- January 28, 2026
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Longboat Key and crime are two things that don’t really go hand-in-hand.
The barrier island with an affluent populace and median age of 71 doesn’t have much of a night life scene, or a lot of outsiders that might cause trouble. It's safe to say that, in general, its residents are pretty well-behaved. Regardless, police stay busy. With a police force of 23, there were about 21,000 calls to service in the 2025 calendar year.
At a Town Commission workshop meeting Jan. 20, Police Chief Russ Mager broke down some numbers for town leaders about what police had been up to in the previous year and talked about his goals for the new year.
According to the presentation, Longboat Key’s crime rate per capita is drastically lower than the national average in every category. In 2025, there were no homicides, no robberies, a single burglary and one motor vehicle theft.
Mager, who started with the department in August 2025, said fraud is one of his biggest concerns. The department investigated 14 fraud cases in 2025, a jump from the 11 investigated in 2024.
“Fraud is a little concerning to me because we have an elderly community,” Mager said. It’s sad because people work their whole life, and their life savings can disappear with a click of a button.”
Mager said education is easier than enforcement because the perpetrators of fraud are often out of state or out of the country and investigations often lead to dead ends.
“We’re working on educating,” Mager said. “That’s really the best way to combat this.”
Another priority for the department is keeping the roads safe. There were 114 accidents in the 2025 fiscal year, a 23% increase from the previous year. Crash data and analysis provided by the state of Florida shows that the top causes of crashes were from drivers following too closely, failure to yield, careless driving and improper lane change. The department heavily favored issuing warnings (4,000 issued) over issuing traffic citations (1,900).
There were some crime statistics shared by Mager that could raise some alarm: 14 batteries, 14 drug offenses and 19 reports of theft.
“You think about Longboat Key. We’re a quiet, little reserved neighborhood and how do we have 20 or 19 batteries (in 2023 and 2024)? So, I delved a little further,” Mager told the Commission. “Over half of those were domestic related, and of those domestic ones, a large portion weren’t from people who were residents here, they were visitors.”
Domestic violence is a difficult crime to prevent.
“What goes on in a home, what goes on between a husband and wife – hard to impact that,” Mager said. “It’s hard to say we’re going to put out some initiative to make an impact on domestic violence. It’s not that easy.”
Mager said the number of thefts could be alarming to residents, but that the number portrays every single report of theft from petty theft to grand theft. It also doesn’t mean each of those crimes actually occurred, but just that they were reported.
Deputy Police Chief Frank Rubino’s position will not be filled by the Longboat Key Police Department, Mager said.
Instead, he is opting to bring on two additional officers.
“After really taking the time to consider the needs of the agency, I opted not to (fill Rubino’s position),” Mager told commissioners. “What I’d rather do and what I am doing is backfill working positions more on the road and the marine unit. Bodies on the road are the workers, and my goal is to provide more visibility and more ability to handle and address any issues or concerns that are going on with the town.”
There are three open positions with the police department. All three will be uniformed officer positions.
A cursory glance of annual calls to service may look as though there was a jump in crime from 2023 to 2024, which continued in 2025, but Mager said that bump from about 15,000 calls to service to about 20,000 was due to reduced staffing in 2023.
“In 2023 we had less employees here, and that definitely impacts self-initiated activity,” Mager said. “It’s not the calls for service that you get over the radio, it’s going out and checking neighborhoods, checking businesses, doing those extra patrols and traffic enforcement. The ability for us to go from 15,000 to 20,000, it’s not necessarily a good or bad thing on the whole, but I like to look at it more as a positive thing because it does allow us to do more self-initiated activity, which I think at the end of the day keeps everybody safe.”
With the departure of the deputy chief and retirement of an officer, there are now three job openings with the department, all for uniformed officers. With more officers, the number of calls to service could increase, but that’s not a sure bet, Mager said, because it may lead to more officers on marine patrol rather than out on the road.
Longboat Key Police Chief Russ Mager said cameras and license plate readers play an important role in policing the barrier island.
Six license plate readers stationed on either side of Gulf of Mexico Drive (the only way on and off the island by car) alert officers when a vehicle’s registered owner has a warrant out, or has an expired license or tag.
“They definitely have an impact on the number of traffic stops,” Mager said.
Those traffic stops often lead to more serious charges.
“We derive a tremendous amount of arrests and drugs from traffic stops, unfortunately,” Mager said.
There were 280 total arrests (27 felonies) by the Longboat Key Police Department in 2025. The previous year, there were 310 total arrests, but fewer (16) from felony charges.
Cameras also help the department solve a variety of crimes. The department can utilize cameras the town has installed and also reaches out to businesses when investigating crimes to ask permission to review their footage as well.
In the future, the police department may look at facial recognition technology to help identify wanted criminals.
“That’s something we could be looking at in the future,” Mager said. “There are software programs that basically take your face as long as it grabs it to a certain degree and then looks for similar images like if you have a Florida Drivers License. It’s something that I’m looking into."
