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ACTIVIST COMPARES SUCCESSFUL ARREST OF FUGITIVE IN ST. PETERSBURG LAKE TO BOTCHED HERNANDO CO. DEATH
Governor and Florida Law Enforcement Agency Asked to Initiate State Investigation
St. Petersburg, FLORIDA: Wednesday, March 3, 2010: Governor Charlie Crist and The Florida Law Enforcement Agency in Tallahassee were sent urgent letters today alerting them to the successful arrest last week of a fleeing criminal, Robert J. Keaton, by the St. Petersburg police department in a Pinellas County lake.
What was startling about this action, wrote the letter's author, was the "similarity of circumstances to a botched effort by the Hernando County Sheriff's Department on September 12, 2009, resulting in the drowning death of its' fleeing fugitive, James "Little Man" Rayford."
Brian Moore, a Hernando County civic activist, wrote that "the similarities of the two cases were hauntingly identical, but the subsequent outcomes were totally opposite of each other, due to the varying caliber of the two law enforcement pursuits." Moore called upon the state leaders to call for a "full-blown investigation."
Both jurisdictions, Pinellas and Hernando counties, had fugitives who were both reported on to the police by a phone call from a Pinellas County teacher or a phone tip, possibly from a jilted girlfriend near or within Hernando County. Both, a fugitive and a criminal, were in flight from the police; both individuals were black; both fled to the safety of a body of water, a lake; both escapees refused to heed the law enforcement efforts to turn themselves in; and both remained in the water, one standing in 5 feet of water in Pinellas County's Lakepoint Reserve, and the other, in an 8-foot kayak, in the middle of Hernando County's Hunter Lake, in six feet of water.
The activist continued in his letter, "However, the police tactics to pursue the criminals were completely the opposite of each other." St. Petersburg police used at least one boat, several officers jumped in the water to pursue Mr. Keaton, 50 feet into the water, and tried diplomatic conversations with him to surrender, actually providing him a cigarette. They had Mr. Keaton's girlfriend and mother speak to him by cell phone to urge him to surrender, and finally turned a tazer gun on Keaton to overcome him successfully. This action was taken out of concern for Robert Keaton's well-being, due to the hypothermia that appeared to be setting in from him standing in the frigid water for over an hour. The result was that the St. Petersburg Police was able to successfully overcome their suspect, "without injury to him, or to the pursuing police, as well as not endangering the surrounding community," Moore wrote in his letter.
On the otherhand, the rural county sheriff's department in Hernando County "did the exact opposite in their pursuit," wrote Moore. The eleven sheriff deputies, in six patrol cars, while at Hunter Lake's edge, either did not initially bring a boat or they did not try to use a boat to pursue the individual who was fleeing in a kayak on the lake on a late Thursday afternoon.
Furthermore, none of the eleven deputies got into a boat to pursue fugitive Rayford; no conversation or communication was attempted by the sheriffs other than to call Mr. Rayford on his cell phone initially, while he was fishing on the lake, just to make certain it was him, and two bail bondsmen, who listened in, identified his voice as the fugitive. Then the deputies immediately hung up the phone. Apparently, the sheriff deputies did not identify themselves, nor attempt to persuade the fugitive over the cell phone to return to shore to turn himself in.
The Hernando County deputies attempted to borrow a boat from a neighbor, according to their internal affairs report later; and simultaneously, or immediately, they called in a sheriff department helicopter to pursue and hover over the fugitive in a kayak in the lake, three feet over the water surface and within six feet of his boat. The pilot was quoted in the report that he kept trying to pressure and move the fugitive back to shore with his helicopter near the water and menacing the fugitive.
When the fugitive either was knocked out of the boat into the water, due to the helicopters' rotating blades, or the sheriff's department said "he fell" into the water, in either case, the helicopter ended up directly over the swimming/fleeing fugitive when Rayford surfaced from under the water the first time. Mr. Rayford then disappeared underneath the water a second time, directly underneath the hovering helicopter.
None of the reported 11 deputies, on both sides of the lake, upon seeing the fugitive fall or jump into the lake, or after seeing him disappear under the water, did they try and dive into the water to attempt a rescue and to try and save him. Nor, apparently, did any deputy obtain or use a boat to go out to attempt to save, much less search, for the lost fugitive, until "an unknown amount of time had lapsed before they began their search for either a body or for a fleeing fugitive," wrote the civic activist and lakeside resident himself.
Because the deputies were unable to locate the fugitive, or his body, they had to alert the community that "a fugitive was on the loose," who was "armed and dangerous," and was a "threat" to the neighborhood.
For two days, the local neighborhood, and lakeside area, was in a state of fear, while the sheriff's department searched both the land and the water for the escaped fugitive, James Rayford.
Brian Moore included in his letter to the governor and to the Florida Law Enforcement Agency a copy of a recent newspaper article in the St. Petersburg Times, with a picture of the captured suspect and the police (article attached below) which reported on the St. Petersburg chase of February 25th.
Moore has also reported on a similar incident that was reported in the Tampa Tribune on December 24th, where the U.S. Coast Guard had rescued three fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, 60 miles from shore, with the use of a helicopter. However, the large helicopter was kept away from the 32-foot boat, for fear of capsizing the three fishermen into the deep waters. Instead, the Coast Guard, according to their spokesperson, conducted a "classic way" to rescue people in danger in lake or sea waters.
Moore concluded his letter stating that the discrepancy in the two law enforcement pursuits, obviously points out dramatically how one law enforcement agency handled a fugitive pursuit efficiently and responsibly, while the other "failed miserably in both counts, as well as tragically causing the death of an individual, who did not have to die because of his actions."
Moore hoped that the state government agencies would "hold those officers, and their superiors, responsible and accountable for their deadly actions, even if it means going to the top of the agency."
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*Translation provided by babelfish.altavista.com