You never know what's going to happen There's all kinds of crazy people nowadays So you guys know better than anybody But actually when you're doing the exam you trust your doctor not the messenger You set off to the side And so yes Well last week there was a tons of um I live in Jensen Beach and there's tons of sirens and also what happened So where do I go to find out why why emergency was responding to something in

Jensen Beach You're one of them huh No So just call to call We don't put it out there But if it's something website or something like that there's too many I mean when I left the office it was back to backtoback calls And here's what happens So you'll see a huge response and then it turns out to be nothing like somebody will describe something that's horrific or or really active and then it turns out to be nothing and sometimes the latter takes place What affects you Uh like traffic jams we try to put them on Facebook Uh anything that's going to endanger a community we try to put it on Facebook Any kind of trend

that's coming we put it out there But every single call there really are just too many of them These deputies are responding right right this second I have 24 just road patrol deputies plus the traffic unit plus the narcotics plus marine K9 aviation Like there's a lot of people out there doing a lot of things Yeah More than you would think There's four deputies assigned Just deputies Just assign Well yeah My daughter moved with me last year from Denver and she's always like go this is Jensen Beach I don't have to be scared here No I mean we have to be cautious and there but not like Denver So back to what where I started

People say "Oh this is place has gotten crazy." We put more information out almost to our own detriment because now the perception is Martin County has gotten worse It's not gotten worse We're just telling you what's going on I worked in Jensen Beach That was my first zone back in 1997 I made over 100 drug arrests for crack by myself as a road patrol deputy a year That place was crazy You had all the mobile home parks off Martin Avenue You had a bunch of them that they've now torn down Um Sunny Acres mobile home There's a bunch of them They tore them down because we had so many problems and of course they redeveloped

them Ocean Breeze Park that place was massive That place is a real problem for us But that's all been revitalized and turned into a nice place We don't get near the calls that we used to get up there It's changed for the better Y anymore I'll end and just say uh I didn't start 909 97 like the sheriff did but uh working alongside of him and now working for him part-time uh our county here Martin County is probably one of the safest in the state of Florida Uh even though you have four people in Jensen and 24 on the street and Aviation K9 and and people literally in boats on the water right now Um

it it truly is a testament to Crowder when I started Sheriff Snider and then Sheriff Budens and to your question sir I think something that is a challenge for him is every year when he goes before the county commission to get his budget uh allocated Uh it's very important for each of you all to tell your neighbors and and others what those funds go for and what they go to He has a citizens academy that you all can be a part of and and go through a spectrum from the jail to the courthouse to the aviation I don't even know I used to be in charge of I don't even know what it is now

But you will really get an inside glimpse of what the sheriff's office does on a daily basis How much it cost uh to to operate on a daily basis how much it costs to feed the prisoners uh and and house them in the medical You you really don't understand the scope of it until you get into it So uh I would just encourage each of you all when that time comes August September somewhere in there uh to to pay attention and and and reach out to your commissioners and and and back the sheriff because uh we are safe because that budget goes through Palm Beach County is an absolute zoo and things that are going

on down there Uh you know I was listening to you the Coconut Bar uh the trailer parks When I say we were going call to call to call um it was a very very busy community And when my son and I drive through or even with my father and I look at those areas of Martin County that are completely quiet uh now or they're no longer even in existence it's to uh people like Sheriff Crowder who allowed uh the sheriff and I to go to work and and Sheriff Snyder who really emphasized uh the wrong exit And now what sheriff budenseek is doing with that budget and with your support uh is allowing it for

those people who live or work in Palm Beach and Broward and Miami to come up here and live in our community And so uh I would encourage you all to to reach out to your commissioners and tell your community and invite their community uh operations team into your neighborhood uh and have a barbecue and see firsthand what what goes on because uh this is what he's giving you tonight is is just a very small 10% of what it is And and I'm tired of hearing about Glenn Lockwood because he uh when you see him just just let him know that somebody took his gun and sent him on his way and that's what you got

out of the moral of the story So Sheriff thank you for being here tonight No I saw a hand over there I don't want to leave anybody hanging We done Yes So where did all the drug traffic go Switched to the Mexican border The maritime traffic has been trickling in all these years a little bit of aviation but with radars and all that it really kind of slowed down the aviation traffic It's quite difficult to do Maritime traffic has continued to just come from the Bahamas for years but not in the volume that we saw back in the day It really did become and under all the president I'm not just picking on the former

one but the Mexican border is really where it really kicked off And then it caught us by surprise because Mexican drug traffickers were different than white people American whites American blacks Bahamian blacks Colombians They were flashy You could tell they were a drug dealer Mexicans you couldn't tell They'd live in Golden Gate in a duplex with seven people and get up and go to work every day roofing and then they'd piece out millions of dollars of kilos and you just couldn't figure out by their lifestyle and the way they were being flashy because they weren't flashy So it took us years to figure that out and around 2005 kind of the whole country woke up

and we started doing wire taps and knocking people off and putting more and more pressure on the Mexican border But now in the last few months that's kind of stopped and now we're seeing maritime traffic again It's coming our way again So it's always coming There's so much money in I hate to say it but they're they're always trying to end round us and get it in So all right I appreciate you all I appreciate your backup You really do back us up You make us strong because you're strong So thank you Thank you so much I won't forget you I won't forget you Thank you A big part of our community being safe is

what allows us to have an evening presentation You know if this was as crazy as it has been in the past none of us would be wanting to go out at night And we're out here tonight You know we'll be out for dinner tomorrow the next night Uh we're very fortunate to have a community that is so well protected and I appreciate what the sheriff does and all these all the gentlemen who work with him and ladies