- April 18, 2024
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As a teenager, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood had his life all planned out.
He grew up around police since his father is a cop as well, and he vowed he would not follow his footsteps.
“I never wanted to be a cop," Chitwood said. "I didn’t want anything to do with my father. I wanted to teach American History and I wanted to coach basketball."
He also wanted to get married, have five boys and become an athletic director someday. A career in law enforcement was nowhere near his radar. After Chitwood graduated high school, he ended up attending an all-boys college for a while before transferring on a baseball scholarship to West Chester University in Pennsylvania.
West Chester was a co-ed school, and Chitwood said that "blew the circuits."
“I discovered beer and women, not necessarily in that order, and at the end of my first year, all my IC’s or incompletes turned to F’s and I was asked to remove myself from campus," Chitwood said. "That was not a pleasurable ride back home with my father.”
Chitwood later got a job at the docks in Philadelphia and after marrying and having two daughters, he started thinking that maybe, he should go into law enforcement.
“The minute I walked through those doors of the Philadelphia Police Academy, I knew there was nothing in life I wanted to do more than that," Chitwood said.
After he became an officer, he said he understood his father a lot more and grasped what it took to be passionate about not only your job, but your family too. Chitwood said he and his father are now best friends, and he often goes to him for work advice.
Chitwood said he thought he would be a cop in Philadelphia his whole life and that he never saw himself as a sheriff, let alone one in Volusia County. However, he said moving to Daytona Beach in 2006 was one of the greatest things that's ever happened to him.
He's just completed his first year as sheriff. He said it's been the fastest year in his life.
“I can remember putting this uniform on for the first time on New Years Eve 2016, and thinking to myself: ‘Wow. This is what you look like in green,'" Chitwood said.
Chitwood said that an elected sheriff is supposed to solve problems in the community, but because of Home Rule, making changes can get difficult.
“You would think that being a sheriff, you would have more autonomy and more latitude to make positive changes in your organization," Chitwood said. "That’s not true here.”
Volusia County's charter reads that "all functions and duties now prescribed by the Constitution and laws of Florida for the office of sheriff are hereby transferred to the department of public safety," meaning that Chitwood has to go through the county. The lack of autonomy is the hardest thing for him to gauge, Chitwood said, especially since he said he had more of it as a police chief in Daytona Beach.
Another challenge for law enforcement officers in 2018 is the widespread access of police video through social media. He said the videos usually don't show the before and after aspects of incidents.
“There’s good and bad with the video aspects of it, but I think for the most part, for us with body cameras is we’re gearing toward transparency and we believe it keeps the deputies safe and it keeps the communities safe,” Chitwood said.
Chitwood said video footage helps the department correct problems and help them see what is working so they can continue to do it.
For his first year in office, Chitwood said the department has accomplished a lot of things.
“For our first year, we’ve run around like our hair was on fire,” Chitwood said.
One of his objectives for the new year is to continue to bring in progressive police methods that work — that includes new technologies. Two they will be implementing this year is computerized statistical analysis of crime, which he hopes will help deputies and detectives prevent crime trends from growing and the opening of a real-time crime center in Daytona Beach. The crime center will be rolling out later this year.
“When a crime occurs, we want to get as much good information to the deputies and the officers as possible," Chitwood said. "The more information they get, the better decision they can make and the less likely they are to use deadly force or be injured.”
They've also revamped their hiring process, complete with new classes, ways to improve diversity among their deputies and more scenario-based training. It's all plays a part in reducing crime Volusia County, which he said crime decreased by 20 percent last year.
“There has been some huge drops in crime in the past year, and that’s not because of me," Chitwood said. "That’s because of the deputies and they’ve taken hold of our strategies and our technologies and they’re using it to go out there and make a lot of quality arrests.”
