Brevard Sheriff Wayne Ivey’s Tough On Crime and Even Tougher On Criminals Stance Cuts Crime Rate in Half

crime rate in Brevard County has decreased by 51% since 2013

ABOVE VIDEO: Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced on Wednesday that the crime rate in Brevard County decreased by 51% since 2013. By partnering together, we not only have an agency of 1,700 men and women working hard to lower our crime rate, but also a community of 600,000 citizens who are the true stakeholders in our mission to protect the community!

Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced in a video on Wednesday that the crime rate has decreased by 51 percent since 2013.

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA – In 2012 when I first started running for Sheriff, I made a commitment to our citizens that my top priority would be to lower our crime rate and to do everything I could to protect our citizens.

From the very beginning, I made it clear that if elected Sheriff of Brevard County I was going to be tough on crime and even tougher on criminals.

Our strategy to lower the crime rate was a multi-pronged approach with the first step in our plan being to partner with our citizens to get them vital crime prevention information before they become a victim and not after.

By partnering together, we not only have an agency of 1,700 men and women working hard to lower our crime rate, but also a community of 600,000 citizens who are the true stakeholders in our mission to protect the community!

In working to create a partnership with our citizens we created multiple mechanisms to instantly share with our citizen’s crime prevention information about the various crime trends that were targeting our community.

Regardless if it was crime prevention information about burglaries to unlocked cars, identity theft, or even larceny, the goal was to arm our citizens with awareness and prevention methods to prevent the crime forever occurring, thus creating fewer victims of crime than ever before.

The second step in our strategy and I have never apologized for this, was to target criminals before they can target us, as criminals target our citizens each and every day.

I firmly believe that crime will rise to the level a community will tolerate and in Brevard County we have zero tolerance for crime.

It’s really quite simple…if you break the law in our county you go to jail, as our citizens deserve a safe community where their kids can feel free to play in our neighborhoods, visit our amazing recreational areas, and travel to and from schools without worry.

The third step, and one that is often overlooked in crime prevention initiatives, is working with our State Attorney to keep those locked behind bars who can’t obey the law.

We are blessed to have a State Attorney in our community that understands the importance of keeping bad people locked up while also finding successful diversion programs for those who truly need our help, such as drug court and veteran’s court.

And lastly, the development of internal programs within our jail complex and external programs outside that work to rehabilitate inmates, so that they can return to our community with the tools they need to be a productive member of society if they so choose.

So did it work? Well…while the mission to significantly lower our crime rate may have seemed like an extremely lofty goal, the answer to that question is a resounding YES!

In fact, since 2013 we have not only seen a steady decline in our crime rate and I am extremely excited, pleased, and proud to tell you that in the past 9 years, the unincorporated areas of Brevard County have experienced a 51% decrease in our crime rate.

That’s right…in 9 years we have cut our crime rate in half.

Even better, last year we saw fewer victims of crime than any time in the past 45 years. Now think about that for a minute…while our population has steadily increased over the past number of years, our crime rate has been cut in half while our population has significantly increased.

And trust me when I tell you that the true credit for this success goes to the brave men and women who professionally represent our agency each and every day and our entire community who have partnered with us to keep Brevard County safe.

By working together to prevent crime we have not only successfully lowered our crime rate, but also, have collectively saved and impacted lives like never before.

Now if you know anything about me you know that I am never satisfied and while lowering our crime rate by 51 percent is an amazing accomplishment, now is not the time to go soft on crime.

In fact, now is the time to keep our boot firmly planted on the throat of crime so we can continue to protect our citizens from becoming crime’s next victim.

Sometime back one of our citizens asked me what I was going to different in the future as the Sheriff of Brevard County and for me, that answer is simple…I’m not going to do anything different.

I’m going to keep doing exactly what our agency has been doing for the past 9 years, putting bad people in jail, targeting criminals before they can target our citizens, arresting fugitives, and creating innovative programs that partner with our citizens to lower our crime rate even further. Oh, and of course not apologizing for a single bit of it!

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