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Sheriffs in Florida are a colorful bunch maybe a little too colorful.

Its not easy being known as Floridas worst sheriff. We have a deep bench.

This week, with the COVID-19 pandemic causing new highs in Florida deaths, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods made his move by forbidding his deputies from wearing masks while on duty or on special details, with a few exceptions. He also banned mask wearing by members of the public while they visited his department offices.

"We can debate and argue all day why and why not," the sheriff told The Ocala Star-Banner. "The fact is, the amount of professionals that give the reason why we should, I can find the exact same amount of professionals that say why we shouldnt."

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OK, so Woods is a stone-cold ignoramus who is a danger to the community hes supposed to protect.

And yet, arguably, he still might not be the worst sheriff in Florida.

After all, you have to consider Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels, who was arrested Thursday by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement on multiple felony charges.

Florida sheriffs who themselves get arrested earn bonus points in this competition.

The charges stem from Daniels move last year to wrongfully arrest his longtime mistress after she broke off their six-year affair. She had worked for Daniels at his previous job as a Duval County corrections officer.

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But wait, theres more. Using his position to file a false stalking charge against his old girlfriend might not even be the worst thing he has done in law enforcement.

Recently, Daniels, while wearing a giant cowboy hat with his green uniform, made a Facebook video warning Black Lives Matter protesters to stay away from Clay County.

Daniels, who is Black, said that if any protesters organized there and threatened to destroy any property, he would deputize every legal gun owner in Clay County to handle them.

"God is absent from the medias message or Black Lives Matter or any other group out there thats making themselves a spectacle, disrupting what we know to be our quality of life in this country," Daniels said in the video.

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"If you threaten to come to Clay County and think for one second, that well bend our backs to you, youre sadly mistaken " he continued. "Well have something waiting on you that you didnt want."

Daniels said he would deputize local gun owners "to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility."

The freshly arrested Daniels is on the ballot next week for re-election as Clay County Sheriff.

And when it comes to tough-guy showboating, we cant forget Floridas version of Joe Arpaio, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd.

Judds another one with a tough-guy personality disorder, which he expresses by inventing ways to make his jail inmates miserable. He has denied them free underwear in jail, and taken away the jails basketball backboard and hoop.

"If they want to play basketball, they should stay out of jail," he said. "Im not going to have an environment where they feel like theyre at a fitness center."

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And when a hurricane approaches, Judd uses it as an opportunity to check the immigration status of those seeking refuge in the county shelters.

These tin-badge despots who get aroused by their own cartoonish invective have their own group called The Florida Sheriffs Association, which occasionally imagines itself as a law-enforcement-optional body.

For example, during the Obama administration, the Florida Sheriffs Association announced that Florida sheriffs "will not assist, support, or condone any unconstitutional infringement" of the Second Amendments right to bear arms in the state.

The proclamation was a ridiculous response to some executive orders issued by Obama that were hardly controversial or Constitutionally problematic. Most of them helped the police.

"Improve incentives for states to share information with the background-check system. ... Launch a national safe and responsible gun ownership campaign. ... ," the list included. "Provide law enforcement, first responders, and school officials with proper training for active shooter situations. ... Release a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits them from reporting threats of violence to law enforcement authorities."

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These were the executive orders that alarmed the Florida Sheriffs Association. Go figure.

Lee County Sheriff Mike Scott, who seconded the motion on the proclamation, told the Naples Daily News why it was a necessary statement to make.

"Its a dangerous time if one man can change the Constitution through any type of executive order," Scott said.

Scott retired two years ago as Lee County Sheriff. If not he would have certainly been on my list of worst sheriffs in Florida.

Scott fought the local NAACP chapter in Lee County over its modest objection to the framed portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee in his Confederate uniform hanging in the county commission chambers behind the dais.

The civil rights group suggested displaying a different portrait of Lee that didnt show him garbed in the Confederacy uniform. Almost 9 percent of Lee County residents are black.

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Scott used this request as a vehicle to attack local civil rights leaders for not being more supportive of George Zimmerman, a self-appointed vigilante who shot and killed an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin, during a sidewalk encounter eight years ago.

"I find your resurrected fixation with the portrait of Robert E. Lee and the demand for its removal regrettable," then Sheriff Scott wrote the local NAACP a year after the Martin killing. "The timing so proximate to the Zimmerman race-baiting is certainly suspect.

"While I am not black, I continue to be amazed by what is deemed racially offensive and/or insensitive and what is not. For example, the rampant use of the word n----- (which he spelled out completely) in the wildly popular hip-hop culture that floods the ears of youth across this nation and is comprised primarily of black artists apparently stirs little to no emotion among blacks but the portrait of General Lee does?"

Oy. Are there enough human resources training sessions in the world to fix that?

Compared with these examples, Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw is like a combination of Mahatma Gandhi and Stuart Smalley.

But Bradshaws no prize package either.

He and his political patron Barry Krischer were essential players in the clandestine coddling of serial child rapist Jeffrey Epstein, who was given his own private wing in the Palm Beach County Stockade by Bradshaw, and privileges to come and go from the jail as if it were a hotel.

And Bradshaw never seems to have enough money in his departments budget to equip his deputies with body cameras a truth-revealing tool in officer-involved shootings even though the sheriffs offices in Miami-Dade and Broward counties have had body cameras for years.

But Bradshaw has the advantage of appearing to be relatively reasonable in this group of unreasonable lawmen.

It takes an awful lot to be the worst sheriff in Florida.

fcerabino@pbpost.com

@FranklyFlorida

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Cerabino: Worst sheriff in Florida: Thats tough ... Is there an all of the above option? - Palm Beach Post