Christiaan DeFranco
Outside the Thrasher-Horne Center for the Arts, protesters gathered. Inside, hundreds of people packed into the lobby, where the public swearing-in of Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels was held Monday evening.
Organizers delayed the start of the ceremony for 40 minutes while they figured out where to put all the supporters, colleagues and curious citizens as the county’s first black sheriff prepared to take office.
“Darryl Daniels was elected because of the content of his character, not the color of his skin,” Clay County Commissioner Diane Hutchings, paraphrasing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., said to the crowd as she emceed the event.
Daniels, a former Duval County jails chief and Naval officer, garnered 35 percent of the vote to win a four-candidate Republican primary in August. He replaces Rick Beseler, who retired after 12 years as sheriff.
“I’ve been this color my whole life,” Daniels said to the crowd. “The color of my skin isn’t relevant.
“You only have a few moments in life to achieve greatness, and I want to try as sheriff to achieve greatness,” he continued during an impassioned speech. “I’m talking about eating away at the blight that’s around Clay County, and eating away at some of the crime I’ve seen in Clay County, and eating away at things I don’t like seeing in Clay County. I want to mend broken fences and be a bridge between the community and the sheriff’s office.
“There is no more ‘us versus them.’ We’re all ‘us.’”
The ceremony, which took place on the lobby stairs, included speeches by two pastors and multiple prayers, with Daniels’ Christian faith as a theme. Daniels promised a transparent administration as sheriff. He said that he and his officers will walk through neighborhoods each month and hold monthly town hall meetings.
“I think it’s important, especially in this day and time, to earn the trust of the people in the community,” Daniels told Clay Today after the festivities.
Daniels has expressed an openness to the use of body cameras for officers, which is an idea Beseler was not especially fond of during his tenure.
“I’m not committed yet to moving in that direction, but we’re going to explore it,” Daniels said. “I know the budget can’t support it right now, but in the spirit of transparency and accountability, I think we need to explore every avenue.”
Estimates to start a body-camera program range between $3 million and $5 million, with a $3 million annual cost to sustain it.
The protesters showed up outside the swearing-in, which was performed by Jacksonville Judge Virginia B. Norton, because of Daniels’ controversial decision to name former State Attorney Angela Corey as his general counsel. She was voted out of office – defeated by former colleague Melissa Nelson – after two terms. She became unpopular for what many voters saw as routinely over-charging defendants for political reasons as well as for giving raises to her staff and herself that were perceived as questionable.
Her hiring was one of his first moves before Daniels’ assuming office, and it caused immediate political blowback.
“I’m leveraging her experience,” he said. “If you trusted me enough to vote for me, then trust me in bringing her on board.”
He has said Corey will only serve as counsel through April, and she will set up legal guidelines for his staff to follow.
For those four months, according to multiple reports, Corey will increase her retirement payout by approximately $35,000 – from $448,200 to $483.272. She will also make around $34,000 in salary from now through April.
“I’ve known Angela Corey for 25 years,” Daniels has said. “I didn’t hire her to be attorney general.”
Steve Johnson, who had initially supported Daniels, recently started a change.org petition demanding the removal of Corey as general counsel. Johnson, who has said he feels betrayed by Daniels, had gathered more than 200 signatures as of Wednesday morning.
“The county voted to remove Angela Corey from office,” wrote Cecilia Nippe, who signed the petition. “Why would I want her back again?”
Mike Lewis, who also signed the petition, wrote of the Corey hiring: “This is a travesty. Darryl Daniels, stop wasting our tax money or you will be run out of town.”
Desiree Allen, founder of Orange Park-based Community Impact – an organization focusing on issues of justice, neighborhood involvement and public service – didn’t support Daniels’ campaign and is also unhappy with his decision to hire Corey.
“I’ve met him and don’t trust him,” she said of Daniels. “I think he deceived the voters of Clay County. Some of the initiatives he has promised sound very positive, but I’ll believe it when I see it. He never showed his face in some of the black neighborhoods in our county when he was running for election, and I just don’t feel honesty coming from him.
“We have a bunch of bright African-American kids, bright Asian kids, who will never get out of jail because of Angela Corey.”
Allen added that after initially meeting and talking with Daniels, she saw him at several other events and was rebuffed because she didn’t get behind his campaign.
“I went up to him and said hello, and he wouldn’t speak to me,” she said. “He simply turned his body away from me and looked the other way. So I guess if I didn’t support your campaign, you’re not going to protect me as sheriff?
“We want to work with the sheriff’s office, so I’ll give him a chance,” she said. “But we’ll see what he does.”
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Email Christiaan DeFranco at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @cdefranco.
