Keys Sheriff's Station

The main Leonida Keys sheriff's station, a concrete bunker of an office handling the chain's enormous territory with a skeleton crew and chronic boat trouble.

The Keys Sheriff's Station is the improbable little nerve center trying to police a hundred and twenty miles of ocean-spanning islands with a staff that would fit into a large SUV. The building itself is a squat hurricane-hardened concrete box painted beige, with a boat ramp, a few docked patrol boats that are usually at least half broken, and a helipad that almost nobody is trained to use. The deputies here are a mix of genuinely dedicated cops, cheerfully burned-out cops, cops who grew up in the Keys and are related to at least a third of their suspects, and at least one cop per shift who is obviously and mutually understood to be on someone else's payroll. Their turf covers smuggling, DUI, tourist stupidity, occasional murder, weather emergencies, and the slow grind of trying to build cases against people who can hop a boat to the Bahamas faster than a warrant can be drawn up.