- March 14, 2025
Karl Tozzi
AGE: 67
FAMILY: married, three daughters, one son, eight grandchildren
QUIRKY FACT: Enjoys doing his own laundry
BIO: The only candidate running for the office of sheriff who was born and raised in Florida.
The only Florida Certified Sworn Deputy Sheriff. Thirty-four years, retired, from Broward County. Allocation and submission of a $5 million budget. Supervised more than 100 personnel, including full part-time court deputies. U.S. Marine Corps sergeant 1963-1967; Vietnam combat service 1964-1966. Florida Atlantic University Police Management Coursework, Nova University Psychology.
What would you do differently with the budget in the next four years?
As a deputy sheriff with 34 years at the Broward County Sheriff’s Department working in numerous positions, last one being the chief of the court deputy division with a budget of $7 million — we need to look for avenues that can help the citizens of Flagler County to be safe. We’d do this through grants, by looking at top administration and seeing if we could make some sort of changes by being more “people” people, meaning that these deputies need to start getting out of their cars and walking around shopping centers, especially schools. We got a lot of bullying going on. This will in turn save me also on my gas consumptions. ...
I have been harping since I started this campaign is we need to look at the way we’re spending money on our jail. I understand that, and I haven’t got the feedback yet on it, that they’re feeding them three hot meals a day. The federal government does not require them to feed three hot meals a day. We feed bologna sandwiches for our noon meal in Broward County. ... We go after grants. There’s plenty of grants out there if you know how to write them. ...
What am I going to do to the budget? Grants, look at it objectively and see what needs to be cut, check my supervision that’s at the top, I think it might be a little top-heavy, I don’t know yet. I would like the community to work better with me and maybe they can come up with some ideas, and I’m not at all — if you want to give me advice I don’t have a problem taking advice. I’m not the type of guy that thinks because he wears a badge he goes in there and can knock everything down.
How would you make Flagler County a safer place to live?
Flagler County in my opinion is a great county. It has a great diversified population; it does not have a diversified sheriff’s department, that’s one of the problems. Second problem is we have juveniles that aren’t being adequately, let’s call, supervised. They get thrown out of school, they hang out on the streets, no place to go, they have no role models, so what do they do? They get in trouble, they break into houses, and my main objective is I would like to set up some sort of program either through grants or other means, businesses, preachers, to be able to get those juveniles the education they need so they can go productively into society.
They either help them get a GED test, pass their GED or help them learn how to do computers, and that will solve a lot of our juveniles. ...
Second problem we’re having is that we need to have more productive, proactive, patrol. ... Deputy sheriffs, police officers that have just retired, with four years left on their certificate that they can go right back into police work, let them work eight hours a month free because they’d be glad to donate their time as a sworn deputy sheriff actively patrolling your community and costing you nothing but gas money. ...
What is one thing you would do differently from Sheriff Fleming?
I can do better because I have 34 years in the sheriff’s department and a lot of the programs that he has now I started in Broward County with the community involvement stuff, and I used to appear at all the meetings and everything, and I don’t see this being done here. It’s a poor answer, but I really, I mean Flagler County is a big county but Palm Coast, Bunnell with their own police department, Flagler Beach with their own police department, and you have Beverly Beach that also has its sheriff’s department – I think with the money he has available he is doing a fair job, but I feel I can do better.
What makes you the most qualified to be sheriff?
Well I’m home grown. I was born and raised in Miami, even though I have a northern accent because I have a lot of my court deputies came from the north that I hired. Being the chief of that division you pick up a lot of the New York and New Jersey accents. ...
I have been a road commander, I have been in charge of a detective bureau, crime control, fields force, I’ve been district commander acting, my last position which was asked for me to handle because when you’re dealing with judges you have a lot of problems (nothing personal judges), but I took over the unit as the chief of the court deputy division with three satellites, one main courthouse, and support personnel was a hundred and something with civilians, jail personnel, we moved 5,000-plus prisoners a month, 60-some circuit court judges, 40-some county judges. ...
The worst problem in Flagler County is the jail. If you don’t do something with the jail soon our citizens are going to end up injured or dead. We have to keep a certain cap in the jail and if we don’t we’re liable for one of them to file a humane lawsuit in federal court, which will allow the inspectors to come down like they did in Broward, and they will hit you with a very strong penalty on a day-to-day basis, and we do not want that to happen. ... During my predecessor’s regime, nothing personal against my Democratic opponent, but his forcible rapes and auto thefts were terrible. ... The juvenile gangs are here to stay. You’ve got to wake up Flagler County and start protecting our citizens.
