Steve Harrelson began his career at the Sheriff’s Office in 1989 as a Deputy Sheriff before becoming a Field Training Officer. He was promoted to Detective in 1993 where he worked in Property Crimes, Financial Crimes and Violent Crimes. He was credited with starting the Fraud Alert Fax system, a mass notification to financial institutions for fraud related crimes and suspects. He also created the fingerprint identification system for local financial institutions greatly decreasing forged checks.
Steve was promoted to Sergeant in 2002, where he supervised the Field Training Program, Property Crimes Unit and Financial Crimes Unit. He developed the Uniform Patrol Guidelines, which provided uniform procedures for handling all calls for service. While a Sergeant, Steve was awarded the LCSO Medal of Meritorious Service for exceptional service, which has only been awarded 4 other times.
In 2006, Steve was promoted to Lieutenant over the Accreditation Section and was promoted to Captain in 2011. During his time as Captain, he was the Commander for Community Services, Uniform Patrol and Criminal Investigations Bureaus, respectively. In May 2016, he was promoted to Major and became the Director for the Special Services Division.
In January 2017, he promoted to Chief of Administrative Services, overseeing Employee Relations, Procurements, Fleet, Records, Information Technology, Facilities, Training and Emergency Management. In August 2018, Steve became the Interim Director/Director for the Consolidated Dispatch Agency (CDA) that provides 911 and dispatching services for the Leon County Sheriff’s Office, Tallahassee Police Department, Leon County EMS, and Tallahassee Fire Department.
In February 2020, Steve was promoted to the position as Assistant Sheriff over Judicial, Detention and Community Corrections and is now currently the Assistant Sheriff over Law Enforcement.
Steve was a member of the Hostage Negotiation Team for 18 years and became the Team Commander in January 2016. He was responsible for obtaining the team’s first two command vehicles offering a mobile command post for team operations.
Steve holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminology from Florida State University. He is married to Christina for 29 years and they have two adult sons, Tyler and Corey.