Retired Wakulla County Sheriff David F. Harvey was inducted into the Florida Regulation Enforcement Corridor of Fame in a ceremony Saturday, Might 21, 2022, at The Capitol in Tallahassee.
After graduating from Florida State College, Sheriff Harvey started his regulation enforcement profession in 1972 as a parole and probation officer for Franklin and Wakulla counties till 1976. That yr, he was elected sheriff of Wakulla County – at age 26. He went on to serve 9 consecutive phrases and retired 35 years later as Florida’s longest-tenured sheriff. Throughout his tenure, he remodeled an workplace with 11 workers and an 18-bed jail to one with 180 workers and a 350-bed jail, whereas additionally turning into one of many state’s first rural sheriff’s workplaces to be accredited in each regulation enforcement and corrections.
The improved jail housed a 200-bed Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wing, and, by 2021, has been liable for gathering $54 million in income for Wakulla County. Underneath his management, the WCSO additionally interdicted and eradicated greater than $90 million in cartel drug importation between the 1970s and 1990s.
In 1978, he grew to become a founding board member and visionary of the Florida Sheriffs Threat Administration Fund (FSRMF). In 2010, whereas nonetheless sheriff and chairman of the FSRMF Board, he determined it was time for the sheriffs to not solely personal their self-insurance funds, however to additionally handle them in-house moderately than outsourcing to a 3rd social gathering. After a cost-benefit evaluation proved possible, he retired as sheriff, and was unanimously chosen statewide by his fellow sheriffs in 2011 to be the primary government director of the FSRMF. FRSMF grew to become the biggest owned and operated regulation enforcement self-insurance fund within the nation, offering insurance coverage to 59 sheriffs and 20,000 sworn and non-sworn personnel with over $450 million of investible property.
Throughout his speech Saturday he thanked the residents of Wakulla County and Sheriff Jared Miller for nominating him.
“Thanks, Sheriff Miller and residents of Wakulla County,” Harvey mentioned. “I used to be a small a part of an incredible staff and collectively we did a whole lot of good work for our county and the good state of Florida.”
