Incumbent Boone deserves another term as sheriff of Florence County

Former Florence County sheriff Jimmy Gregg is running against incumbent Kenney Boone, who he endorsed for the position four years ago before retiring.

Gregg is running as a Democrat while Boone, who switched parties in 2007, is running as a Republican.

With so much going on, it seems that one term isn’t enough time for any sheriff to see new programs and strategies through — especially when those programs and strategies are working.

That’s one reason why we think Boone should be re-elected.

Both candidates clearly are capable of running the sheriff’s office.

During Gregg’s 12-year tenure, he oversaw the move to the Florence County Law Enforcement Complex in Effingham, where the sheriff’s office and county jail are housed. He also supervised the transition of the Florence County Dispatch and E911 system.

Community outreach programs, like Camp Pee Dee Pride and the Explorers Program for Florence County’s youth, also took root when Gregg was sheriff.

Boone has taken that success and built upon it during his four-year term as sheriff. Among the things he has done is assign deputies to the Drug Enforcement Administration Task Force, the Pee Dee Violent Crime Task Force, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. Marshals Service Operation Intercept. Boone said he views this move as an investment. For example, he said, the county receives 80 percent of the funds from DEA seizures made in Florence County. The sheriff’s office also has made multi-jurisdictional agreements with all of the sheriff’s offices in the state “to ensure access to every available law enforcement resource, be it manpower or equipment,” Boone said.

Gregg has publicly expressed his disapproval of Boone’s traffic division of the sheriff’s office. Gregg claims too much time and too many resources are being dedicated to the traffic division, and not enough has gone into combating serious crimes. Boone disagrees, saying he’s dedicated to traffic enforcement because of the high number of traffic fatalities in Florence County and that traffic stops don’t infringe on deputies checking property and responding to E-911 dispatch calls.

Gregg said he feels the sheriff’s office is heading in the wrong direction — backward, in fact. He said he prefers the “rifle effect” to dealing with crime, meaning problems are handled as they occur, as opposed to the “shotgun effect,” an approach that shoots blindly at problems in the hopes of hitting them.

Boone said he aims for the sheriff’s office to take a proactive approach to community safety and fighting crime. His goal, he said, is to stop crime before it happens. That’s why the sheriff’s office is in the process of implementing a program that analyzes crime statistics and other relevant data to put appropriate resources where crime is recurring. This approach makes far more sense to us than waiting for problems to occur and handling them later.

One thing the new old sheriff who wins this race must do is build a better working relationship with municipal police departments in Florence County — specifically the Florence Police Department.

There’s no denying the rivalry between the sheriff’s office and the Florence Police Department, but it seems that tension has become a hindrance to the goal of keeping the community as a whole safe.

As Gregg has said, the election shouldn’t be about political parties, or old sheriff versus new sheriff, or even Boone versus Gregg.

“This thing is about who can best manage the Florence County Sheriff’s Office,” Gregg said.

In our opinion, that person is Boone.