all right good afternoon everyone and thank you all for coming out to cover our auto-theft task force news conference before we get started I wanted to simply make some introductions and set up the order of speakers first up we will have Chief Anthony Holloway of the st. Petersburg Police Department he will talk about the background and the reason why the task force was created in the first place next we will have chief Eric ward of the Tampa Police Department he will talk about the impact of the Task Force on Tampa PD Storace diction and the benefits of this regional approach and then Sheriff Bob Gualtieri will talk about the overview of the work of the task force and provides the final results we'll take questions after that and it's worth mentioning that various other representatives from various law enforcement agencies are here today as well to include Chief Dan slaughter of the Clearwater Police Department whose agency also assisted in this endeavor at this time I'd like to go ahead and turn it over to chief Holloway good afternoon everyone what I'll do is give you the background and I'll turn over a chief ward back in February of this year we started seeing an increase in our auto thefts so we had a conversation with in chief caster to say okay what can we start doing we still can get more information then later on we just started looking at okay our cars that are being stolen in st. Peter being dropped off in Tampa in Tampa cars are being dropped off in Saint Pete so that at that time later on chief Ward I got together and we decided on let's start putting a task force together because we solved we having the same problems across the bridge so he jumped in right away say okay let's start sharing information so we started sharing hot sheets with each other like what cars are being stolen honor you're sitting what cars being stolen our city and then we realized we had a bigger issue so that's when we got on the phone we contacted sheriff koala Terry and right away said sure whatever we need to do let's do it so that we put our three agencies together and we start tackling this problem but then we found out it was still a bigger problem here in Pinellas County so then we started doing conference call with all the agencies here in Pinellas County so 2 11 o'clock every morning we would share information on what cars are being stolen who's being arrested and in just all information so that's how the task force came about so we started in August of this year and the team that were involved within with st. Pete Tampa and the Sheriff's Office and thanks to these agencies to my left and to my right they had the assets that we don't have these helicopters that you're gonna hear about they're great tool it really helped us where we didn't have to chase anyone we just know what a car is like the chopper farm around we surround the car and we take the people into custody so without tampa without the sheriff's office st. pete we would have been stuck because we were still been chasing a lot of these cars throughout the city but this made it much safer for us to do what we could back off wait for the chopper to spot the vehicle set a perimeter and then get these guys and gals as they're coming out of the car we targeted a lot of areas we did a lot of information with crime analysis so we know we know where the cars are being taken and where the cars are being dropped off so without my turnover chief war but if we're going to solve this problem you hear both Chiefs saying that any Sheriff if you lock your cars and if you take your keys out of your cars ninety percent of vehicles that we're recovering we would not recover him anymore as the chief mentioned earlier you know one thing that was very significant in Tampa is that over the past six months we saw a significant increase in our auto thefts an auto burglaries so as we dug into it we realized that it had a common factor which was the Howard Franklin Bridge so as we looked at our suspects as well as the suspects in st. Petersburg we found the trend which was most of them were juveniles so as we compile that data and a list of names we got together as he was mentioned earlier to form his task force the task force a very effective at least in Tampa as well as in st. Pete and Pinellas simply because over the past six months we had a significant increase in crime and violent auto burglaries and over the past 30 days we experienced something close similar to a 32 percent decrease in auto thefts and auto burglaries that's the deck direct contributor to the auto theft Task Force now putting the right assets in place and working together as a team is the only one who can get it job done we tried the education process which is you know alerting all of our citizens along that corridor she just simply locked their cars take the keys out of the cars that fell so we had to change gears so forming this task force was a great idea and a great opportunity for us to work together as a team share our resources and to come back this one significant crime that was troubling both sides of the bay so with that I would pass it on to the sheriff Thank You chief word I want to take a minute to just before we talk about the results specifically the task force take a couple minutes to share some statistical information with you that helps I think paint the picture nature of the problem at least as we saw it here in Pinellas County and as it relates to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office in 2013 the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office took 332 reports of stolen vehicles so that's in the 13 contract cities and the unincorporated part of the county in 2014 we took 404 and we're on track this year to take 510 so it's most definitely an increasing problem for the is the board shows here for the first six months of 2014 compared to the first six months of 2015 is that we are up 31% so that's a significant increase in the number of stolen vehicles as both Chiefs have talked about and as I've talked about many many times is is that this is a problem that can be seriously mitigated I'm not going to say it's a problem that can be solved but it's a problem that can be seriously mitigated with the public's help and their help comes from simply locking your car doors these are crimes of opportunity the absolute majority of these are not situations where there's any four century these are situations where you got a bunch of kids young people that are roaming through neighborhoods and looking for those unlocked cars and finding the keys and the cars or other ways to steal them so again using some numbers from January 1st of 2015 through July 3rd first of 2015 so seven month period for all the agencies that use the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office records management system which again are some of the other cities there were 520 reports of stolen cars in Pinellas County 75% or no one no one to be unlocked and/or have the keys in the cars so that's a huge number and it does paint the picture it does tell the story of what's happening and these are really crimes of opportunity so what happens is when these kids and I say kids because a lot of them will talk about one here in particular but they're probably early teens 14 15 up into their mid-twenties and they're out there roaming the streets and they take these cars and then they use the cars to engage in other crime other criminal activity and one of the things that they find is a game but it's a deadly game this is a game of cat-and-mouse where as soon as they see the sheriff's office car a police department car and they see that cruiser gets behind them oftentimes they run and they flee they don't even wait for the officer or the deputy to light it up is is that they just flee but I can tell you that in February of 2015 through August of 2015 just the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office alone so one agency we had 333 incidents where a deputy or an officer got behind somebody and lit it up in the person flood and the average of that is forty seven times a month in August of 2015 alone there were 71 of those incidents but because we don't pursue people by policy for only traffic violations or for stolen cars is that the actual pursuits so far this year only been three but as they run they run red lights they flee from the police and they're engaging in dangerous and deadly conduct so this is a very serious thing that happens when people are leaving their cars unlocked unattended the cars are being stolen and these kids are out there engaging in very dangerous conduct conduct so what goes hand and handle with that this is not just the stolen cars but the car burglaries and I talked about this again many times and between January 1 and August 27th of 2015 in just with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office we have taken 1576 reports of car burglaries 86% were unlocked cars and you know what a good chunk of those and is very very responsible for people to do this there's a bunch of them where they leave their guns in their cars and these cars are unlocked and we had one not too long ago where a person left their car unlocked and it was an ar-15 and two 9-millimeter handguns that were stolen from the car and even when we asked these people you know give us the serial number of the gun so we can enter it in the system they don't even know remember go back to December of last year December of 2014 officer Charlie conduct in the Tarpon Springs Police Department was shot and killed and he was shot and killed with a gun that came from an unlocked car burglary it's wrong and this can be stopped people need to lock their cars we need your help we need the public's help in dealing with this problem we can't do it alone and it is a problem that we can seriously mitigate if people will help us by locking their cars so getting into the task force a little bit more a little bit about the task force itself the deputies and officers from all three agencies work seven days a week we had a total of 36 12 from each agency that were assigned to the task force and they work diligently to detect through the use of daily briefing sheets and that's what you see over here to the right these hot sheets so is was mentioned in the daily conference calls there would be information gathered and information disseminated and they literally hit the streets with these hot sheets looking for these cars and they had great success in finding these cars and then in a very tactically sound way to mitigate the exposure to danger for themselves and to the public is that they were able to safely take these people into custody without pursuits without having to take action to put the public at risk and that was heavily accomplished by the use of air support from the Tampa Police Department in the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office and the use of some other technology that we had available to us to be able to surveil these people and get them to a place where they could be safely taken into custody without having that cat and mouse game where you get behind them with the marked car you light it up and they run so the successes we had were because of the number of people the quality training and the quality tactics that they employed to accomplish this so during the course of the task force so far because it's not over we will continue with our efforts in this regard until we see these numbers go down and these kids get the message and knock it off and stop doing it so during the period of time so far since August when we began there's been 64 arrests and 46 recovered stolen vehicles a number of the people were charged with crimes in addition to the grand theft for the stolen vehicles and all that information is listed on the boards that you have here down here on my left where it lays out all the different charges now one in particular that I do want to mention to you because this is one example and there are others one example of the problem that we see is these kids and I say kids because this one right here Cleon Williams he's 15 years old and look at it 15 years old look at his criminal history is that the most serious crime begins there back in 15 with grand theft and carjacking so he carjacks a car and then from there he's got for grand theft auto's and the most that has happened to him so far is spending a few days literally a few days in the juvenile detention center and his after his most recent arrest two days ago he's released a home detention so how soon is it gonna be before he's out stealing another car how many times these kids have to steal cars before somebody decides they shouldn't put them back on the street again something else needs to be done this is a problem with the system and my view the system system is not working well when you got a kid like this that steals cars four and five times and does an armed carjacking and then he goes home to mom and he sits on home detention it's not working so something needs to be done better in that regard so again we we'll continue with our efforts we will continue to do everything we can to keep the community on both sides of the base safe in the same time send the message to these people who are doing this is that we're not going to put up with it and we are going to do everything we can to put you in jail and hopefully the system will do a better job than what it's doing and keeping these people locked up so that they can't get out there in really in many respects terrorize the community with what they're doing these pursuits are very concerning these fleeing and eluding czar very concerning because as these people do this and sometimes it's several times the night they are putting the public at risk they're putting the public in danger by running red lights and by running people off the road and engaging in very dangerous driving oh it is more than just property crime and then is they're using these stolen cars they're engaging in other types of criminal activity as well so that's the problem we face I think we're going to see I know we're going to see as we finished this year we're gonna see an increase in crime in our County because of this type of street crime activity is car burglaries are up stolen cars are up and also so far we're seeing street crime robberies are up but it's all being committed by these people and they're all doing the same thing again a lot of it can be fixed by people securing their property so we're asking for the public's help in that regard