Jail violence down

In the last year, attacks on Hillsborough deputies working inside the jails have gone down dramatically, and so, statistics show, has the use of force by deputies against inmates.

The Sheriff's office says a re-deployment of deputies and new get-tough policies seem to be working.

By their very nature, jails are pressure cookers, where violence comes without warning, and deputies regularly are injured on the job.

Deputy Mark Mullens says most times, there's no warning.

"Sometimes we joke around", Mullens told FOX13, "they're putting that thing back in the water again, you know, because everybody's come in acting the fool."

Last month, a drunk woman fought being put in a holding cell, and kicked a door, crushing a deputy's fingers in the door jam.

Said Sargent Selina O'Nan, "a lot of the public doesn't know how frequently these types of things happen to us."

Pick a jail deputy and there's a story to tell, like Sgt. John Beboeuf.

"I've been hit several times, I've broken my hand, I've fractured my leg," he said.

Yet there's been a dramatic turnaround since a new Sheriff's Colonel came to town. Colonel Jim Previtera says, "we want to present a good environment here but we also want to always be perceived as in charge, and I say that not in an authoritative sense, just in the sense that we're running a tight ship, it is a jail."

With a Secret Service background, security is Previtera's mantra, and so far it seems to be paying off. Assaults on deputies inside the jail have dropped dramatically, down as much as 60-percent over last year, and while violence against deputies is dropping, so are inmate on inmate fights, down 28-percent through October.

"One of the first things he brought up", says Beboeuf, "was getting rid of the disposable razors. That has brought down inmate attempt suicides, assaults on staff, we had a Deputy at Falkenberg get cut on the neck by a razor."

With a number of open pods closed down, more Deputies went to hot spots like booking and juvenile cells, the biggest change.

the biggest change, any hint of a violent background and inmates don't get to live in a pod with others, they go to lock down confinement, "if you have what we believe to be an established history of violence", Previtera says, "we're not going to take the chance of putting you into a general population pod and waiting to see what happens".

The strongest measure of success? The use of force reported by Deputies is down over 40-percent in the last 10 months, and grievences filed by inmates are down 29-percent for the same period.