The public is entitled to the truth.

Sheriff Donnie Edenfield has made false claims in his political mailers and speeches, and you deserve to know the truth. This is the fifth in a multi-part investigation into these falsehoods.

Employee Retention: Sheriff Edenfield has taken credit for being almost fully staffed. All credit for that should go to Governor DeSantis for having the foresight to increase the starting pay for Deputies statewide.

He fails to mention that he has lost 42 of the 54 Deputies who were there when he started, as well as the majority of the support staff.

Those numbers do not reflect the gains and losses during his time in office.

That is an incredible amount of knowledge and experience gone.

Many former deputies still live in Jackson County and drive to Bay, Walton, Calhoun, or Gulf counties to work when they would much rather serve their home county.

The vast majority of the patrol division has less than 3 years of experience and more than half have 18 months or less. He is being forced to prematurely promote rookie deputies to supervisors and investigators because he has run off all of his experienced officers.

One of his patrol lieutenants lives in Ponce DeLeon, one lives in Alabama, and at least two of his sergeants live in other counties or states.

Whatever happened to wanting hometown people to work with their own community?

Promote within the ranks.

Many are just holding on until the election primary is over to decide if they will stay or go. The work environment is one of micromanagement and toxicity. If he wins the primary, expect a mass exodus.

Fluff over Substance: if you pay close attention, you will notice that everything he does is about appearance rather than the things that matter. It’s more about social media presence than fighting crime with attention and due diligence.

The job of a Sheriff is to make the community safer through professional, proactive law enforcement and do so with well-trained people while spending the taxpayer’s money as prudently as possible.

Our budget has skyrocketed, and we have nothing to show for it except an overactive social media presence.

His Claim: Sheriff Edenfield states that he has reduced narcotics in our community by “leading the largest drug trafficking bust in Jackson County history.”

Fact: The drug bust referred to was initiated during Sheriff Lou Roberts's term. It was, in fact, a Federal drug investigation (DEA) that spanned several counties and states, and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office played a role in it. The Sheriff’s Office has a Drug Task Force Officer that is assigned as a Task Force Officer with the DEA and he did work on this case. The Sheriff claimed 70 arrests, when in fact, only about 6 were from Jackson County. The last update that was posted was the sentencing of a female involved. She was arrested for her part in the drug trafficking ring that Sheriff Edenfield is taking credit for, when in fact this crime took place in Texas. During the two years that they were working on this case almost no other drug arrests were made. Look back through the press releases. True Jackson County drug cases and arrests are significantly lower than during the previous administration and below you will see why.

His Claim: Sheriff Edenfield claims that he has “doubled” the size of the Drug Task Force.

Fact: Since Johnny MacDaniel was the Sheriff, and during Lou Roberts’ years of service, there were 4 people assigned to the DTF. There are 5 assigned now. That is not double. Here’s the Kicker: Since the inception of the Drug Task Force, every municipal Police department in the county has been invited to assign an Officer to be a part, and most did. But now, no outside agencies are allowed to participate. There is no longer shared intelligence, resources, or personnel. If they were invited back, it would immediately add 4 people to the Task Force, at absolutely no additional cost to the Sheriff’s Office and would promote the sharing of information and resources.

Fact: The North Star Drug Task Force is a multi-jurisdictional cooperative that includes agencies from all over the panhandle. They have an enormous amount of resources including money, manpower, and state-of-the-art equipment that can be utilized by member agencies. The problem is, North Star cannot operate in a county without the blessing of the

Sheriff. That means that if Marianna, Cottondale, Sneads, or Graceville wants to access the vast resources of North Star, such as using undercover Officers from another county to make drug buys, using buy money to make cases with, or using the high-tech equipment that smaller departments cannot afford, they can’t because Sheriff Edenfield will not allow them to operate in our county.

Drug overdoses are not reported in press releases, so most of you never hear about the surprising number of deaths and the countless lives destroyed in Jackson County all because of ego and control. We are overrun with drugs in this county and substance abuse is the root of 90% of our crimes. Whether it’s burglary, theft, domestic violence, child abuse, assault, robberies, and even murder, almost all of it relates back to substance abuse, and we are failing at combatting the problem.

Some very dedicated employees affiliated with the Jackson County Drug Task Force are rightfully applauded. But Leadership starts at the top as well as the tone and attitude about how we do our job, and we have none where it counts.

Fuel Budget: Over the decades fuel costs have oftentimes fluctuated.

When a Sheriff budgets for the year’s projected fuel cost and gas soars from $2.25 a gallon to almost $4.00 a gallon, the Sheriff has to return to the Commission and ask for more money.

The Commission has never turned down any Sheriff because fuel is an essential item. What they will do is if it is projected that the Sheriff might need $250,000 extra before the end of the fiscal year, they will award him $100,000 and have him report back when that is beginning to run out. There’s always a chance that the spike in fuel costs may be temporary and it causes the Sheriff to be frugal because he knows he will have to come back for more. It has always been this way and should be.

Not good enough for Edenfield: When fuel prices spiked, he demanded the full projected amount needed for the remainder of the year. They agreed to give him part of the request, as usual, and have him return as needed. He blew hot and sent them notice that he was taking his case to the Governor.

They were in no way denying him. They were simply trying to be good stewards of the taxpayer’s money.

Commissioner Peacock asked him if he had taken any steps to save on fuel costs. Sheriff Edenfield’s response was, “I guess we could stop answering 911 calls!”

The Commission gave in and gave him the money to avoid the embarrassment of being sued by the Sheriff. The only Commissioner that really stood up to him was Jim Peacock, as he does often.

Here’s where it gets interesting: at the same time he was demanding extra money for fuel, he was sending as many at 17 Deputies in 17 separate patrol cars to Tallahassee to work off-duty details at the FSU games. This is great for the Deputies because they make $43 an hour for 9 hour shifts, but many of their cars run non-stop from the time they leave Marianna until they return 11 hours later. This is of no benefit to the citizens of Jackson County. The easy solution is that a $3 per hour surcharge is tacked on to the entity paying for the detail that goes back to the Sheriff’s Office to cover fuel, oil, tires, and wear, and tear.

His Claim: Took responsibility for partnering with the School Board to have a School Resource Deputy in every school in Jackson County.

Fact: Following the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas school shooting (2018), Governor DeSantis passed legislation mandating that a Law Enforcement Officer would be in every public school. The state provides roughly $700,000 to help fund that mandate. The school board pays the Sheriff almost 1.3 million dollars to cover those positions. To reduce the cost, the school board also gave him cars for the Deputies, leather gear, bulletproof vests, and guns.

Walton County has 29 Deputies assigned to schools at a cost of roughly 1.5 million dollars. Why are we paying so much more? A price tag cannot be placed on our children's lives. We are paying for something we are not receiving.

Another interesting fact about school safety: When Lou Roberts was Sheriff there was Active Shooter Training done in Jackson, Washington, Holmes, and Calhoun Counties. The team assembled assisted each other from county to county. All school board personnel were trained along with all local Law Enforcement Officers.

There has not been one single Active Shooter training held since Donnie Edenfield took office. With almost all of the department being new over the past 3 years, it will be potentiall chaos if we have one of these situations. This should be done yearly.

Budget Increase: In 3 ½ years Sheriff Edenfield’s budget has increased from 5.9 million dollars to over 8.2 million dollars. 1 million dollars of that came in the first year he was the Sheriff.

Here’s even worse news: The raises that the Governor passed for Deputies were only funded by the state for two years to give the counties time to adjust their budgets.

That means that next year, the county will begin paying the difference. The exact dollar amount is unknown but will easily be in the high hundreds of thousands of dollars.

More: He recently boasted that the Sheriff’s Office is accredited now. That’s not a bad thing, but it means every vehicle that the Sheriff’s Office owns that has over 125,000 miles must be parked and replaced with newer and lower mileage vehicles.

That includes spare cars, Reserve Officer cars, etc. Behind the Sheriff’s Office right now sits about 50 patrol cars. Most of them are perfectly good vehicles that have been taken out of service due to the mileage mandates of accreditation. Now they will have to be replaced to maintain accreditation. Just imagine what that will cost. He is forcing the County Commission to be obligated to spend that money. If they refuse or can’t, he will say that they lost their accreditation because of the County Commission.

He is going to do the same thing with the new Sheriff’s Office complex: The proposed complex is funded by state grants. Everyone believes that it is impossible to build what he has proposed for the amount allotted. But the problem with grant money is that when you say you will complete a certain project with that money and you run out of money halfway through, the county will be legally obligated to finish the job as agreed upon, and the taxpayers will have to foot the bill. He doesn’t care because he is trying to build a dynasty.

Did you know that the Sheriff’s Office buildings do not belong to the Sheriff’s Office? They belong to the county and is the county's responsibility to maintain, heat, and cool; which leads me to another issue.

One of the proposed 11 structures at the new Public Safety Complex is an acre under one roof. That doesn’t include the other 10 structures. What do you think the heating and cooling costs will be at that location? More money that the County Commission and the taxpayers will be responsible for.

The Sheriff should have never taken it upon himself to apply for and obtain that grant. That is the responsibility of the County.