Corporal Jim Lancia is (to the best of our knowledge) the only 56 guest to have been ambushed with a Tommy gun. He has so many tales of adventure and danger that he said getting stabbed under his vest during a domestic wasn’t even a big deal compared to all the times he’s been shot at. After years as a law enforcement officer in Pennsylvania, plus a stint training K-9s for Navy SEALs, he came to the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. (He passed up on an offer from NASA SWAT, which means working at our agency is cooler than… er, fighting aliens? Or is that Space Force? We’re really not sure.) While here, he’s worked on the beaches and in the Marine Unit for a welcome change from snow and slush in the concrete jungle. Right now he’s in the Training Division, keeping PCSO on the forefront of the most innovative technology, including our groundbreaking use of Virtual Reality. Hear about how he was first on scene at a mass shooting, how he put his life on the line for $5.25 an hour, and why he loved working with the beautiful chaos that is a Belgian Malinois. He says he’s been shot at so many times that he shouldn’t be here talking to us now, but his career shows that in police work, luck’s not a tactic, but it’s a very real thing.

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Deputies can’t walk to calls – gone are the days of the beat cop on foot patrol – so the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office depends on Michael Vecchione, manager of the Fleet Services Division. His career took him from BMWs to firetrucks to PCSO’s Tahoes, armored vehicles, the command bus, and more. On this episode of 56, find out how you take a basic Tahoe and upfit it to a state-of-the-art police vehicle with lights, sirens, a push bar, and an interior that’s somewhere between an office and an arsenal. There’s science behind all those flashing lights too, and innovations have fine tuned them to keep deputies safer on the road. From the travails of finding parts for a military vehicle that’s still top secret, to how emergency vehicles handle hurricanes, we talk with the guy who literally keeps the sheriff’s office running.

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Some forensic scientists train for years in the classroom, only to discover on their first real crime scene that they don’t have the stomach for the job. Not so for Forensic Science Supervisor Lisa Murphy. When she pulled up to her first dead body – a shotgun suicide – and said, “Wow, there’s a piece of skull!” she realized this was the perfect job for her. Since then she’s worked some of the grisliest crime scenes, labored for hours in houses full of decomp and no air conditioning, and never thrown up… although she’ll tell you about the times when she came close. Now she’s a blood pattern recognition expert who can reconstruct a homicide based on the blood evidence on the walls and floors. On this episode of 56, hear about the most disgusting, dangerous, and heart-wrenching cases she’s worked, and find out why she was the 2024 Forensic Science Specialist of the year.

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In this episode, we bring back one of our favorite guests – and we’re not just saying that because he’s our boss. On his last visit you got to learn the history and career path that made Sheriff Bob Gualtieri the sheriff he is today. Now we talk more about some of the issues that are near and dear to the hearts of Pinellas County residents, and issues that have far-reaching implications across our country. When Sheriff Gualtieri sees a problem, he fixes it. That’s why we have innovative, first of their kind programs like Safe Harbor, which diverts homeless people from jail to a safe shelter, or diversion programs to give young people or first-time minor offenders a second chance. He created the HOME Task Force to monitor the worst young offenders, and made a robust Threat Management Unit to identify problems at their earliest stage and nip them in the bud. You know that school safety is his top priority, and in addition to prevention, rapid response, and thorough investigation, he has added an innovative and much-needed component: family reunification. Find out why major crimes in Pinellas County are at historically low levels, how he’ll keep you safer during the next hurricane, and why he’s a hard man to categorize.

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For a guy who became a cop because of Super Troopers, Lieutenant Matt Thornton is doing pretty well in law enforcement. He started his career in the jail, where he was known as the “Inmate Whisperer” for his ability to calm inmates with psychological issues. When he went to Patrol, he realized that deputies are first and foremost members of the community, and that it’s hard for people to yell at you if you’re talking to them nicely. But don’t let that genial demeanor fool you – he’s worked in Narcotics and the Violent Crimes Task Force, putting some of the worst criminals in jail. He’s done a lot for the youth of Pinellas County too, both the good ones and the bad ones. Are there bad kids? Well, there are kids who commit five or more felonies in a year, and he developed groundbreaking ways to keep them from reoffending, and arresting them if they do. Now he’s in Youth Services, keeping our schools safe with SROs and inspiring the leaders of tomorrow with the Cadets. On this episode of 56, get to know the respected leader who encourages creativity in the people who work for him. (Oh, and as a special treat for co-host Laura, he likes snakes, bugs, and opossums, and has tons of stories about animal rescues and other furry and scaly adventures.)

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Deputy Syeeta Robinson-DeBerg is the kind of person who will ride a bike down stairs without worrying about how she’s going to stop at the bottom. If it’s a new challenge, she wants to try it – and do better than anyone else. Syeeta says she’s always liked kids and drugs – not in a creepy way – and so a career in law enforcement was perfect for her, helping kids and getting drugs off the streets. Sure, as a rookie she couldn’t always tell when someone was dead, but now she has her finger on the pulse of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office. Her role in Staff Inspections is basically to tell the sheriff what’s going on in every nook and cranny of the agency so he can better support what’s working and fix anything that needs improvement. At one time or another all the cash, drugs, guns, jewels, and explosives in the agency pass through her hands, so you know she has some entertaining stories to tell.

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Snooki, Tigger… Corporal Justin Fineberg is a man of many names but a singular purpose: to get the bad guys so victims can sleep peacefully at night. His hometown of Boston almost got to keep him, but when color-blindness disqualified him up there, he succumbed to the lure of our snow-free winters and joined PCSO. Now he’s a member of the K-9 unit and along with his dog Beau (“because he’s handsome like his daddy”) he’s apprehending some of the worst offenders in the county. He’s also one of the unit’s trainers, and knows how to get inside the heads of some of the most intense dogs you’ve ever met. One of the hardest things for a new handler to learn is how to find their voice – their praise voice that is. When the dog does what he’s supposed to, a handler has to give him positive reinforcement by getting goofy and talking in a high-pitched funny way. Your tail might wag too if Corporal Fineberg praises you in his special voice. Tune in to this episode of 56 to go fishing with K-9s, explore the jungles of Pinellas, fall down a hole in the darkness, and find out how someone goes from being one of the boys to a true leader.

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Talk about rising through the ranks! Chief Deputy David Danzig is the number-two man at PCSO, second only to Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, and has done just about everything at the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO). Coming from a law enforcement family, he knew he wanted to be a cop practically since he was a baby. In fact, his reward for potty training was a ride in cruiser running lights and sirens. From his first arrest (charge: Cat Running at Large) to his first week as the new chief, he’s never had a bad day at work. Despite the many challenges of law enforcement, he has always loved his job, whether he was working in the Marine unit where he saved lives with the right combination of “skillset and guts” or leading the Violent Crimes Task Force that reduced homicides and gun crimes in the county. It’s a peculiarity of law enforcement that as you rise through the ranks, once you get comfortable somewhere they move you somewhere else. But Chief Danzig thrived wherever he went because of a collaborative leadership style and a willingness to learn. In this episode, we talk about Chief Danzig’s career, and why he thinks the resiliency, strength, knowledge, and training of today’s PCSO deputies makes them the greatest generation of law enforcement officers.

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