“David Dipre is truly gifted. He displays humility and kindness, balanced with strength and professionalism. I consider it a privilege to witness his dedication and service to the Florida keys community. Mostly, I’m honored to call him my friend.” – Richard “Moose” Vandervoort, Monroe County Fire Rescue captain & 79th Street Band member
“Dave Dipre is the epitome of communication, cooperation, partnership and teamwork. Twenty-four hours a day, he showed up, came early and stayed late. He’s part of the MCSO family. He’s one of the most dedicated law enforcement officers I’ve ever met. We’ll move on, but you can’t replace Dave.” – Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay
On July 3, flashing lights and dozens of law enforcement officers descended on 79th Street in Marathon. On the street he calls home – which became the name of his must-see local band – FWC Captain Dave Dipre sat in the back of a patrol truck. After 30 years spent serving the citizens of Florida, he took a deep breath, choking back emotions for a moment before giving his final “10/7” over the radio.
“Please don’t play bagpipes,” he laughed.
“Your leadership, courage and unwavering commitment has been an inspiration to us all,” the dispatcher replied. “On behalf of dispatch, it’s been an honor serving with you, sir.”
Dipre’s drive for public service began before he could drive a car, starting as a junior firefighter in Pennsylvania at the age of 14 before joining the army after high school.
“Back in the ’80s, you could do a lot more stuff than you can now,” he said. “Wearing the packs and going into burning buildings at a very young age – we did some crazy stuff.”
Working as a dispatcher, Dipre said he saw the opportunity to get out from behind a desk and on the water as Florida Marine Patrol merged with the Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission to become FWC in 1999.
“I was in FWC Academy number 1,” he said. “But I knew in the Keys, we did a lot more than that – we were involved in narcotics, domestic violence, everything.”
Sure enough, on his first day on the job, Dipre was chasing down a murder suspect who’d hijacked a boat out of Garrison Bight Marina in Key West, ending in a sniper standoff with the grounded vessel.
“It wasn’t like that every day, because Monroe County is a great place to be,” he said. “But sometimes, it goes south.”
With all he’s seen, Dipre’s sense of humor is still his calling card for anyone who knows him. Asked how he keeps that alive in spite of the stories he can tell, his answer is simple:
“Because most people are wonderful,” he said. “Those people we deal with in those (bad) situations, they’re 10% of the 1%. But it’s our job to find them.
“Even the ones we deal with who are way down in the dumps, maybe rock bottom, if you treat them with dignity, they really appreciate it, because that’s all they’re looking for half the time. … And many times, they snap back.”
And even in the darkest situations, he said, there’s always a sliver of humor to be found.
“If you don’t laugh about it, the sadness of it … there has to be something there to keep you from being angry,” he said. “We make ourselves laugh about it. … You look at the humor, if you can find it.”
He recalled a night chasing down a domestic violence suspect who’d run his sailboat aground on Eastern Dry Rocks. Commandeering – and accidentally sinking – a small dinghy to try to rescue the victim from the shallow reef waters, the FWC and Coast Guard crews were surprised to find the boat missing when they returned just minutes later.
“In the three or four minutes that we were transporting her back, (the suspect) managed to wake up, pull the anchor and disappear,” Dipre said. “But suddenly we saw red flares going up. Turns out that when he hit the reef, he cracked the hull. So he got maybe 100 yards away and sank the sailboat.
“We got all the boats out of the water, but what a goofy night, man.”
Getting boats out of the water – derelict vessels, specifically – is a specialty for Dipre, and one he can proudly look back on after helping spearhead years of efforts to remove the ecologically-damaging eyesores from the Keys’ mangroves, seagrass beds and canals.
After Hurricane Irma, more than 1,600 vessels were pulled from Keys waters. This fiscal year alone, he said, they’ve pulled out 130 – in Key West alone.
“The guys make fun of me for it all the time, how I can never go to a meeting without mentioning derelict vessels. But you have to,” he said. “We can’t stop for a minute.”
As he closes the book on more than three decades in law enforcement and public service, Dipre credited FWC major Alberto Maza, Monroe County Sheriff Rick Ramsay and Robert Spottswood as his mentors. But his greatest accomplishment, he said, is the partnerships he’s been fortunate enough to preserve and grow in a delicate island chain, where cooperation is more vital than ever.
“I don’t want to say proud, because I didn’t do anything magnificent,” he said. “People say it’s so cliche, but if we didn’t have such great partnerships with the sheriff’s office, Key West Police Department, the fire departments, the county commission, we couldn’t have been as successful as we were. I’m really hoping that (new FWC Capt.) Adam (Garrison) can keep that up.”
