- December 5, 2025
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Longboat Key’s two newest police officers aren’t new to working in law enforcement, and they’re not new to the community either.
Both Thomas Puccio and Gregory Tillman have decades of experience and came to the town’s police force not as a stepping stone but as a destination.
Puccio is a graduate of Sarasota’s Riverview High School and served with the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office before embarking on a military career. Tillman worked since the mid-1990s at a sheriff’s department outside Nashville, but he has vacationed in the Sarasota area for years.
Both said they knew of Longboat Key long before job openings popped up and that they are happy to be here.
The Sarasota native spent his first four years after high school graduation working in his family’s restaurant in Sarasota, then enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1989, where he served until he became a deputy in the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office in 1993. In 2003, though, he was recalled from reserve to active duty and remained in military service until he retired Oct. 1 at the end of about two months of what the military calls “terminal leave.”
As part of his military service, Puccio has visited more than 30 nations, including stints in Iraq and Afghanistan, always in security or in a law enforcement capacity. Among his stops was Joint Base Andrews, just outside Washington, D.C.
The Air Force was a vehicle for Puccio, who rose to chief master sergeant, to pursue four-year and graduate degrees in criminal justice. Throughout his career, he said he has learned that successful law enforcement relies on a partnership.
“I’m a firm believer and advocate of community-oriented policing,” he said. “It has to be transparent because if the public doesn’t trust the police, and the police don’t trust the public, you really have a recipe for disaster.”
And what he has seen so far encourages him.
“I have never waved so much,” he said “And they warned me about that. They say a lot of people just wave. They’re not trying to wave you down; they’re just waving to you. And it’s very true.”
“The last three years I had a commanding officer, a lieutenant colonel, who was a huge supporter of me obtaining my formal education, especially in my master’s degree,” Puccio said. “And he said: ‘Chief, I want you to get your master’s degree. I really want you to focus on it, and I will support you and whatever you need, but I want you to get it.’ And I did.”
Tillman comes to Longboat Key from the Nashville area, where he served in the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office; he said that the county 20 years ago was a sleepier community than it is today, owing to the core city’s recent explosive growth.
His law enforcement career, which began in 1995, has included everything from road patrol, canine, drug interdiction and work as a detective.
Longboat Key wasn’t simply a dart-on-the-map kind of decision.
He said he and his wife of 25 years have been vacationing in the Sarasota/Siesta Key area since it “was just a little small little hut over there.” He said that through those visits he made some connections in the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office.
“They’re like, ‘Hey, you need to look into Longboat Key,’” he said. “It’s a really good department. That’s a good department to put in for. And so I heard they were hiring, and I came out for it and got the job.”
Tillman said he likes the brand of community connection officers and residents of the town make. In Tennessee, one of his jobs was that of a school resource officer.
“The approach that they go with is as a teacher, counselor, cop,” he said. “So basically, you’re a teacher first to the students, and then you’re a counselor to the students. And the last thing you are as a cop. It’s really a community within a community.”
Tillman said he hopes to serve in Longboat Key until he’s ready to retire.
“I turned 50 this year, so I’m not ready to retire,” he said.
“I’m not quite ready to hang it up just yet. I think I still have a lot to offer.”
