Hernando County: Sheriff: increased funding crucial to combat growing sex offender concerns
BROOKSVILLE, Fla. –
The Hernando County Sheriff’s Office warns that his agency is “significantly underfunded” and dwindling resources are putting public safety at risk. Sheriff Nienhuis says his plan to add a new detective to track the growing number of sex offenders moving to the county is being stonewalled by county leaders.
“We’re stretching that rubber band very thin and I’m afraid it’s going to break,” Sheriff Al Nienhuis told ABC Action News Thursday.
People living in a west Brooksville neighborhood have become increasingly concerned about the number of sex offenders living nearby.
“Another one I know that lives about two blocks down, there’s some two, three streets down – four or five up that street,” said Allison Phillips.
According to HCSO, the number of sex offenders calling Hernando County home has nearly doubled in recent years, now totaling 416.
Detective Tommy Breedlove oversees the county registry, but is hampered by active cases. Det. Breedlove says he’s backlogged from making random registry checks.
“By prioritizing you have to take your active cases first,” said Det. Breedlove. “We’re always afraid of the one that might fall through the cracks.”
Sheriff Nienhuis asked Hernando County Commissioners for a 4% budget increase, totaling $1.7 million. Sheriff Nienhuis wants to use some of that money to hire a new detective focusing specifically on the county’s sex offender registry.
“It’s a very heavy burden because you take the safety of 175,000 people personally,” said Sheriff Nienhuis.
County commissioners denied that request, instead proposing a new tax for unincorporated property owners. It would establish a Municipal Service Taxing Unit for law enforcement in the unincorporated areas of Hernando County.
“I asked for this item to be placed on the agenda for Board discussion so we can resolve the budget appeal with the Sheriff once and for all,” said Chairman Wayne Dukes. “I believe the best way to do this while providing full transparency to our taxpayers is to establish a MSTU. In addition to the milage rate needed to maintain the Sheriff’s approved budget, I’m prepared to transfer an additional $1.2 million to his current budget to settle the budget appeal and fully fund the Sheriff.”
The Sheriff and county commissioners will discuss future funding at a meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the Government Center, located at 20 N. Main St., Brooksville.
However the budget battle ends, Tammy Salazar supports whatever gets her an extra set of eyes on area sex offenders.
“We need it,” said Tammy Salazar. “Honest to God, we need it.”
Doesn’t seem like a budget “battle” if they’re getting what they want.
What happens to all the money paid into the system by probationers? what would happen if all probationers signed in every month but didn’t pay anything for 6 months or a year? The whole system would probably collapse.
Not to complement myself, but Hernando County would do well to have me living there. I probably live a more “straight arrow” life than most of the “do-gooder” citizens who are living “in fear”. Are they as equally concerned about drug dealers, armed home invaders, murderers, burglars, etc. Or are they just driven by the ‘paranoia’ coolade they have been served?
I am considering moving to Hernando county, my husband is on the registry and we want to find an area where the police aren’t going to harass us. We’re looking at the ridge manor area. Anyone here familiar with it?
I live in Leon county and they don’t bother me here at all. I believe that the level of harassment by law enforcement with registered persons is commensurate to the amount of time you have left on any sentence. Basically, if you have a long way to go you’re going to get messed with. Since I’m done no one bothers me at all excepting for the biannual address check..
It depends on the county and the local sheriff. If you live in Polk or Volusia, count on your life to be made as miserable as possible.
I lived in Sarasota County and the sheriff’s department wasn’t bad; it was the local police department that was. Polk County has Elmer Fudd and Volusia county has Chipwood.
Six counties account for 90% of FL registry horror stories.
Polk, Volusia, Dade, Seminole, Brevard, Marion.
Amirite?
I mean, I know they’re all bad, because they’re given a bad law to enforce, but the above six are unusually callous and vindicitive, judging from the stories on here.
A lot of the reason why they are so bad are the people who run those counties. Sheriffs Judd and Chitwood own Polk and Volusia and Lobbyist Ron Book owns Miami-Dade. Brevard and Marion have some really draconian proximity ordinances and Marion is just looking to lock up as many people for petty missteps to keep their employees’ jobs.
Several counties elect new sheriffs this year, due to retirements.
Hoping none of the new sheriffs view the registry as an opportunity for security theater.
Add St. John’s to your list. They’ve ruined our life
My husband’s situation is a messed up one so he doesn’t fit in the norms of it all.
His crime happened in another country. The incident was illegal there, but not in the US. So he took a plea there after being told it would not carry over to the US.
But, he was forced to call the local police and boom. They throw him on the registry, with NO trial, NO judge ruling on it. Nothing. In the meantime, the death threats all start up again as his name is added and all our neighbors share it and talk smack. So while trying to research how to fix this and in a deep depression after all this and losing his very good job in the government, he forgot to register. Got arrested, and we began to fight a felony. He went even deeper into depression and somehow the second registration came and passed and he was arrested a second time. In the first arrest he had lost his CDL job (of ONE day) and because he forgot to tell them, he’s now facing THREE felonies. For NEVER breaking the law in the United States.
Make sure you have a good attorney on retainer at all times. Some states, and I’m somewhat certain Florida is one, have statutes that read something to the tune of “..if you have ever been on a registry (ornhave been charged or convicted of such a crime…when moving to [that] state, you must register for a certain period. Some states is ten years, some [expletive] states are for life. If Florida could have the entire population of the state on the registry, it would because….FEDERAL MONIES. Leaving Florida won’t get you off the registry either. Get good lawyer. A really good lawyer. $10,000 – $20,000 walking in the door lawyer. You want to buy your attorney a Maserati, not a Toyota. You should have picked a different state, such as Oregon or Pennsylvania.
Yes we have a Lamborghini Lawyer we’ve given him $45,000 so far but he’s just our criminal defense lawyer he said there’s nothing he can do about registry stuff also the one issue that we’ve had with all of this is that yes they state if you are registered in another state you must be registered in this state there’s nothing that says if you’re registered in another country and if I’m correct in saying this there areImmigrants with worst criminal records in their home countries but don’t have to give that information when entering the United States so how is it that a US citizen have to enter that information we’ve talked to probably 50 lawyers all over the country and no one has ever dealt with a situation like this before we are kind of like the very first ones and it’s gonna take a lot of fighting and a lot of effort on our part and probably a lot of money that we don’t have. I hate this life I hate this country I hate this state I hate this government I hate the police I hate the fact that they said my husbands guilty without any proof. And now he’s going to be three times felon for never committing a crime in the United States how is that possible I don’t know how much more I can take of this to be honest and I had to move to Florida because my mother is dying and I want to spend her last year‘s with her because we’ve lived overseas for so long I didn’t get a lot of time with her and she lives in Florida because she’s on the liver transplant list at the mayo clinic so we’re stuck with got to live in Florida unless I don’t want to be around my mom which is not an option for me. And my husband doesn’t want it to be he says we will stay in Florida until it’s time to go but he’s the one suffering.
Thank SORNA and Homeland Security for implementing foreign elements to the registry.
And how on EARTH can they do that?! We’re desperately trying to find a civil lawyer that will fight for us tooth and nail. But with these felony charges, any judge will think he’s just trying to get out of these charges. Our lawyer is suggesting taking the guilty plea (comes with no jail time and 2 years probation), then fight to get off the registry. The problem is, he’ll have a proper US conviction.
We want to keep fighting, but the DA is a NASTY woman who has blatantly said she’ll nail my husband to the wall. And the sex offender detective hates me because I kinda lost it when he was arrested the second time and I cried hysterically because every other month they did “checks”, EXCEPT his registry months. Just so they could find him in violation.
He’s got severe ptsd from 3 tours in Afghanistan, then the situation of his arrest and loss of high government job, he’s barely functional.
I’m a care giver for my mother on the liver transplant list, otherwise I would have paid more attention to the severity of registering ON TIME and stepped in.
It’s all to late now, he’ll be a convicted felon for the rest of his life.
If we fight it and he’s found guilty they’ll throw the book at him.
The DA sees it this way, regardless of if he should be on the list, the fact remains AT THE TIME he WAS and should have followed the law. So, he broke the law and that’s that in her eyes.
She’s a mean nasty woman.
I know of no law that requires registration for something that was not illegal. Not even in Florida. Have you contacted a lawyer yet?
Yes, several. Not many willing to take our case. We’ve got a good one, actually he’s quite amazing. But, now we need a civil lawyer too. That’s going to be the tough one
If you make a plea, which is a negotiation, offer up no registry and adjudication withheld, since there was no victim and the state clearly cannot show he’s a danger to society. Don’t take no for an answer.
““We need it,” said Tammy Salazar. “Honest to God, we need it.””
Are sex offenders running around your neighborhood every week raping children? What the hell is your issue? How about using funding to teach parents and kids how to deal with situations when kids feel like they’re being abused so that they can speak out? You know, some damn common sense for a change instead of fear mongering. Tammy makes it sound like the biggest issue to the United States are sex offenders. She needs her head re-examined and possibly prescribed some pharmaceutical meds, the same meds that are part of the 100,000 deaths per year thanks to the criminals in the pharmaceutical industry, you know, the Real Problems facing Americans. Can rampant stupidity by politicians be treated with meds? Pathetic. This is the America that so many people have fought for?
Good! I hope every sheriff office budget in the entire state “snaps” like a rubber band stretched too thin. That’s the problem. Government and law enforcement has gotten way too big and way too outta hand. That’s why they need people like us to fill their prisons and probation offices that slap fees on us and slap monitors on us at $8 a day a pop. So hmm, let’s see, has anyone in Hernando asked the questions of WHY their is such an increase in sex offenders moving in??? BECAUSE THIS DUMB A$$ PRISON STATE KEEPS CREATING SEX OFFENDERS OUT OF THIN AIR WITH STING OPERATIONS AND LAWS THAT MAKE ALMOST ANY LITTLE NORMAL SEXUAL ACTION A SEX CRIME—-THAT’S WHY YOUR COUNTY IS INCREASING IN SEX OFFENDERS LIVING THERE—BLAME YOUR GOVERNMENT!!!!
My only concern is that with such focused policies concerning sex offenders the real problems will get overlooked. When your organization becomes so engulfed in tracking all sex offenders it is easy for those who really need monitoring to ‘go under the radar’, and that is not too overlook the real problem offenders that exist that are much more likely to offend/re-offend…drug dealers, armed home invaders, murderers, bank robbers, burglars,etc. These present much more of a threat than a sex offender and they can ‘move in next door’ and no one would ever know it. Statistics show that sex offenders have a low recidivism rate…5.3%…and only sex offenders must go through extensive counseling upon release from incarceration. I had to have my counselor ‘sign me off’ before my daughter and I could resume communications. Every day on the news we hear or read about someone being shot, someone being robbed, a car being stole, a home or car being broken into…even police cars are not exempt, or we read of a sex offense by a school teacher, or a police officer, or a family member, or even ‘heaven forbid’, a politician. I read the police reports each week here in Brevard County and rarely is a sex offense listed and if it is it usually involves an offender moving without providing the new address. We have far too much serious crime taking place to concentrate an over burdening proportion of scarce funds on monitoring problems that will most likely not come to fruition. Each day we are reminded of where the real problems are. I do not see how the police can keep up just with these problems. There are some states that have now come up with a system to categorize sex offenders into various categories. Very little attention if any at all is paid to those offenders who are not at all likely to re-offend. My counselor told me that with my background the potential of re-offending was close or at zero; there are non-sex offenders who have a higher probability than that. Florida is ‘behind the power curve’…an aeronautical term for approaching stall…in managing sex offenders. Much good talent is going to waste because of antiquated policies.
As a registrant living in Hernando County, I can tell you they don’t need any extra money for tracking sex offenders. I get my regular monthly harassment visits just fine. Unless they are planning to do it once a week! 🙁 This is pure unadulterated fear mongering to get the BOCC to come up for the extra money to fuel the sheriff’s and deputies pockets and perhaps new vehicles oh and let’s not forget fuel so the can play on their helicopter. Which Hernando has way too many of them. It is entertaining to watch any fender bender in the County. EMS and the Sheriff office responds as it were a terrorist threat.
“It’s a very heavy burden because you take the safety of 175,000 people personally, really. that I believe is one sex offender to every 420 people there. You have a better chance at getting run over than running into an offender. The problem is going to privatized prison and the ability to keep them full. The counties are affected by the fallout of released prisonsoners. the ones they tried so hard to incarcerate in the first place. LIke newtons theory of relativity, what goes up must come down. What goes into prison will eventually come out
Because of SORNA and it’s retro activity, I am a registrant that lives in hernando co. Twice a year visits to the sheriff office and the address verification to my home. This is where the confusion on their part begins. I used to hand them my DL and they would run my DL thru the computer, and I would have to wait (sometimes in the dark and sometimes rain) to see if I am wanted, this is a SPOT check. I no longer do this I present my DL and show them that it matches my address, but no longer give it to them. They have threaten to shoot my dog, I tell them they have no reason to enter my yard. they say they have to leave a door card, I said no that is considered correspondence, and all correspondence between the sheriff office and me will be by registered mail which is the law. entering my property and leaving door card will be considered trespassing and littering. No problems last 5 years. now lets talk about (SPOT) as i can find no state law that authorizes it. So when they pull into my driveway and ask if I am so and so I don’t answer I ask them what is their intent, if they answer I’m here to do a spot check. I reply are you sure your not here to do an address verification? If the reply is no I tell them to remove themselves from my property or I will call the state police. Only 6 counties have the SPOT program so if 62 counties do not then it cannot be state law. The SPOT program was written by Pinellas county it is a computer program spits out 90 day visits for Sexual Predator Offender Tracking.
I don’t mean to be nosy, but is your husband’s offense a crime in the United States or Florida. If not I’d check out the attorneys FAC recommends.
It is not illegal in Florida, but the Federal Government has put people in jail for it, but it’s weird because there’s no real “law” on it. It’s just broad under obscenity. So, case by case I think..
Look into “writ of certiorari” and “writ of coram nobis.” Ask your attorney about these. Never take the first deal.
Thank you! I’ll take all the advice we can get! We’re looking for a civil attorney to sue FDLE for putting him on the list to begin with.
Good luck.
Thank you:)
Here’s an idea that would solve their “problem” – follow the constitution and get rid of the proven useless registry.
It costs money doesn’t it but it certainly makes much much more $$$ just ask Ron Book how much a Lamborghini runs…or what his useless daughter would do without the hate list to sell the public over and over and over with the same tried old lies!
So with 1/2 of those listed on this hit list not even living in the state of Florida it seems clear to anyone with 1/4 of a brain (leaves out most politicians and LE) that making money and NOT public safety is the REAL REASON THE “SEX OFFENDER” REGISTRY EXISTS.
If Lauren wasn’t a Senator
she’d be a writer: She’s great at fiction and living in a fantasyland. Is FleetwoodMac still together? Tell me lies tell me sweet little lies. See perfect for her.