When Scott Israel was elected sheriff in 2012, one of the first things he did was to hire friends from his former employer, the Fort Lauderdale Police Department. He stacked his command staff with so many FLPD members that some Broward Sheriff's veterans viewed it as a veritable soft coup by the smaller department. Those brought over received powerful positions, promotions, and pay raises. Among them were Steven Kinsey, who was made undersheriff; Jack Dale, who was promoted to colonel and placed in charge of both internal affairs and criminal investigations; Jim Polan, who was ultimately put in control of the road patrol; Jonathan Appel, who was placed on the executive command staff; former FLPD Chief Frank Adderley, who was made a colonel; and Jan Jordan, who was eventually made the commander in the Parkland district. Also hired was a Fort Lauderdale sergeant — Kevin Shults — who would ultimately be promoted to major.

While receiving pensions from FLPD, all of these retirees began also collecting hefty salaries at BSO (Shults, for instance, currently makes $143,000). The placement of FLPD transplants at the top of the BSO command structure was perfectly legal after Israel won the election, but numerous deputies have complained it caused a corrosive division in the agency that has only worsened with time. Israel, in effect, imported an instant good-old-boys network loyal to him. Seasoned BSO personnel were either terminated or pushed into lower positions, while outsiders, at times regarded by the rank-and-file as unqualified, took their place. The new hires insulated the sheriff and, at the same time, took care of one another, say Bell and numerous other BSO sources.

“It’s a systematic pattern that if you’re part of the Fort Lauderdale crew, you will be protected,” the union chief says. “Their circle of friends will be protected, but if you’re not part of that crew, you will suffer severely.”

Consider the case of command staffer Appel. While running the agency’s body-cam program, he engineered the hiring of his brother-in-law as the program’s video technician with a $20,000 bump in his starting pay. Appel didn’t disclose the relationship, which appears to violate the department’s nepotism policy and could have qualified as official misconduct. Yet when it was brought to light, the agency took no action other than to issue Appel a “counseling report,” essentially telling him not to do it again.