Scott Powers
Orange County Tax Collector Scott Randolph said he will be hiring armed guards to secure the county’s tag agencies.
Randolph, a Democrat up for re-election, said he resisted the idea of armed security for a long time but, in the wake of Sunday’s Pulse nightclub massacre, resolved it is the right thing to do.
“There are scary people out there,” Randolph said.
Occasionally, he said, they show up at one of the county’s seven tag agencies. A few months ago, he said, an angry customer vowed to come back and “shoot the place up.” That person never came back and police were not able to track him down to his knowledge.
“This is really at the prompting of our employees. They deal with angry customers all the time,” he said.
The guards would be in plain clothes. Randolph said a handful of other county tax collectors in Florida already employ such guards. He would be able to piggyback off existing state contracts. His office would find ways to pay for it “by squeezing the budget.”
