- March 14, 2025
John F. Pollinger
AGE: 60
FAMILY: Married
QUIRKY FACT: member of NY Skyliners Drum & Bugle Corps as a young adult
BIO: Pollinger served as a military policeman and investigator in the U.S. Army and, throughout his career, served in nearly every role in law enforcement. His policy of notifying parents of juvenile traffic offenders, as well as the major enhancement of “Rude Awakening” was later recognized both locally and nationally. Since moving to Palm Coast in 2008, Pollinger has been a member of a number of civic organizations.
What would you differently with the budget in the next four years?
One area is reviewing the additional pay given to certain officers for performance. It involves additional salary for Crime Suppression Team members, SWAT team members, K-9 officers, and through your career as you move up in rank, your responsibilities become different. Officers may be still receiving compensation for a dog handler when they’re in an administrative position; at some point you have to move beyond that and say, “I’m no longer a dog handler, I’m an administrator.”
The other consideration is the use of a public information officer. ... I believe the public information officer should be the sheriff of Flagler County. Day-to-day press releases can be handled administratively by a commander or supervisor. But major incidents should be handled by the sheriff directly to the public. The sheriff must be the face of the agency, and that’s what I intend to be. ...
A line-by-line review of all of the positions, and eliminating duplication of services, which I believe could exist in the agency, is one of my priorities.
If elected, what steps would you take to make Flagler County a safer place to live?
I would eliminate the online reporting that currently exists within the Sheriff’s Office. Right now, there’s a program that the citizens of Flagler County can actually go on their computer and report crimes. I believe this creates a disconnect between the Sheriff’s Office and the citizens they serve. ... Law enforcement officers have to get out of the car and connect with the citizens. ...
President Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971; it hasn’t worked. Untold trillions of dollars and law enforcement officers killed as a result of trying to eradicate drugs in the United States. We’re the largest consumers of drugs in the world. We blame Mexico; we blame South America as a whole for not doing more to stem the flow of drugs. But we’re the consumers; we have to break the cycle. We’re going to break the cycle only through education, getting into the schools and partnering with the schools to starting educating our young people at a very young age. We have to partner with social services and we have to partner with the courts. ...
What I had as a chief of police and I want to implement here is the Sneaker Patrol; that’s what the media dubbed it. It was a special enforcement detail of highly motivated plain-clothes officers going out into the area and reducing the opportunity for young people to get involved in crimes in the first place. Take them into custody for minor offenses, because I’d rather have a juvenile record on somebody than an adult record later on in life. It takes a while, but that’s how you reduce crime. ... The juveniles in this county have to be held accountable. ...
We need to provide alternatives for our youth to keep them engaged because the reason we don’t let young people live on their own is they make mistakes.
What’s something you would do differently from Sheriff Fleming?
One thing I disagree with is Sheriff Fleming’s decision to carry out and continue on with former Sheriff Manfre’s decision to not respond to 911 calls. A 911 call of a child’s broken arm could be child abuse. A woman who has been injured could be domestic violence. A woman laying in a ditch could be the victim of a hit-and-run or an assault. Medical personnel going to the scene of a 911 call are trained to preserve life and get immediate medical attention; they’re not trained to investigate the circumstances. ...
Another thing I want to do that hasn’t been done and has lapsed is the recertification of all the deputies as well as everybody in the agency in CPR.
What makes you the most qualified to be sheriff of Flagler County?
I’ve served in nearly every capacity in law enforcement. ... I led a law enforcement agency with over 107 sworn officers in a community with 70,000 people. We had the third lowest crime rate in the United States for towns of our size, which is 50,000 to 100,000 people; I believe we can do the same thing here. But you have to be innovative and you have to create new programs. ...
For example, my Letters to Home, where each and every teenage driver who commits a traffic offense gets a letter sent to their parents. I believe it’s very important to notify parents early on with driving behavior before they get a knock on the door in the middle of the night. The Rude Awakening program, which is recognized nationally, was a program that we had during prom season. We reenacted a fatal car crash using kids from drama class and EMS and fire. ... And during the eight years I was chief of police, I didn’t lose one teenager in a fatal crash in my town.
Right now, we don’t investigate our own crashes in this county; we delegate that out to the Florida Highway Patrol: one trooper serving three counties. I think it’s very important that, with the size of this county, and the experience that already exists with the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, there are enough trained crash investigators that we could investigate our own crashes, serious and fatal crashes. More than 25 people were killed last year in Flagler County in car crashes. If there were 25 murders in Flagler County last year, someone would be asking questions and someone would be held accountable. But we look at it as an accident, and it’s not. It’s a crash that involves a violent end to someone’s life. We have to focus on that as well.
