Top cop: controlled chaos can be an ally

When you lead an organization that gives several hundred armed people, many of them young men in their 20s, the authority to take away people’s freedom, pressure is bound to follow.

Tom Knight faced that, what he calls controlled chaos, for 12 years. As the elected sheriff of Sarasota County he oversaw a 1,100-person agency that handles law enforcement for some 440,000 people. And Knight, now CEO of First Step of Sarasota, a mental health counseling and substance abuse treatment and prevention facility, was a police officer for 20 years prior to being elected sheriff.