They spoke on the phone about four times a month. The older man understood military life, the younger man was just stepping into it.
Darryl Daniels cautioned Larry Smith about the pitfalls of having to leave a spouse for extended periods when out in the field. He guided him on how to develop a strong, committed marriage. To Smith, the former Navy man turned sheriff’s officer was a mentor.
Smith’s wife, Cierra, introduced the two as he got ready to graduate from Florida A&M University and be commissioned in the U.S. Army.
Cierra Smith had worked for Daniels at the Duval County jail since 2013. She called him “Uncle D.” She seemed to revere Daniels, a man twice her age.
Larry Smith said he didn’t look to Daniels in the same father-figure way, although he did respect him for his sacrifices as a military man and law officer.
When Cierra and Larry Smith held their wedding reception in September 2015, Cierra picked Daniels — not a best friend or relative — to give the bridal toast. Larry Smith selected his younger brother.
Fifteen months later Larry Smith discovered a trove of emails between his wife and Daniels. They were rife with stories and reflections of the things Daniels and Cierra Smith had done together while Smith was likely out in the field for the Army. He then came across a video link on his wife’s iPad.
He clicked on the link and a video popped onto the screen, a video that stunned him. The images showed his wife performing a sex act on his mentor, her boss, the chief of the Duval County jail at the time. Both were in their uniforms. They were in an office, Larry Smith would later tell investigators with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office.
Smith on Wednesday described the betrayal as a punch in the gut.
“I think back to everything he represented to me. He was like, ‘You’re a veteran. I’m a veteran. You know what we go through when we leave for the field.’ We had man-to-man conversations.”
Smith called his wife, who was out with friends that night in late December 2016, telling her to come back to his mother’s where they were visiting. Instead, Cierra Smith called her husband back. Daniels was also called for a three-way conversation about the affair. At first, Daniels was nervous, Larry Smith said. He then became gracious.
“He mentioned several times, ‘I’m coming at you man-to-man.’ He said, ‘You’re handling this in a way that is like a man. I respect your level of maturity.’”
Three days later, Daniels was sworn in as the 28th sheriff of Clay County, the first African-American to serve as the top lawman there. His mistress attended his inauguration.
Daniels and Larry Smith wouldn’t have a conversation again until May of this year, right before the affair was about to become public. The reaction from Daniels’ rank and file and his subsequent actions — that are potentially criminal — are far-reaching, stretching all the way to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office and into the laps of Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators.
BURNISHING HIS HEROIC IMAGE
As sheriff, Daniels came into this bedroom community west of Jacksonville full of himself and bluster. He wore a white cowboy hat — and ordered others for his deputies. He walked proudly through the county where he has lived since 1983 when he was in the Navy. His main initiatives were to reduce crime and foster community engagement.
Daniels vowed to chase drug dealers and troublemakers from the county. He was great in front of the camera — a sturdy man with broad shoulders, a wide smile and a strong message that if you are up to no good in Clay County, he will find you.
An in-house camera crew filmed Daniels last year outside of a raid at an Orange Park home. The video shows masked officers in SWAT gear. There are armored vehicles. The sheriff wears a long overcoat. He carries a thermos of coffee. The video pans over more than a dozen people sitting on a curb, hands behind their backs. Daniels announces that 15 people were pulled from what he called a drug house and are on their way to jail.
The camera then pans over to the home where a large window had been busted out.
Daniels walks into the house and declares: “If you commit crimes in Clay County, you’ve got options: You can stop what you are doing, you can leave Clay County, or you too will be on the receiving end of this.”
That tough-talk ultimatum soon became his trademark, that and swigging coffee in three big gulps. The in-house produced video of “Operation You’ve Been Warned” was shared more than 30,000 times and viewed 3.4 million times on Facebook. While success in the viral sphere, in reality, “Operation You’ve Been Warned” actually led to just five adult arrests — not 15. All five adults had adjudication withheld, which generally refers to a decision by a judge to put a person on probation without a finding of guilt. One juvenile was detained. No records could be found, so the outcome is unknown.
Daniels marched on as a warrior against drugs. His on-camera swagger was better matched to a large round-up of people last year dubbed “Operations Sheriff’s Blend.” During that initiative, officers attempted to serve 44 people with arrest warrants across the county. At a news conference, the media was told 26 people were tracked down and arrested.
“There is no safe place in Clay County where you can say, ‘I’m going to lay my head,’” Daniels declared. ”... There is no place that is off limits for us. If you think you can hide in Clay County, you can’t hide. At some point, you are going to hear that loud bang and it will be my people, the hard-working men and women of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office who put their lives on the line. ... And they are going to be standing over you with masks on and guns were drawn ready to take you to jail. And I’m going to be standing in that living room, just like I promised, drinking my coffee while your butt gets taken to jail.”
The Times-Union reviewed the cases. Of those with significant charges, the average sentence was two years. A handful of those arrested were discharged with a sentence of “time served.” The heaviest sentence went to a young man who had vowed not to go back to prison and was threatening to end his life — suicide by cop. It didn’t come to that. He was sentenced to 6½ years for the sale and distribution of narcotics.
Not long after “Operation Sheriff’s Blend,” Daniels made national headlines when he announced that Trumaine Muller, 32, a drug dealer, was being charged with first-degree murder for the death of Ariell Jade Brundige. Brundige died from an overdose in 2016. The charge was a first of its kind.
“He decided to peddle his products in Clay County and his luck ran out,” Daniels announced in front of the cameras, a place where he had become very comfortable.
There were more charges. Tyler William Hamilton and Christopher Allen Williams, who went with Brundige to buy the heroin, were charged with manslaughter. The heroin was laced with fentanyl.
While some applauded Daniel’s tough-on-drugs stance, others criticized it.
Jonathan Caulkins, a drug-policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University, told the Times-Union last year that using murder charges for drug overdoses “is exactly the opposite of what we generally think of as best practices.” Another field expert said arrests like that could lead to people not calling for help when someone is in trouble after doing drugs.
Unlike the very public announcement of the first-degree murder charge against Muller, the State Attorney’s Office quietly dropped the charge one month later. The case was moved to federal court, and Muller was recently sentenced to life in prison for distribution, possession of a firearm by a felon and other drug charges.
Daniels continued about the county wearing his white hat, clutching his coffee, taking his tough stance. In his first year, the uniform crime rate in the unincorporated parts of the county dropped according to statistics from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. But any gains made were lost in 2018 as crime crept back up according to newly released stats.
The Urban Bean Coffee House in Orange Park capitalized on the sheriff’s fame when the owners created “Sheriff’s Blend” coffee. The proceeds went to the Clay Police Athletic League. On the day the coffee house rolled out “Sheriff’s Blend,” it completely sold out by 10 a.m.
The sheriff, it seemed, had found success again after an eight-year stint in the Navy and more than two decades at the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office where he rose from patrol to chief status.
The sheriff, who holds a master’s degree in religion, was plucked to serve on a handful of boards in the community — boards that he has now been removed from since his affair became public. At the time, Daniels made his aspirations known: two terms as sheriff then he’d make a run for Congress, just as his former boss, Jacksonville Sheriff John Rutherford, did.
LARRY SMITH DROPS A DIME
Last summer, 1½ years into Daniels’ job as Clay County’s top cop, Larry Smith picked up the phone and called the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office where his wife was working again as a corrections officer. He claimed she broke into his home in North Carolina and ran up his credit card.
He claimed she stole items that were sentimental to him. He claimed he saw a video of his wife and her then boss Daniels having sex in an office. He provided them with some text messages that spoke to that exact topic. The details of his claims and the subsequent internal affairs investigation are part of a several-hundred-page report that the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office made public in May.
In August, Cierra Smith was removed from her position and given a desk job while the internal affairs investigation of her conduct was underway. Daniels was asked to come to Jacksonville and give a statement. He refused.
Smith denied having sex with her boss and she denied many of the allegations her husband made against her. The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office reviewed eight claims.
In April the report was completed. It supported the charges of trespassing; departure from the truth; failure to be candid; failure to conform to work standards and unbecoming conduct. The claim about Smith and her then jail director Daniels having sexual conduct was not substantiated.
Accompanying the report was a letter from Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams informing Cierra Smith that he intended to fire her.
A reporter from the alternative weekly Folio was long onto the story and had been waiting for the internal affairs records to become public. Daniels was now in a race with the media. His wife, someone the 54-year-old has known since he was 17, could either learn of her husband’s affair through the media or from her husband.
Daniels told his wife, according to a written statement Cierra Smith gave to the police. There was a fall-out.
The Times-Union tried numerous times to get comments from Cierra Smith and Daniels. They declined. Cierra Smith did sit down with Times-Union news partner First Coast News. She said Daniels gave her $30,000 over the years.
Either on May 2 or May 3, Larry Smith’s phone rang at midnight. He ignored it. The following morning at 9, it rang again. The same number, he said. He ignored it again. Then he got a text from a woman addressing herself as Denise Daniels.
Larry Smith told the Times-Union she was asking about money. She asked if he was extorting her husband. She called again the following day and put her husband on the phone.
“He was aggressive,” Smith said.
He said he told his old mentor to come straight with his wife: “You are paying your side chick and playing it off on me. The best story you can come up with ‘I’m being extorted?’”
On May 4, Cierra Smith filed a police report saying she received a threatening phone call from Denise Daniels. Smith said Daniels told her: “I know where you live. I Googled your address and I have someone posted up there.”
Two days later, Cierra Smith was arrested. She explained in the interview with First Coast News as well as a five-page written statement to deputies in Clay that she and Darryl Daniels have been having an affair for the past six years. She said Daniels had told his wife about it, and he and Smith were going to meet at their usual spot in the Oakleaf neighborhood of Clay County.
As they both drove there, Daniels radioed emergency dispatch and called for back-up, saying he feared for his life because someone was following him. Smith detailed to the television station how Daniels pulled into a parking spot and the next thing she knew a deputy blocked her Jeep in. Denise Daniels, Smith said, also drove up and began recording the scene. Smith’s daughter is in the car.
Cierra Smith said Darryl Daniels sat in his car the whole time. She said she saw him talking with a deputy and she heard him call for her arrest. Smith was arrested on felony trespassing charges after a loaded gun was found in her glove box.
Smith told deputies she was pregnant. She was detained for six hours. During that time she wrote up the five-page statement detailing her relationship with Daniels and claiming they had planned to meet in the parking lot.
At 9:48 that night Pam Hazel, an assistant state attorney who oversees Clay County cases, was contacted for guidance by a lieutenant. Those ordered to arrest Smith felt they did not have probable cause. Hazel, according to a memo she wrote about the matter, informed the lieutenant about the required course of conduct for stalking.
The lieutenant told her at this point they didn’t have that. He then questioned whether the State Attorney’s Office would investigate the case by speaking to the sheriff. Hazel told the lieutenant that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement needed to review the matter.
Latoya Shelton, Smith’s attorney, said the two of them have discussed filing a lawsuit against the Clay County Sheriff’s Office possibly on the grounds of unlawful detention. Shelton would not elaborate: “It’s a conversation. That is all I can say about it.”
SHERIFF LOSES HIS COFFEE BLEND
In a matter of days, reports about the allegation of a threatening phone call, Daniels calling for his girlfriend’s arrest and the lengthy internal affairs probe became public.
Social media exploded with comments. The Facebook page Saving Clay County Sheriff’s Office goads the sheriff on a nearly daily basis. Posts describe an atmosphere at work that is toxic. The administrator of the site said the page is getting between 150,000 to 205,000 views a week.
Daniels has since been dropped from three boards he served on. He even lost his line of coffee from the Urban Bean Coffee House. Pam Hegel said “Sheriff’s Blend” hadn’t been selling so well and in light of the sheriff’s now public troubles, the decision was made to pull it.
For the most part, the sheriff has kept quiet on the matter. On May 17 he issued the following statement: “I want to take time to acknowledge a series of personal incidents. I have, in the past, made decisions in my personal life that I truly regret. I sincerely apologize for the embarrassment my past personal decisions have caused. My family has asked that I do not discuss private matters in public so I will not be commenting further on the personal aspects of this issue.”
Though many speak out on the Saving Clay County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, few — supporters or critics — are willing to speak publicly about the sheriff, claiming they fear retaliation.
Martin Borum a former volunteer firefighter had this to say in a telephone interview with the Times-Union. “I think it is repulsive. This sheriff is nothing more than a political hack. He is immoral and I believe he is a criminal. ... This sheriff must set a standard and he must hold himself to a higher standard which he holds his deputies.”
A handful of people contacted their county commissioners to express displeasure.
“There is a dark stain on our county,” wrote Madelyn Cristofoli in a letter to the commissioners. As my elected commissioners, I’d like to ask if any of you have stepped up to the plate and told our sheriff to resign?”
Ask is all the commissioners could do because only the governor has the authority to remove the sheriff from office.
A letter purported to be written at the behest of several members of the Sheriff’s Office was sent to the Governor’s Office and media outlets. The letter suggests the sheriff is unhinged and that deputies feel they are in danger.
During a June 14 briefing, the letter said, Daniels talked about leaks within his department and said he would cause harm to an employee — “murder the (expletive)” that leaked it.
The letter ended with this plea. “PLEASE HELP US!”
They’ve asked the governor to remove Daniels and bring in an outsider to run the Sheriff’s Office while the Florida Department of Law Enforcement completes its investigation. The FDLE investigation was just confirmed a few days ago.
The governor has not issued any official statement on the matter.
Curtis McClees, chairman of the Clay County Republican Party, said, “Everyone is entitled to due process. It is unfortunate that we are in the news again.”
Republicans in state government who represent Clay County, Rep. Travis Cummings and Sen. Rob Bradley, did weigh in Thursday when they issued a joint statement: “If FDLE’s investigation confirms what has been reported, we will have major concerns. The public must always have confidence that its chief law enforcement officer will treat every citizen equally under the law. In this instance, a woman was arrested and detained in front of her child. It is serious and cannot be dismissed as merely a private matter.”
Resident Mike Porter voted to elect Daniels sheriff in 2016. He’s upset about what has happened because the sheriff, he said, has done a great job cleaning up Clay County.
“I really liked him and thought he did well,” Porter said. ”... I brought into all the PR hype. The ... warnings. I loved the personality and the way he carried himself. He seemed to be an honorable man to lead law enforcement in my community.”
But the sheriff’s conduct, he said, cannot be overlooked.
“I no longer have confidence beyond what he has accomplished,” Porter said. “I would dislike losing what he’s done and is capable of, but he cannot effectively lead new police officers and hold them accountable for — in uniform and out of uniform — behavior after this scandal.”