Curt Lavarello democrat

Curt Lavarello has a strikingly humanitarian approach to crime, especially when it comes to drug offenders. He looks at a small-time criminal and sees a nice normal citizen waiting to be cut from the block.

In many cases, he supports rehabilitation instead of arrest, not after. Over time, he says, this will save the county money on incarceration. An official at the overcrowded county jail told us that, in 2007, 30 percent of those arrested had already been arrested that same year. So Lavarello may be on to something.

Lavarello is the former director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, and the head of the Sarasota Coalition on Substance Abuse. In 2005, he was arrested on a DUI charge, which was later dropped.

He was the only candidate to propose an increase in the sheriff's budget. As the sole Democrat in the race, he will face the winning Republican in November. Here he is on crime preemption:

Let's say [you're] shoplifting, and one of my deputies makes the arrest. ... How about instead of sending [you] to jail, we hold your case without charging you, and we say here's a deal -- we're not going to charge you and put you in jail, but you've got to agree to get in a treatment program. ...

I would create a whole separate prevention division within the sheriff's department. ... We'd have a director of prevention. He or she would go out there and say, "How does prevention fit into this part of the sheriff's department? What are we doing in gangs?"

Instead of producing inmates and repeat offenders, the sheriff's office could give the county friendly neighbors, choir members, knitting buddies! It sounds real swell, but it also sounds expensive. Which brings us to Lavarello's double-take proposal ­­-- go above the County Commission and ask the governor for an increase in the sheriff's budget.

He can come back and say, "You have a good budget, we're giving you 10 million." ... Then the county [has] to slice up the rest of the pie, look at parks and look at the library and look at all those other areas. ... I bet you in the long run we would save a lot of money.

Recently the city of Sarasota passed a law allowing cops to impound a car if the stereo is too loud. It seems a little pointed. We wonder if a booming Mitch Perry report would get you impounded as quickly as Lil' Wayne would. Lavarello has a problem with the law. He even said that Sarasota was a little ordinance-crazy.

What do we do? We take your car. Now you can't get to work. You can't get to work, you lose your job. ... I'd rather come out and say, "Hey, you haven't listened to us, we're not going to take your car, but on Saturday and Sunday you're going to come out here and clean the cigarette butts off the beach, 'cause that's the other issue that we just created an ordinance for.

And like most of the candidates, he had a plan for bringing minorities onto the force.

One of the things I would do that we can do right now is I would start tracking high school students, recruiting more in the minority based high schools, like Booker High School. ... When was the last time a police (recruitment) meeting was held in Newtown? So how much are you really trying?

Pop quiz score: 100 percent

Jail population on a given day? 1,150

Most common cause of drug overdose in Sarasota County? Pharmaceuticals

Number of black officers who rank lieutenant or above? None