Cumming likely choice for long-term police chief

Longboat Key Acting Police Chief Pete Cumming appears likely to get the position on a long-term basis.
Cumming told both the Kiwanis Club of Longboat Key and the Longboat Observer that he hopes to be appointed to the role permanently.

Town Manager David Bullock confirmed that the town isn’t currently advertising the police-chief position.
“Pete’s in there in an acting role, and if he does great, we’ll keep him right there as chief until he wants to retire … ” Bullock said. “My expectation is that he’ll do a great job.”

Cumming had no time to prepare for the role.

He was serving as a Longboat Key police captain, a position he had held since April 2008, when Police Chief Al Hogle died in a motorcycle crash May 14. Cumming, along with Capt. Kristina Roberts and Sarasota Police Chief Mikel Holloway, Capt. Lucius Bonner and Capt. Paul Sutton, drove that day to Sarasota to notify Leslie Hogle of her husband’s death.

Later that day, Bullock asked him if he would take on the role of acting police chief.

Cumming said that taking on the role at the time was a challenge but said that officers are coping with the loss of Hogle.

“After the initial shock, we all spent some time talking and coming to terms with the tragedy,” he said. “We focused on the task at hand to keep the department running. The morale is high, but I think that everyone still grieves in their own way.”

Cumming began his career in law-enforcement in patrol with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office in 1980 and later became a detective, then a corporal, then an undercover narcotics smuggling agent for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).

In the mid-1990s, he was also sworn in as a U.S. Deputy Marshall for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Violent Crime Task Force, before heading to FDLE’s Fort Myers Regional Operation Center, where he opened a fictitious pawnshop to create an outlet for stolen goods.

Next, he worked to find and convict absconded sexual predators in a five-county region, from Manatee to Collier counties.

Cumming applied for the Longboat Key position in 2008, after Hogle asked him if he would be interested.

Cumming said that he is adjusting to the role and has received advice from many sources.

“What I’ve always said is, if I understand what is expected of me, I will exceed those expectations,” he said.