Marion County, Florida, Sheriff Billy Woods schools the media on police operations, crime, and individual responsibility.Screengrab from Marion County SO Video
On the afternoon of Thursday Feb. 1 there was a horrific incident in Silver Springs, Florida. Three people were killed and another was injured when a woman stole a Marion County deputy’s patrol vehicle, led other deputies in a pursuit, and crashed into a pickup truck.
It all began when a deputy responded to a “suspicious incident” call at a local shopping center. When the deputy arrived, he spoke with 33-year-old Kendra Boone. He did so by rolling down the passenger window and contacting her while still seated in his patrol SUV. When he got out of the SUV to continue the conversation, she climbed into the vehicle through the still open passenger window, got in the driver’s seat, and started to drive away, evidentiary video shows. The deputy ran after her. But she accelerated onto the road, as the deputy called for help.
Minutes later, three people—two of them innocent—were dead.
But this commentary is not about that incident. It’s about the straight talk some sheriffs give the media and public. Case in point, the magnificent press conference Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods held the day after the Feb. 1 incident.
Some of the first words the sheriff uttered in this press conference were: “My deputy did absolutely nothing wrong.” Wouldn’t it be great if more police leaders could bring themselves to support their troops like that?
Not only did Woods emphatically defend his deputy. He repeatedly referred to the woman who reportedly stole and crashed the patrol vehicle as a “moron.” And when a reporter asked about the Marion County SO’s policy on leaving patrol vehicles running after exiting the vehicle, Woods got a little peeved. “I had a feeling y’all were going to push my buttons. That doesn’t mean sh*t. That doesn’t play a factor in anything. This moron stole a police vehicle and killed two human beings,” he said.
Woods gave a lecture on the attempts of people to point the finger at the wrong causes of tragedies like the patrol vehicle theft and fatal wreck. “Society wants to blame everything else but where the blame should be. The blame goes to this individual.”
He then added that there was one other thing that should be blamed for the tragedy. Judges, and prosecutors, and other officials in the criminal justice system had been letting Kendra Boone skate on numerous charges for decades.
The sheriff opened up a printout that I estimate to be about 20 feet long and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is her criminal history.” Her lifetime rap sheet includes 13 felonies and nine misdemeanors, Woods explained. He added that she had been convicted on two of the misdemeanors.
One of the convictions was in Marion County in 2022. Boone was supposed to still be in prison on that conviction and on a probation violation in Orange County at the time of the crash,” Woods said. “If this person would have been in jail, I would not have two dead innocent people…If you want to fix our problem in society then hold people accountable.” The misdemeanor charge that should have kept Boone off the streets: fleeing and eluding.
Asked to give more details about Boone’s criminal history, Woods reeled off some locations for the arrests, but quickly let the press know he was not blaming fellow officers. “Law enforcement did their job in those [cases]. Law enforcement obviously made their charges. Somewhere else there’s a breakdown.”
This press conference made Woods my second favorite sheriff. Number one remains Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida. In 2006 Judd answered questions of why his SWAT team shot a suspected deputy killer 68 times and fired 110 rounds at the man with the following statement. "I suspect the only reason 110 rounds was all that was fired was that's all the ammunition they had," Judd said. "We were not going to take any chance of him shooting back."
Judd is the epitome of a straight-talking sheriff, and most of the people of Polk County love him. He has won five terms since 2004 and is running again in 2024. Almost all of his opponents have been write-ins. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office even sells Sheriff (Judd)-on-a-Shelf dolls at Christmas. They sell out very quickly, and the proceeds go to charity.
Florida does not have a monopoly on straight-talking sheriffs. There are many others in other states. Sadly, I don’t have space to tell you the great things they have said.
What I do have room to say is that we need more of them. The men and women who serve as sheriffs in counties where they are politically safe are some of the last truth tellers in America. They will absolutely speak up and explain what is really going on in law enforcement to the public. And we need them to tell that truth more today than ever.
