Steube Walks Off into the Sunset with Impressive Legacy as Sheriff

This month, all eyes are on Rick Wells, Manatee County's newly sworn-in Sheriff and the only second generation deputy to ever follow his father to the top of the department. However, Sheriff Brad Steube, who retired after 41 years in local law enforcement, should be commended for his crucial role in leading the department through a very difficult time in its history and handing off a first-rate organization.

When Steube dropped by the office on Friday, he already looked five years younger than the last time I saw him, the stress that comes along with sitting atop of the chain of command for a massive law enforcement organization having fallen from his now sun-tanned face, and his posture looking much more relaxed in his new uniform–shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops. Retirement looked good on him.

A lifelong cop, Steube was first appointed as Manatee County Sheriff by then-governor Charlie Crist in 2007, following the retirement of Manatee County icon Charlie Wells. He would go on to easily win two elections, becoming one of the most respected sheriffs in the state. Still, make no mistake, it wasn't a bed of roses. Steube inherited a department mired in controversy that oversaw a community riddled with crime. Needless to say, morale wasn't great. The new boss would have his work cut out for him.

Though he was a hand-picked successor, Steube got the job for one reason: he was the best candidate within the agency, and the only member of the force with the right combination of skills, experience and demeanor to take the department where it needed to go. The contrast, however, was quite stark. Wells was a charismatic cowboy who ran things fast and loose. He was also long the most powerful public official in the county, retiring at a time when the landscape was changing drastically–the county sheriff's role changing along with it.

By the time Steube took the reins, the days of handshake budget deals, unwritten rules and on the fly policies were in the rear-view mirror. The department would need to come into the 21st century and adapt to unprecedented growth that brought an increasing population of outsiders, new challenges and a landscape that was quickly losing cow pastures to concrete. He would prove himself adept to the tasks at hand.

Steube always knew he wanted to be a police officer. In 1970s Manatee County, local government posts were highly sought after. While the wages were low, such jobs nonetheless provided uncommon stability and security in a pre-boom cattle and agriculture community, the likes of which most of today's residents couldn't begin to contemplate. At the time, securing a spot with the sheriff's office was no easy task and usually required having a relative on the force–one that was willing to do you a big favor at that. A prospective deputy couldn't even take the certification course at an academy without the sponsorship of a local law enforcement agency, and even that didn't mean they would offer you employment when and if you graduated.

"I camped out for four days at the Bradenton Police Department, until finally they agreed to sponsor me, I think just to get rid of me," he once recounted to me with a laugh. When Steube graduated, there was no job waiting for him at BPD or elsewhere. So, when a position on Longboat Key's force was offered, he finally got a foot in the door.

In less than three years, Steube secured a spot with the MCSO. Good thing, as he clearly was not cut out for the sleepy island beat of that time and place. He'd go on to serve nine years in narcotics and vice, where he rose to the rank of commander, then do the same at SWAT. He rose through the ranks: Sergeant, Lieutenant, Captain and Major, before finally making it to the right hand of Wells as a Colonel.

In addition to all of the challenges facing him when he inherited the Sheriff post–including a gang epidemic–Steube would soon be hit by the biggest one of all: The Great Recession and the steepest fall off in local revenues in the county's history. He would have to navigate the department through years of budget cuts (including an initial reduction of $5 million in a single year), first trimming the fat and shedding the toys, then cutting everything clean to the bone, returning before the county commission every year at budget time, hat in hand, only to be told time and again that his relatively meager requests would not be approved.

As the agency continued to fall behind neighboring departments in terms of pay scale, Steube quickly found that the MCSO was becoming a veritable training ground for other agencies who poached his best prospects with the promise of better pay. A short term fix of boosting starting salaries quickly led to a pay compression problem for senior deputies whose compensation had failed to keep pace. Although the county continued to grow at an alarming rate–increasing calls for service, miles patrolled, fuel budgets, etc.–Manatee County Administrator Ed Hunzeker stubbornly refused to recommend that MCSO get proportional increases in funding to accommodate Steube's increasingly-expensive mission.

As a county grows, the cost to protect it increases accordingly. As rural hamlets become suburban sprawl, that effect is only amplified. When taxpayers see their levels of service reduced through these sorts of failures to address the true cost of growth, this is simply a tax increase under a different name. Needless to say, public safety is not the place where you want to cut such corners.

Still, Steube continued to do more with less. Ultimately, he may have wound up being a victim of his own success more than anything else, having taught elected officials and bureaucrats alike that he would somehow get the job done even with one arm tied behind his back, reducing crime year in and year out, despite inadequate funding. What the FBI calls Part 1 crimes–which include things like murder, armed robbery and rape–were brought down 35 percent in total. Simply put, the county is a safer place now than when Steube took the post, despite all of the budgetary challenges he has faced.

In 2016, the county put public safety front and center while marketing a lucrative half-cent sales tax that will put another $20-25 million a year on the backs of taxpayers in order to stuff the coffers. Most of the money will go to subsidize new growth, while some is loosened up for the Sheriff's capital budget and things like EMS. In Friday's conversation, Steube seemed cautiously hopeful as to whether promises made would be promises kept in subsequent budgets. He had a plethora of answers to the most important issues county officials should prioritize going forward but cautioned that they will all cost money.

One of the linchpins in Steube's methodology was creating defined accountability. The county is broken down into patrol districts in which MCSO leadership is personally accountable for answering to the meticulously-scrutinized crime data. Captains answer for their sectors at weekly meetings and plans are created to address spikes. Steube demonstrated considerable success by adding a third patrol district and has long called for a fourth to split up the sprawling east county district that has transformed from a sparsely-populated pastoral landscape to a much denser suburbia. In today's Manatee County, it simply doesn't make sense to have the golf courses of Parrish in the same sector with Myakka City and the shops of Main Street in Lakewood Ranch. However, whether funding for the leadership costs of adding a fourth sector will be found remains to be seen.

Steube has also long lamented the forced move away from traditional community policing toward patrols that are driven by continuous response. Instead of deputies patrolling neighborhoods where they can engage the community and act as a criminal deterrent, he says they are instead more often running non-stop calls for service through an entire shift. Unfortunately, the kind of policing that is most effective isn't being done anymore because there simply aren't enough deputies–at least not in Manatee County.

When asked about the biggest challenge the county will face moving forward, the retired Sheriff quickly pointed to the harrowing heroin epidemic. With his deep experience as a narcotics officer–including plenty of undercover work–Steube has seen drug epidemics come and go in predictable cycles. Marijuana to heroin to cocaine, to crack cocaine and back to powder again, then to the notorious pill mills and now back to heroin once more. What makes this time around so much more lethal, he says, is the prevalence of fentanyl, a potent, synthetic opioid that has increasingly found its way into the local heroin supply, bringing with it an enormous spike in fatal overdoses.

"We're seeing even long-time heroin addicts overdosing because of the large amounts of fentanyl they're often taking in without even knowing it," explained Steube. "That's the biggest reason you're seeing all of the deaths right now." Steube said that many of the dealers purchase the drug right over the internet from places like China and then use it to cut the more expensive heroin. The MCSO has a chemist on staff, and Steube said they're often finding that heroin confiscated in busts contains as much as half of the deadly drug, and in some cases they've even seen pure fentanyl passed off as heroin to unsuspecting buyers.

Steube explained that they work with the state's attorney's office to target dealers in which this practice is discovered in order to get both them and the drugs off the street as soon as possible and are lobbying the state to pass laws that would enforce stiffer penalties for dealers when the sale of fentanyl-laced drugs results in death. That said, he's also realistic about the limitation to the role that law enforcement can play in curbing the epidemic. "On the back end, we've done a good job of making arrests and getting drugs off the street, which you can see in the numbers," said Steube, "but I think there's always going to be a bigger role on the front end. We've seen that you can lock up a lot of dealers, but there's always someone who steps into that void. You can confiscate a lot of heroin, but there is an endless supply coming in behind it. Ultimately, until you solve it on the front end (usage), you're going to repeat that cycle. But the fentanyl is why I believe we're seeing so many more deaths right now."