Once the youngest officer ever hired by the Lake Worth Police Department, Eric Coleman is no longer the kid cop he was when he pinned on the badge on his 20th birthday and headed off to Palm Beach Community College’s Police Academy.
That was in 1985. By then, Coleman already had been on the job as a civilian LWPD employee for two years, right out of high school, as a parking enforcement officer writing tickets at Lake Worth beach.
Today, Coleman is gray at the temples but fit and youthful. He wears his green uniform, the Glock .9-millimeter on his belt and the gold eagles on his collar with ease as one of four Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office colonels.
“Col. Coleman is a committed member of the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, where he has dedicated himself to the safety and protection of the citizens of Palm Beach County,” longtime Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said this week.
Since being promoted from major to colonel in January, Coleman serves directly under Bradshaw, overseeing some 1,500 uniformed officers in 20 districts and 13 municipalities across much of the county’s 2,383 square miles. That includes five majors, 25 captains, 35 lieutenants, 129 sergeants, and 872 deputies and detectives.
“My role now is comparable to an assistant police chief,” said Coleman, who has been a Royal Palm Beach resident since 1989. “My job is to ensure we’re hitting our benchmarks, that our service delivery is where it needs to be, [and] our citizens are happy.”
Coleman said to accomplish those goals, it’s necessary to stay on top of crime trends, make sure resources are properly allocated to address changing priorities, and work with his majors and others to ensure that “things impacting us globally, we’re addressing as a team.”
While it is a big job, Coleman said, “I have a lot of help. We all have our roles and responsibilities. If everyone is chipping in and doing their part, it all goes pretty smooth.”
Coleman moved with his family from Ohio in 1973 to what was then western Lake Worth. He remembers playing on some pretty good football teams at John I. Leonard High School and law enforcement personnel coming to the school to make presentations. He was impressed, and almost as soon as his high school diploma was in his hand, he was ready to embark on a law enforcement career.
“I did some ride-alongs,” he said. “It was very attractive to me. I liked the uniforms and the fact that no two days were the same. I guess maybe I’m a little bit of an adrenalin junkie.”
It was a challenging time to join the force.
“This was right when the crack cocaine epidemic was starting,” he said. “There was a push to hire a lot of police officers in Palm Beach County because it was a pretty rough time here.”
In 1987, Coleman joined the PBSO, moving through a variety of assignments, including road patrol, homicide, special victims, internal affairs and narcotics.
He also earned a degree from Barry University while continuing his law enforcement training through the DEA Drug Unit Commander Academy and the FBI National Academy. He also was part of Leadership Palm Beach County’s Class of 2020 and is currently enrolled in Leadership Florida Cornerstone Class 42.
“When you come in, everyone has to do their time in road patrol, and that’s where you build up your foundation,” Coleman said. “Some people stay on road patrol their entire careers and they love it, and I loved it… but I was passionate about investigations.”
Coleman said he enjoyed the heat of a homicide investigation but spent only one year in the unit because the demands of the job were incompatible with the needs of a young family. Still, when he was there, he did his job putting killers away — noting that there are 12 inmates from Palm Beach County on death row, and one (Ronnie Knight) was sent there by him and his partner in 1995.
From homicide, Coleman shifted to the Special Victims/Crimes Against Children Unit. While the switch offered better hours, “It’s much more emotionally charged because the victims are alive, but it’s also in many ways more rewarding, because you can stop the abuse from happening… and change someone’s life.”
Still, “there were days when I would come home, and I felt like I had the filth of these guys on me,” he said. “I didn’t want to touch my kids until I took a shower.”
In 2000, Coleman became a sergeant working in internal affairs and back to special victims; in 2005, he became a lieutenant overseeing special victims.
Then, in September 2006, he and then-Capt. Antonio “Tony” Araujo were assigned to merge the Royal Palm Beach Police Department with the PBSO.
For Coleman, the assignment was a homecoming. He had raised a son and daughter in Royal Palm Beach with his first wife, and soon would be raising twins — also a boy and girl, now 19 — with his second wife, attorney Marybel Reinoso Coleman.
“It turned out to be a very successful merger, and it led to many future mergers,” Coleman said. “We brought a lot more resources to this community than a small-town police force could provide. I think it was very helpful for me to know a lot of the people, to know the culture, to know the community.”
In 2009, Coleman was appointed PBSO captain in Royal Palm Beach, before shifting in 2011 to take over the Narcotics Division, where he aggressively went after the county’s pill mill problem.
“I was head of a task force [that included] local, state and federal agencies,” he said. “We were sending undercover agents into doctors’ offices and pharmacies… And that kind of morphed into the heroin problem.”
Then, in 2017, Coleman was elevated to major overseeing the department’s West Region, which includes all of the western communities, as well as the Glades. He remained in that role until Jan. 27, when he officially got his colonel’s eagles.
The colonel he replaced was Araujo, who recently became the chief of the West Palm Beach Police Department.
When time allows, the Colemans enjoy travel, fishing and golf, and are involved with various charities, including Habitat for Humanity.
Coleman said the biggest challenge that the PBSO faces over the next few years is likely to be recruiting men and women who want to do the job he loves.
“Young people are not as attracted to this profession as they were in the past,” he said. “And it’s getting harder, and it is very competitive to get qualified applicants.”
Negative media coverage of law enforcement over the last few years has played a role, he said. “Our salaries and benefits are competitive… [but] our standards are high,” Coleman said.
