Clay County sheriff says he'll deputize every gun owner if deputies can’t handle protesters

Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels, no stranger to making viral videos appealing to tough-on-crime politics, released a video Tuesday that said he will make “special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county” if he feels the county is overwhelmed by protesters.

The three-minute video shows Daniels standing in front of 18 deputies as he derides civil-rights protesters as godless disruptors and tells them to stay out of Clay County, a suburb of Jacksonville.

“And if you come to Clay County and you think for one second, we’ll bend our backs for you, you’re sadly mistaken,” he said. “I know what happens when lawlessness prevails. And in this day and time, God is raising up men and women just like the folks standing behind me who will have strong backbones and will stand in the gap between lawlessness and the citizenry we’re sworn to protect.”

Daniels, the county’s first Black sheriff, is himself under investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement related to an affair he had with a fellow officer back when he was at the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and a subsequent false arrest of that officer.

Daniels is a first-term sheriff up for re-election who has said he wants to one day be a congressman. He is being challenged by six opponents, including former Atlantic Beach Police Chief Michelle Cook, former Clay Couny Sheriff’s Office Emergency Management Director Ben Carroll, former Clay County Commissioner Harold Rutledge and Mike Taylor, a former FDLE agent and state attorney’s investigator who has earned the endorsement of former Gov. Jeb Bush.

His challengers accused him of inviting chaos to Clay County and insulting the training necessary to become a sheriff’s deputy.

“We train under intense situations to control the adrenaline dump,” Taylor said, “and we don’t do a perfect job at it, but we train to be prepared to make decisions under pressure. That’s necessary to be effective. To think we can put anyone in that role and it’ll be OK, we’re asking for a much bigger problem and inviting chaos and anarchy in the streets. The citizens of Clay County deserve better than that.”

Taylor added that deputizing private citizens could make the county liable to pay out lawsuits if the newly deputized citizens don’t act appropriately. “I don’t believe it was intended to be a pro-police message. I believe it was intended to be a propaganda message. Real police professionalism actually acknowledges that professionally trained police officers cannot be replaced by a swearing-in ceremony.”

Rutledge echoed that sentiment.

““Part of the problem in policing is that some officers need more training in how to interact with all people and all situations, including how to keep calm and how to de-escalate situations. Threatening to ‘make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county and I’ll deputize them’ is going to make the problem worse. Police officers with more than 1,000 hours of law enforcement training can have problems in high-stress situations. Imagine putting a badge on someone with zero training — no de-escalation training, no firearms training, no training with the law. I am not sure what heis thinking, but it is not the kind of thinking we need from our top cop.”

Cook said the video was a sign that Daniels wasn’t capable of leading. “What Daniels said yesterday may sound tough and macho. But, instead, it is a call for vigilantism and another signal that he is incapable of leading the sheriff’s department and keeping Clay County safe.”

She added, “Instead of dealing with real issues in a meaningful way, he is behaving like a reality show sheriff and calling attention to himself,” she said. “To make matters worse, he pulled 18 officers off the streets to be used as props for his taxpayer-funded campaign stunt. It’s no wonder morale is so low among our fine officers.”

“If I was under criminal investigation by FDLE,” she said, “I’d probably want to change the subject, too.“

Carroll, who spent 14 years at the Sheriff’s Office, said he runs a nonprofit that trains churches and private schools, and he believes it’s foolish to think private citizens could replace deputies.

“I’m sure that was a political production for the sheriff. I doubt seriously that there will ever be the need in Clay County to deputize all the citizens to stand in the gap. I believe the sheriff’s department is totally capable of standing in the pike.”

Carroll said he supports citizens owning and training to use firearms to protect themselves, but he believes the Sherriff’s Office must be capable of handling protesters on its own.

This is a developing story.

Full comments from the video:

Don’t fall victim or play victim to this conversation that law enforcement is bad, that law enforcement is the enemy of the citizens that we’re sworn to protect and serve. We swore an oath, and in that oath, we swore to support, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and the government, and that we’re duly qualified under the state’s constitution to hold office. That means for me as a sheriff and these men and women as deputy sheriffs. And we end that with, ’So help me God,’ but God is absent from the media’s message or Black Lives Matter or any other group that’s making themselves a spectacle disrupting what we know to be our quality of life in this country.

In Clay County we have a great quality of life. We have a great relationship with our community. But across this nation, not so much.

I wanted to take a stand with these men and women who feel the same way as I do.

Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in this country. Lawlessness, that’s unacceptable in Clay County.

And if you come to Clay County and you think for one second, we’ll bend our backs for you, you’re sadly mistaken.

I know what happens when lawlessness prevails.

And in this day and time, God is raising up men and women just like the folks standing behind me who will have strong backbones and will stand in the gap between lawlessness and the citizenry we’re sworn to protect.

So, you can threaten all you want. You can say let’s go to Clay County or let’s go to some other peaceful county where problems don’t exist where relationships are great and not strained and where the people support their sheriff and support the men and women in uniform. And you’ll have something waiting you don’t want.

Yes, we’ll protect your constitutional rights as long as you remain under the umbrellas of peaceful protest or peaceful march.

But the second you step out from up under protection of the Constitution, we’ll be waiting on you and we’ll give you everything you want.

All the publicity all the pain all the glamour and glory for all that five minutes will give you.

Is it a threat? Absolutely not.

But someone has to step up in front of the camera and say enough is enough. Tearing up Clay County, that’s not going to be acceptable

If we can’t handle you, I’ll exercise the power and authority as the sheriff, and I’ll make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county and I’ll deputize them for this one purpose to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility.

That’s what we’re sworn to do. That’s what we’re going to do. You’ve been warned.