Articles Posted in Crime News

Four suspects from Palm Beach County were apprehended after breaking into an elementary school with the intent of stealing laptop computers. This wasn’t the first time the thieves tried this. The first attempt occurred last Memorial Day weekend. A janitor came in to the school to find one of the classrooms was broken in to. Nearly $20,000 dollars in Apple iBooks were stolen from a locked cabinet which had been snapped open. Emboldened by the robbery, the thieves came back for another score, this time snagging 31 iBooks. Little did they know that Broward Sheriff Office deputies had been alerted by a silent alarm and were waiting outside for their immediate arrest.

The suspect plead to charges of grand theft, burglary, possession of burglary tools and obstruction without violence.

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Michael Hernandez, a computer technician for the Department of Children and Families, is being placed on probation for supplying false information to authorities in their investigation of a former employee’s child pornography case. The Tampa man admitted to deleting files off the person in question’s computer, Al Zimmerman, yet later he attempted to assist federal investigators in building substantial evidence in the case against Zimmerman.

Violation of probation has not occurred in this offense, yet VOP is one of the most common charges faced in the criminal law field. A competent attorney can handle these criminal matters quickly and efficiently. Do not go with a lawyer that will not meet your requirements in legal skill or prowess.

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Anthony Mercer, 35, was arrested in possession of a significant amount of drugs located in a Fort Lauderdale warehouse. Mercer is married to a prosecutor in the Broward County State Attorney’s Office and has been for 7 years. While in the warehouse, officers seized atleast an ounce of cocaine and approximately a pound of marijuana. As well as the cocaine and marijuana, he was found to be in possession of 21 prescription pills.

Cocaine possession, cocaine delivery, cocaine trafficking, in fact all criminal cases filed in Fort Lauderdale, Miami and throughout the state of Florida in which the state seeks criminal sanction for possession of controlled substances begins with a study of Florida statute 893. Statute begins by defining the important words and phrases used in this chapter. In a prosecution for possession of cocaine or possession of any other controlled substance begins with an indictment, which is called prosecutor information, under this statute.

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In a blatant anti-Semitism attack on a Miami Beach synagogue, a man lit some wood pallets on fire resulting in a intense fire contained to the garage of the building. Officials say if they arrived minutes later, it could have ripped through the main area of the building. Not more than a week ago another anti-Semetic attack occurred at a local rabbi’s house in Miami Beach. Miraculous in timing, a day earlier the synagogue where the fire took place had a camera installed. The camera got the arsonist smoking a cigarette yet reports show inconclusive evidence as to how he ignited the fire exactly. No arrests have been made yet according to a detective of the Miami Beach police department.

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14 individuals of the Winter Garden-based Westside gang were apprehended recently in a gang arrest initiative created by local law enforcement in the Central Florida area drug unit. This particular gang was responsible for millions of dollars in value of drugs being shipped into the Central Florida area for over 10 years. Severe jail sentences loom over the heads of these criminals caught and for good reason. The gang has been linked to many cases of witness intimidation and money laundering by the use of several business fronts in the Winter Garden area. Drug sales were hidden at these discreet locations in order to cover their money trails and police heat. Bales upon bales of marijuana and cocaine were seized at several of the sites where arrests took place.

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Numerous drug growing houses were targeted in Polk County. Officials say these marijuana-cultivating houses are a problem for the community for a multitude of reasons. One obvious reason is the fact that they are growing points and primary centers where drugs enter the market. Secondly, the guns and cash usually found at these houses are a target for criminal activity besides the fact of the drug growing.

Many of the charges facing the criminals arrested in the entire operation ranged from trafficking in cannabis and cultivation of cannabis to maintaining a dwelling for drug trafficking and possession of drug paraphernalia.

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After an incident at a middle school in Florida where a 13 year old was raped, critics and lawyers say the laws have been softened regarding bullying. The Jeffrey Johnston Stand Up for All Students Act requires schools in Florida to establish concrete policies to discourage bullying in person and online or risk losing state funding. Lawyers to the raped individual aforementioned have claimed that if the law on the books had been enforced in the school, the incident would not have even occurred.

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In an unprecedented law suit ruling, Mary Taylor Christensen has been ordered by the courts to pay $6.2 million to the family of the victims in her drunk driving hit-and-run incident. In 2005, Christensen drank too much, took painkillers, hopped behind the wheel and ended up slamming into a car on the side of I-95 belonging to Thomas Bowen, who was instantly killed as he changed a flat tire. Christensen has been serving an 11.5 year sentence for the vehicular manslaughter and will now pay a massive amount of money in restitution for her crime.

Driving under the influence is a deadly motor vehicle crime that costs many people their lives, physically, financially, and in their freedom. Drinking and driving should already be a definite ‘no’ activity and must be seen in light of the damage it creates and the wide ripple effect that it creates.

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Last week, Indian River County Sheriff Deryl Loar implemented a drug task force on the highways. Many patrol cars were assigned to their stretch of highway, pulling over vehicles that sped or had other minor traffic violations in hope of discovering illegal drugs or other criminal activity. Of the cars pulled, surprisingly many had drugs on them or were wanted on warrants. One car was a rental car, driven by a suspended license driver, headed to Georgia, with marijuana in the car. Others involved one driver having numerous pain-killer scripts from travelling all across South Florida for doctors and their signatures to write off drugs like Oxycontin, Percocet, and Vicotin. The law enforcement agency in this article had felt like they took a chunk of crime off the streets and done well in one days simple work.

Prescription pills used illegally or in possession by those without prescription is a felony in most if not all cases and are dealt aggressively by state prosecutors. Trafficking amounts can be as low as one pill in certain cases.

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Ten teenagers in the Florida Keys have been charged in making child pornography videos. The tape allegedly had a 16 year old runaway girl engaging in sexual intercourse with a 19 year old man, with witnesses around in the Key Largo apartment. The camera operator and surrounding people would direct movements at times and yell things at them. A 14 year old runaway girl there notified officials of the incident because she believed rape was involved at certain points when the female subject of the video had said “no” during portions of the filming.

All 10 — the six juveniles and Kenneth Carter, 19; Michael Thelus, 18; Derek Williams, 19, who deputies say was the one having sex on camera; and Ceasar Gjerde, 18 — face charges of sexual performance by a child, a second-degree felony. Gjerde also was charged with directing and producing the performance. Williams was also charged with promoting a sexual performance by a child. Bail was set at $175,000 per count for the adults involved.

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