In a column last June I introduced readers to the Lee County Sheriff’s Department’s Citizens Academy, a 12-week interactive program intended to enhance understanding, communication and partnerships between citizens and law enforcement agency in the Southwest Florida county.

Completion of the course gave us a renewed respect for our men and women in blue who are dedicated to serve and protect our neighborhoods. None in the class however - let alone those instructing us - could imagine the amount of havoc and destruction Hurricane Ian would cause within months in the county of 780,000 residents.

The devastating storm has stretched and tested the manpower and resources of Lee County like no other time in its history. One thing that stood out to us who went through the citizen’s academy was the focus and dedication to community by the law enforcement agency, from Sheriff Carmine Marceno, down through the ranks.

After taking a direct hit from Ian, we saw no change in that clear, firm resolve by those in key positions of authority, from Sheriff Marceno on the local level to the state in Gov. Ron DeSantis and the federal in our elected U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds.

Marceno’s early assessment was clear and sobering to residents.

“It’s incomprehensible what we’re looking at,” he said. But he immediately put to rest those rumors circulating that “hundreds of bodies” were washing up on beaches.

My earlier column earlier this summer was written in the wake of the mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. At that time, Marceno responded directly after a teenager was arrested for phoning in a copycat threat at a Cape Coral school. The sheriff firmly served notice that any school threats in the county will not be tolerated and that his agency is well-prepared and trained to return deadly force with deadly force in any on-campus intrusion.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Marceno had a similar no-nonsense warning for would-be looters.

“They might be able to walk into someone’s home,” he stated, (but) “they might ... they will be carried out. I ain’t playing games.”

Speaking of the lawlessness during a news conference in the hard-hit city of Fort Myers, Gov. DeSantis revealed that three of four looting suspects arrested for ransacking and homes and business on Fort Myers Beach were in this country illegally.

“These are people that are foreigners, they’re illegally in our country, but not only that, they try to loot and ransack in the aftermath of a natural disaster,” DeSantis said. “They should be prosecuted, but they need to be sent back to their home country. They should not be here at all.”

Even while citizens were still being rescued, DeSantis and other officials were facing criticism from some in the liberal media for the storm preparations and evacuation orders for the county. The governor explained that before Ian made landfall, every computer model had it heading toward Tampa Bay and the orders that were given reflected the quick-changing situation.

Donalds, who was tracking the storm was at the NOAA headquarters in Washington, D.C., agreed, stating that most people thought it was going to track northward but by Wednesday morning, it rapidly moved east and touched down in his home district in southwest Florida.

Thanks to the coordination and mobilization of emergency responders and the cool, decisive leadership from elected officials like Gov. DeSantis, Rep. Donalds and Sheriff Marceno, we’re now witnessing the largest and swiftest mobilization of hurricane and disaster response ever seen in Southwest Florida.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.