by Richard Prior
Staff Writer
But for a simple twist of fate, John Rutherford would have been a grocery store manager, not the sheriff of Jacksonville.
He had been stocking shelves during the night shift for Kmart when two co-workers suggested he may not want to make it his life’s work.
“They seemed much older and wiser than me,” said Rutherford. “I told them I’d like to be a store manager, but they said store managers come and go. They said, ‘You should do something else, or you’ll wind up like us, night stock at 35 or 40 years old.’
“So I started FCCJ [Florida Community College at Jacksonville].”
A fellow student, R.H. “Bob” Davis, then talked him into taking some classes with him. Rutherford didn’t know that his new friend was a police officer.
“He said I should take some police science administration courses, so I did,” the sheriff recalled. “From that point on, I knew I wanted to be a police officer.”
Rutherford graduated from Florida State in July 1974 and started at the sheriff’s office two months later.
“Police work just struck me as extremely interesting,” said Rutherford. “The first class I took was a forensics class, dealing with evidence and rules of evidence. It seemed intriguing to me to try to solve a whodunit by that evidence process.
“Plus, after taking a class or two, I always thought of it as a noble profession. There’s self-sacrifice involved.”
Just after taking office, the sheriff started going on ride-alongs, twice-a-month patrols with his officers.
“It’s a great opportunity to connect with the troops, find out what their needs and concerns are out there,” he said. “It puts you back in touch with what they’re going through out there.”
The ride-alongs are an extension of his community walks, building relationships with neighborhoods around the city.
“I knew one of the worst things I could do as sheriff is to understand all the wants and needs of the community and be totally insulated from the wants and needs of the agency personnel,” he said. “I’m not going to do that.”
Technology has wrought spectacular changes in how police do their jobs since Rutherford first sat in a patrol car 29 years ago.
“I get back in the front seat of a police car now, and there’s a laptop there,” he said with a chuckle. “It amazes me.”
When asked if technology had made the job easier or merely different, he said it’s a little of both.
“It does make you more effective and more efficient,” he said. “But because of that, more is expected. You continue to work hard even though you’re working smarter.”
The terrorist attacks of two years ago obviously also changed the way police departments go about their jobs. And some of those ways are for the better.
Before Sept. 11, law enforcement agencies closely guarded the information they gathered. Sharing information willingly was uncommon.
“What I think Sept. 11 did is it really drove home to everyone that we have to share information,” said Rutherford. “Not just information, but intelligence. That has become critical.
“I think you go from just data to just information to intelligence. We used to do a lot of data collection, and we used to provide a little information. But we had almost no intelligence.
“I think since Sept. 11 that’s become much more important to everyone.”
The effect is that more departments can plan, not react.
“I tell folks I do not want Jacksonville to be the best first-responder to a nuclear, biological or chemical event,” he said. “I want to stop the event before it occurs, and that takes intelligence.”
Having an adequate supply of good officers is an essential part of that effort to take a more active approach to the job. That is one reason why Rutherford is excited about the recommendation announced Tuesday that candidates will be considered who have two-year degrees instead of four years of college.
“We still embrace education,” he said. “But, honestly, I think there are other things that are more important than whether a person has a four-year or a two-year degree. I want to know they’ve got the right character, integrity, honesty, trustworthiness. I want to know they’ve got the right stuff to be a policeman.
“By limiting our first look to a pool of people that have a four-year degree, we just shrink our pool way too much.”
Requiring a four-year degree will be maintained for those seeking promotion to lieutenant or a higher grade.
Based on the initial reaction, Rutherford said, the change is going to be a success.
“We had the press conference [Tuesday] at 10,” he said Wednesday. “My director of Personnel and Professional Standards told me this morning their phone has been ringing off the hook.
“One of the commitments I made during the campaign was that we were going to hire men and women of character that were going to be well equipped, properly deployed and skillfully managed. This is going to help us get people who not only have a good education, but they have character.”
The change also will allow the department “to get back to some really tough training. We’re going to put them through their paces, both physically and mentally.
“The philosophy there is, if this person’s going to break psychologically or physically, I want him to do it out here in my gym, not in your living room.”
Concern with terrorists doesn’t mean the department is ignoring more traditional domestic problems. Next month, Rutherford will “roll out a big initiative on deployment of our troops.”
Though he wasn’t ready to be specific about the details, he said, “I can tell you it’s based on crime patterns. We’re particularly going to go after drugs, guns and prostitution with a zero tolerance. And it’s going to have a Safe Schools initiative.”
Referring to charts that show crime patterns in neighborhoods across the City, Rutherford said he plans to address a group that doesn’t get much attention.
“The initiative I’m going to roll out next week will include misdemeanor repeat offenders,” he said. “We already have that for repeat felony offenders, enhanced penalties for career criminals.
“I’m going to work with the Florida Sheriff’s Association and try to get a repeat misdemeanor statute passed. We’ll say, upon conviction for your fifth misdemeanor in any 12-month period you should be looking at up to 365 days in jail.”
Rutherford said he’s not eager to jail misdemeanants for a year, but he has to do something about the revolving door.
“We had a guy who was arrested 27 times in 12 months,” he said. “Eighty-nine percent of them have addiction problems or mental health problems. The average stay for them now is 11 days.
“I can’t keep them in jail long enough to get them treated. And you know they’re not going to get treatment on their own. So they keep cycling through the system.
“This community does not have the resources to allow that to continue.”
What should happen, Rutherford said, is for those who are addicted to drugs or alcohol to be incarcerated “long enough so you can dry them out, begin to work with them, get them treatment-ready. Then either keep them in treatment within the system or transfer them to treatment in the community.”
For all the hours the job now demands, Rutherford wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Being sheriff is not a job; it’s a way of life,” he said. “It better be a calling, because if it’s not, you ain’t going to make it. For me, this job, this place has always been a calling.”