OVERVIEW AND PURPOSE:
When a citizen of Lake County calls the Lake County Sheriff's Office for assistance, most likely the deputy responding will be a member of the Uniform Patrol Bureau. Often referred to as the 'backbone' of any law enforcement agency, the Uniform Patrol Bureau provides law enforcement services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year throughout the 1,156 square miles of land area within the agency's jurisdiction. Deputies in the Uniform Patrol Bureau respond on average to 350,000 calls for service each year. Uniform Patrol Deputies are easily recognizable by the highly visible patrol vehicles that they drive. The Uniform Patrol Bureau of the Lake County Sheriff's Office contains several specialized units. These units answer calls for service or respond to emergencies that would be impossible or impractical for regular Road Patrol Deputies to handle. These units include the Street Crimes Unit, Traffic Enforcement Unit and the K-9 Unit.
The Lake County Sheriff's Office, through contractual agreement also provides law enforcement services to the City of Minneola. The City of Minneola currently has fifteen deputies assigned to its district to serve the needs of the citizens residing within the city.
Because the Lake County Sheriff's Office is the largest law enforcement agency in Lake County it is often called upon for assistance by other public safety agencies in Lake County such as fire rescue, EMS and the local police departments. On any given day throughout Lake County you may see members of the Uniform Patrol Bureau working closely with these agencies. By keeping the lines of communication open and fostering a cooperative relationship with these agencies we are able to work together collectively to ensure that the needs of all Lake County citizens are met.
MAIN DUTIES:
For operational purposes, the Sheriff's Office has divided the county into 16 zones patrolled by the deputies of Uniform Patrol 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays. There are four 12-hour shifts, one of which will be on duty at any given time. The men and women assigned to the Uniform Patrol Bureau perform the most visible and recognizable functions of the Sheriff's Office; they are the ones responding to your calls for assistance. You will find them in your neighborhoods, taking reports, looking for a lost child, comforting the victim of a crime, or questioning someone who doesn't appear to belong in the area.
On a typical day patrol deputies may respond to calls as ordinary as a noise complaint, assist with traffic control at the scene of an accident, writing a report of a theft, or to ones as dangerous as a violent crime in progress. Additionally, patrol units are responsible for investigating reported offenses such as burglaries, domestic violence complaints, alarms, and suspicious persons, just to name few. Tasked with providing professional law enforcement responses to ever-increasing calls for service, the Uniform Patrol Bureau remains dedicated to providing quality service to the citizens of Lake County.
