South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Former Palm Beach County Sheriff Bob Neumann dies at 81
Robert Neumann, a public-school teacher -turned-FBI special agent who later spent four years as the top law enforcement official in Palm Beach County, died Feb. 5. He was 81.
Neumann, a Republican, at the age of 53 was sworn in as Palm Beach County sheriff in January 1997 after winning against incumbent Democrat Charles McCutcheon, 54% to 46%. He won the primary election in September 1996 against two opponents by a wide margin — with
70% of the vote.
“I will approach this job as I have approached everything I’ve attempted to do — with all the energy I have, with all the integrity I can muster,” Neumann said in a speech in 1997 after taking his oath of office.
The Sheriff ’s Office in a statement shared on social media last week called Neumann “a beacon of dedication and service within our community. Sheriff Neumann’s legacy will forever be remembered as one of integrity, bravery and unwavering service.”
A major platform of Neumann’s campaign was to change what he saw as bureaucracy within the department.
Before his decadeslong career in law enforcement, Neumann obtained his bachelor’s degree in elementary and secondary education from the University of Miami and spent four years as a physical education and history teacher in Miami-Dade County middle and high schools in the mid-to-late
1960s.
He told the South Florida Sun Sentinel after he was elected sheriff that it was in his teaching role that he saw many young students who lacked discipline. Intervening with youth before they reached the criminal justice system was a priority of Neumann’s campaign platform and remained so after he was elected.
Shortly after he took office Neumann pitched the idea of a youth boot camp for troubled students in what he recognized as a “nontraditional approach.”
Supported by then-Gov. Lawton Chiles, the camp in Belle Glade was called the Youth Eagle Academy and opened in late September 1997. The military-style school closed in 2010.
He fulfilled a promise to citizens he made while campaigning by opening a new district in western Boca Raton. Neumann told the Sun Sentinel in 1998 it was the first expansion of a district in 20 years.
After the community was rocked by a car crash that killed four family members in October 1997 in western Delray Beach, Neumann brought back a unit of deputies who focused on arresting those driving under the influence that was in place before he took office but dismantled after a few years.
Neumann supported some changes that were controversial with some deputies and the union at the time, including asking the state Legislature to do away with automatic raises for captains that were based on how long they had been with the department.
He wanted pay raises to be based on merit.
He also pledged to “bust up the gangs.” Between Neumann taking office and his reelection campaign in 2000, the Sheriff ’s Office increased the number of gang-related
cases it handled and had identified more gangs and gang members, the Sun Sentinel previously reported.
The Sun Sentinel reported in 2000 that Neumann had added over 40 patrol positions to the Sheriff ’s Office since he took office and had over 100 more deputies patrolling than in the year before he took office. Neumann was sheriff until 2000, when he lost to Ed Bieluch, a Democrat, despite then-State Attorney Barry Krischer crossing party lines to endorse him.
By the time he retired early from the FBI to run for sheriff in 1995 Neumann had been the chief of the FBI’s West Palm Beach office for more than 10 years.
His 26-year career in the FBI seemed to start on a whim.
When a friend said he was going to try to become an FBI agent, Neumann said “that sounded good to him too,” the Sun Sentinel reported in 1996.
In his more than two decades with the FBI the majority of Neumann’s investigative experience centered on organized crime, the Mafia and public corruption, Neumann told the Sun Sentinel in a 2000 interview during his reelection campaign. He was the agent in charge of all FBI operations in West Palm Beach and in four other counties in the last half of his career.
Some of his notable cases included investigating Ku Klux Klan members in Jackson, Miss.; investigating firefighters in Detroit who burned school buses to fight against integration; the 1975 disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the former International Brotherhood of Teamsters president; and in the same year the kidnapping of 13-year-old Timothy Stempel, the son of Robert Stempel, later the CEO of General Motors.
Neumann is survived by his wife, Babs; his daughter, Kristin; and his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by another daughter, Jennifer, according to a family obituary published in the Palm Beach Post.