there was a horrible storm that came in they called for help and the Coast Guard said for some reason that they were not going to respond we're supposed to only respond nine miles offshore that's state water so yeah that was way outside but I was like if we don't go they're probably gonna die all I could think of is like look we just need to make it we need just need to find them before the sun goes all the way down you're listening to 56 a Pinellas County Sheriff's Office podcast I'm Ricky Butler once again with Laura Sullivan and Ashley Cooley we are excited to bring you another episode and I think we should say a big thank you to all of our listeners as we always do because that's the most important thing because people continue to listen to us for each episode and I think the feedback we're getting is increasing as well oh yes it is so I'm going to say you know what you know where they're sending that feedback yeah where are they sending that Laura they're sending it to Let's 56 at pcsonet.com that's l-e-t-s-5-6 at pcsonet.com a true professional so thank you to those that are listening bigger thank you to those sending feedback keep doing it because we're actually starting to get suggestions and recommendations for guests good ones good suggestions yeah so please keep doing it and be patient with us we will get you will get to hear every suggestion I've gotten so far has been a good person so we will hear from those people at some point we just got to get them into the schedule because we're working ahead quite a few months now so again keep sending the feedback thank you very much so let's get right into it in today's guest so uh Pinellas County is unique for a whole lot of reasons one of which is that it's a peninsula so there's a lot of water right so we've got the freshwater lakes we've got the gulf we've got the Bay of course the Intracoastal Waterway uh and a lot of people don't know is tens of thousands of Acres of environmentally protected lands and we have a specialized unit of guys and gals that take care of it we call those the Marine environmental lands deputies and we have one of them with us Deputy Jill constant welcome to 56. thank you for having me you've gotten a little bit of attention recently and it's probably our fault it's definitely our fault it might even call it Fame at this point Fame yeah Fame it's true I think she's gonna live forever bam so uh we were thrilled to have Jill to kind of talk about this because uh Marine people probably are like oh well Marine that's got to be the best job right you just ride around the boat all day see all the sights and the waterways and whatnot but it's a lot more than that and they all of the folks out there but especially Deputy constant and a handful of others are all about protecting the people and the animals in and about the Waterway and those protected preserves so I'm looking forward to talking all about that but first Ashley has a question look at you you remember this she asks this question of all of us we've never heard the question so you're not singled out and we're all going to answer it so Ashley this is your time to break the ice and get the conversation going okay so Barbie came out this weekend so um this might be like a two-parter question we'll see but what I want to know is were you a Barbie girl I mean I know you probably weren't but when you were a kid like was what was your go-to you know toy I guess well I I definitely love Barbie and I had Shira with her and they had swords and horses and Adventures it was yes it was not like a traditional they had really cool outfits too but it was a very it's a very adventurous sort of sort of Barbie lifestyle they did make Shira into a show too so gotta see the new She-Ra too hmm my plug so Shira is a character Shira it spun off of He-Man but then she was her own character had her own show and then they did a reboot that um I know but I'm into it now no it's okay this is like good Barnacle Boy and whatever crazy couple episodes ago anyway Dyna girl there it is yeah I'm like no that's SpongeBob whatever whatever whatever she's not gonna reference SpongeBob whatever anyway okay is it my turn yes were you about a girl I was not a Barbie girl um in a Barbie world uh I guess I had uh I had a lot of toy cars and stuff I did have some GI Joes and some really like cool helicopters and boats and GI Joe things did they do traditional War things or did you expand their storyline they did traditional War things okay yeah they had guns and whatnot okay okay no I I just that was I was not prepared for your follow-up question well I wanted them to have like a back story in a home life and what they're fighting for that kind of thing no just just a free world okay yeah sometimes it's not that complicated right all right especially when you're a kid Jill this might be surprising to you and it's Gonna Roll right into today's topic I was not a Barbie girl um I had an ally the alligator that's what I named him he was up three and a half foot long plastic alligator that I carried with me everywhere and I had Jurassic Park toys because I loved Velociraptors I was actually pretty obsessed so never owned a Barbie actually hmm yeah I did not either I was not I was not a Barbie girl my younger sister was um but I liked little animal like figurines and things I had like when 101 Dalmatians came out I had like Pongo and perdita and I took them everywhere with me and then I remember having like Flintstone figurines at one point like that was more so I could make little stories so those were you know in-depth and intricate she said Jurassic Park let me think of it I did have some toys from the lost world I had the little RV thing that goes off the cliff oh yeah I had that that was cool yeah I'm thinking I haven't thought about what I played when I was a kid for a while yeah and then there was always fire and stuff like that oh of course lots of fire yeah yeah yeah definitely good stuff yeah that wasn't nearly as scary as some of the others has anyone seen the movie yet no I will not be attending I will not be either I don't see myself seeing it I'm good yeah some historical context well thank you for asking that great question so uh now we're gonna we're gonna get into it uh with Deputy Jill constant now I guess we need to go all the way back to the beginning here so why does Jill constant want to be a deputy sheriff where did you tell I want to know everything from the time you were born to now look everybody's gonna tell you it's just to like help people and that's true okay we all want to help people but if we only wanted to help people we'd have been firefighters right right why I want to become a deputy sheriff I want to take bad guys to jail oh yeah right okay there you go the firefighter thing is there's a couple things I could have said but didn't you controlled yourself you might have listeners that are firefighters all right Fair Point fair point so growing up how'd you get into all of it what made you decide you wanted to go into law enforcement so I always wanted to do really something with environmental lands fish and wildlife something like that and that all started with my grandfather he was a really big impression on me I spent a lot of time with him growing up pretty much every day of the week while my parents worked and we spent a lot of time like hiking traveling places being out in the wilderness and he taught me a lot about the land and taking care of it taking care of the animals in it because when you protect and take care of those things they take care of us and we live longer and so that was kind of instilled upon me when I was really young and then in my later childhood my older brother who's significantly older than me became a charter captain and he is a captain on the Great Lakes up North I'm not from the state yeah up north yes yes uh in Northern Indiana in Southern Michigan okay so he's a he's a charter Captain up there and we'd go out fishing all the time he'd take me even though I was his little sister and even though his job is to catch fish for clients he's always been big on preserving numbers and when you catch fish you want to be conservative in what you keep you don't have to keep everything that you catch and if you do that you're just going to deplete numbers then we don't want fish to catch and he doesn't have a job and so many guys are like that so many guys are just you know as many possible fish as you can get because they think the numbers are going to make them more popular make more people want to go out with them exactly you said guys and I'm like guides already all right yes yeah Fair Point yeah and that's totally true and we see that a lot people just go out there and they just Slaughter fish just to do it yeah because people are going to book with them but they don't see the long picture they're obviously not in it for long term right right because when you do those things you start to see the the effects of it yeah so how did you get from and don't say a car or an airplane how did you get from from Indiana Michigan down to Florida what brought you here the weather yeah so I spent you know 24 years there you know in one spot went to college up there and there was nothing I hated more than the weather horrible it's the worst thing ever I mean it is nice realistically four months out of the year the region that I was from it it snows and rains the rest of the time it's just terrible so as soon as like I was in my late teens I was like as soon as I graduate college I'm leaving this place and never come back and I kid you not I could do not the week after I graduated college I packed all my stuff into my car and left well yeah yep said bye-bye um you started right off here in Pinellas I did yeah yeah what made you pick Pinellas so my brother uh also has a side job he's in the car industry and there was a big company he worked for up north that started down here and they needed somebody to come and work in their like legal department down here and so I took a job with them and started working like small claims court for them and so I could get hired with the sheriff's office because the big thing was like you need to be a resident to be employed here so I just came down did that for a little bit to get on my feet and then got hired here A year later so it was always the Sheriff's Office was always the goal well I didn't know that at the time okay yeah so what did we have that other people didn't have right so uh up north okay the DNR the Department of Natural Resources uh they're called game wardens and you know they're the big dogs in those States like that's the cream of the crop of law enforcement agencies everybody wants to go work make good money they make good money up there and so I just thought that's what I needed to do down here because I didn't know any different you know we didn't really have Marine units and we definitely didn't have like Marine environmental lands units at Sheriff's offices up up north it was just like that was all all DNR yeah yeah you were either a patrol officer or you went to DNR to go be do game stuff yeah so I just thought I was going to come down here and get in with them and then I found out how much they make and I was like oh no thank you I can't live on that equipment so that equivalent down here would be would be FWC right artificial water yes absolutely for sure and then I found out that the sheriff's offices in Florida are like totally different structure of like government down here is just totally different and that of most Sheriff's Office and bigger police agencies have their own Marine units and those Marine units also do fish stuff they don't just necessarily do like right Patrol and people don't realize that too I mean we just we're talking about it because we we did put out some of the results of some of the fishing enforcement stuff that y'all were doing and people don't realize it but yeah I mean and it goes back to we've mentioned it before but Sheriff's offices are different state to state they some parts of the country the sheriffs are kind of bottom of the totem pole and others like Florida Florida California and Texas are probably the most similar I would say as far as the powers and the resources the sheriff's offices have so yeah so you quickly figured that out that the sheriff's office is where you needed to be if you wanted to do that kind of work yeah absolutely as soon as I figured that out which didn't take long right I was like that's where I'm going and nobody's stopping me it wasn't that easy it was Daddy it really kind of was that easy I mean were they sponsoring that they were not so I guess I should retract my statement it wasn't quite that easy and he didn't go straight into Patrol either no no so uh when I got hired with the agency they were not sponsoring academies you had to like put yourself through the academy and then get hired and so on and so forth so um when I applied here I actually took a civilian spot first with the alternative sentencing unit one of those lame civilians it's the worst it was a tough job it really was like it taught you a lot of people skills and how to communicate with people and dealing with people from all sorts of different classes and backgrounds and stuff like that in dealing with violent offenders a lot so it got me comfortable with that um so I was in ASU for a year and then all of a sudden we started sponsoring people and I was like there's my window of opportunity and I went for it and did you get in the first class no no let me tell you about this okay this is after she told us how easy it was all right yeah this body can do a lot but it ain't meant for running I consider myself pretty physically fit I cannot run okay so like at all oh I mean I can but it's not pretty okay all right so I'm trying to just have to take him get up for a second no yeah is this while you're on the on the phone actually so there's no foot Pursuits yeah no chance of a Pursuit at all yeah pretty much I mean I mean the less chances I have to like have to get off the boat and run after somebody the better off just not run fast or you don't know how to coordinate your limbs like you use your arms too on the ground uh you know it just doesn't look good they're good and also I just my little legs just don't want to okay they're just not built for that okay they're just kind of like it's not looking good okay okay so so pre-hire they have a physical test they do that involves running yeah when you're sponsored you know they want to make sure that you're going to pass the entire PT test because as soon as you go to the academy day one you get washed out if you yeah you'll get washed out if you don't pass it up just just for our listeners um when we're talking about sponsorship we're talking about you'll actually be hired uh by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office we'll pay for you to go to the academy and more importantly pay you at the Academy while you're a good salary that's almost as much yes once you graduate you go right to the starting Deputy salary so anyway please continue yeah so uh the very first sponsored class I did not pass my the running portion flying colors on all the other portions running not so much so they said work on running we'll have another sponsored class in a month and they did and I passed at that time and the Rocky theme just starts playing for the next few months yeah just running up steps yeah and let me tell you in the academy it wasn't anybody better I mean we did a lot of running especially my class because there were some mischievous individuals so we got pt'd a lot my running really did not get good until the end of the academy and all of a sudden I like unlocked something and then after that you never ran again oh yeah I got out I was like never doing that again but you know you have to run like every year for your yeah your annual you know yeah and I pass it no problems okay let's clarify that I just hate my life when I do it right but I think like people watching are like oh I can see why she chose to go last I'm at the sheriff's office which is to see Deputy constant run yes yes when you do what's up let's chuck her heart I think it's like I think I my next one is December 1st if you want to come out to the tracks oh yeah absolutely there we'll be there we'll be there we'll do a special segment for the time just flailing arms BB on friends you know I just remember that scene where she's running like a child because it's more fun the arms are tucked it's just the legs are I don't know what's going on they feel like sacks of concrete to be honest I don't know not Grace it probably doesn't look very graceful okay no I'm saying all right well that's what we're hoping for when we come out to see it yeah we're gonna get our hopes up yeah it sounds like real material all right sir yeah you will have a million dollars all right so you make it you start a patrol as I'll do how'd that go great I loved Patrol yeah you know some people just absolutely hate it and I didn't leave Patrol because I didn't hate it I loved Patrol like catching bad guys oh that's great I'll chase some bad guys guys too like I said it's just not gonna be pretty but I'm gonna chase them and I'm gonna catch them but yeah I loved it I loved working investigations and uh I really put my heart and soul into it but I knew where I wanted to end up and so the second that I could and that there was a spot open in Marine I applied for marine and you got that right away easy no there's gonna be a theme here okay second time's the trouble hold on hold on did anything fun happen in Patrol for the time um from Patrol yeah what area did you mostly work okay so I was like a float car for okay 2.5 seconds that's how fast and then I had a really great sergeant that I came into contact with uh Sergeant Horton and he was like you know you have a great personality I like working with you there's going to be a city of Seminole car spot opening would you like to take it and I took in a heartbeat because if you can get locked down somewhere great yeah especially get a sergeant who's going to like teach you and make you a good day or a great Deputy that's the goal right and I felt like he could do that so I went to City of Seminole and I was a car for them and um had so much fun in Squad three we had like the best Squad at the time like all the deputies in it we all meshed and that's so important it really is important because it just when you can all mesh you can work so much more efficiently and you trust each other and it feels good Feels Like Home you know right yeah yeah and in Squad three like I don't think people have given enough credit is freaking busy it can be real busy and I didn't have to be like locked down in the city seminal I was able to like go to other people's calls and stuff like that and um I wasn't out very long and there was a stabbing I mean I'd probably been on the road for like I don't know by myself four weeks or something like that and there's a stabbing and what happened with that one yeah that was that was exciting so uh I'm like the second to arrive on scene a little bit still learning my way around and you know I get there and the deputy who's already on scene has somebody proned out on the ground at gunpoint and um he's just pointing and yelling in a general direction and I look and there's a person sitting in a car with a door open and is he's got a knife in his gut the victim the victim quote unquote and I'm like oh boy and uh he as I'm like running up to the car he pulls the knife out naturally I mean what else would you do with a knife and then like it's there's stuff coming out and not blown it's like kind of stuff like fat like a long a long thing of fat and I said oh we're just going to put that away like and I don't remember what do you mean did you just like push it back in what do you mean so I was like that doesn't look so good and there was like a rag totally hygienic very hygienic rag like sitting in the floorboard I grabbed something it was a rag of some sort right there and I just grabbed it and I just put it against the stomach it wasn't the dirtiest rag to be honest okay and like in hindsight yeah should I have ran back to my car and got of course of course yeah better than like a Civil War battle battlefield but you know I just like didn't want him to die it was like it's solid yeah okay and I thought okay and he was kind of acting like he was gonna die so I was like or no you just hang on there buddy right so uh long story short it turns out uh he was not the victim he was the perpetrator and he actually tried to rob the homeowner in the uh with a butter knife well he was there and then tried to Rob him and grabbed a knife off the homeowner's like microwave and then the homeowner uh grabbed a better knife and stuff yeah he had the steak Knife I'd never bring a butter knife to a steak Knife Fight yeah he so he technically was yeah so that's a good point though because you hear a stabbing you see someone that stabbed you're gonna think right that's the victim yeah I mean he was a victim of a stabbing but yeah he kind of had it coming yeah yeah you show up to these calls and you don't always have totally clear information right now and on this particular call if I recall all we had was that there had been an altercation it was like an assault in progress I don't even think it was like an armed person in progress so it was kind of chaotic when I got there that like there was a person stabbed and there was a person proned out on the ground and I was like holy smokes what just happened but yeah it turns out um the bad guy was the stabbing victim but he he uh you know deserved it yeah I mean yeah don't don't think people's stuff don't put him in my house but that is that is I mean you know with all the technology we have and all the information we have our disposal it is a good point and a point of discussion that especially In the Heat of the Moment law enforcement doesn't always have all the information and that is never going to change because it's always going to be despite I mean now you know you figure whoever had called uh 9-1-1 so they're dispatching there and and these days we have deputies in the car they've got live 9-1-1 where they're hearing the calls come in in real time but yeah that's a relatively recent thing it is but you still only know whatever the person is telling you and that could be a person that is directly involved or a bystander and you just don't know the bad guy changing the totality to change the story yeah yeah it could be someone just making it up to paint whatever picture I'm still visualizing you telling a guy to put his innards back though and I think uh so back then we didn't have body cams we just had Co band which is a mic pack and I think my sergeant even reviewed my my mic pack and was like did you tell them to put him we'll just put that away yeah I did yeah I said we're just gonna put it back inside shouldn't be outside okay the inside should never be on the outside no no no no no no I heard you were a pretty detailed report writer yes I can do a lot of words and some people aren't very appreciative of how many words I can really write people have to read all your reports yeah yeah you know I was you know I had a great fto when I first started and she told me the probably the best advice the better you write the less you're in court or like the less you're going to get hemmed up to be honest and so far that's like proved to be true when I have gone to court my reports have saved me but I write very detailed reports I leave no stone unturned and uh I definitely had some supervisors that said hey your reports are great but is there any way you could you could put less words I had somebody tell me uh it took me like 45 minutes to read one of your reports and I was like it was a death investigation what do you want from me yeah it has to be long I wanted to make sure you gotta [Laughter] any other good stuff with Patrol yes so um we went to an armed person call and it uh this is probably one of the sketchiest calls that I went to in Patrol before I left and uh this individual was saying uh he the homeowner was he was armed with an AR and AK so he was armed with an AR AK and the reason he was armed is because there was somebody trying to break into his house and they were also armed with a gun and there were there were multiple people and given the neighborhood this call came out in it seemed totally plausible it didn't seem so far-fetched at all and the call notes were not like convoluted at first it was pretty cut and dry yeah so I'm like all right let's party you know go lights and Sirens there and like as we're getting as we're arriving on scene the call notes start getting a little bit more funky but now you're kind of like running towards the scene and just not really paying attention to how funky things are coming out on the air and so my sector partner at the time who is now my husband we were the first two to arrive on scene and uh we like apparently the bad guys are in the backyard right so we're like taking quick peeks in the backyard to see like if we see anything we see nothing and we're like okay that's weird and so we go around to the other side of the backyard and then the call notes start getting really interesting now the bad guys are wearing green and have ARS well that's weird I'm wearing green and I have an AR I was like we're the Bad Guys [Laughter] I don't remember if I grabbed Nathan or he grabbed me but we beat feet backwards and we were like all right everybody just needs to set a perimeter because we have something else that's going on here we don't know what that sounds I can obviously see you guys very clearly see us but we can't see him and he may be not in his right mind because that's how he's talking about us so uh we ended up hailing him to come outside and he does end up coming outside leaves the gun inside and he ends up being super high on all sorts of drugs he thought he was taking Xanax but when we tested the Xanax it did not come back positive for that they were fake Xanax so they're something else I was like MDMA or something like that so he's completely hallucinating not what you need when you're trying to chill out yeah some Xanax yeah he he was so there was never anybody in his backyard there was never anybody and then we went back into the call notes like after like we had detained this person and what had not been aired over the radio is that some of the weird stuff which was like the people were wearing flowers yeah that would have been a clue yeah but like when you have so many call notes coming out the dispatchers can't necessarily air everything they try to air as much as possible but like they some things get missed yeah and so we didn't really get the full effect of like how crazy this person was or we probably would have picked up on it um but uh let's just say we took his guns and we submitted an RPO to permanently take his guns and he accepted it and told us at the RPO hearing saved my life so he's like because I don't know what would have happened and you could have shot me and you didn't see I'm like firefighters don't get to hear that no no good shot and he didn't yeah thank goodness but it was the hairiest situation I mean he he could have easily killed us oh yeah lesson learned on that one good thing you're listening to the radio carefully yeah yeah or somebody I mean I was but you know what I mean it just next time the lesson learned here is slow down what's the rush yeah you know I think the rush for us was like we thought for sure this person was about to be a home invasion and we were just trying to prevent that that's how it sounded when the call came did yeah yeah but in hindsight we should have slowed down a little bit you know oopsies oopsies that didn't turn out horrible yeah luckily could have gone much worse yeah yeah all right so Marine then the opening comes the opening comes and at this point I haven't been in Patrol very long and let's just talk about getting into Marine like it's not like a female environment like it's kind of a boys club by reputation by reputation it was a boys club and when I I always said in the academy like hey I'm trying to go to Marine because they always ask you what are your aspirations I was told by everybody I ever came in contact with that's never going to happen that's a good old boys club they don't let women in there and when they do it doesn't end well and I'm just like okay cool story still doing it yeah really so uh the opening comes and um I apply and I did really great on the tryout but they picked another co-worker of mine first and then the second opening came and they called me right away for the second opening but uh during my interview you know they ask you like why do you want to come here and then you you have the opportunity to like give some closing statements and I just flat out said to them hey you might not give this position to me now but I promise you I'm never going to stop interviewing I'm going to keep coming back and you're gonna be forced to take me and like everybody in the room started genuinely laughing they're like okay okay and I'm like no I'm serious [Laughter] she might have that's great but hey you know what you want yeah yeah yeah and I made sure that was clear yeah and we did we have had a handful of women in Marine I think before you were a couple right one yeah I was like is it just doesn't want Rita just read a bishop yeah Oh I thought and now there's Dinah oh now okay I thought okay that was like the same time did you come in when Diana came in she came in after me like oh you're not like a year and a half after me yeah I pay attention you're close you tried yeah I tried so in a way I hesitate to ask this question because you know when we had major Arnold on here we didn't say so major what is it like to be a male major we don't we don't do that but I do feel compelled to ask what what is it like being a female in law enforcement female and Marine are there any special challenges anything that makes your job easier being a woman right and then you know would you recommend this job for women yeah so I would have recommend it for a woman we can do anything that a man can do we just may I have to modify how we do it oh wait no that's just you oh no that's just yeah um you just might have to modify how you do things you know especially like in Marine because like we do a lot of heavy lifting and stuff and I come up with all sorts of crafty ways to get heavy objects out of the water so um but you know being a woman in a male dominated field you have to not take things so personally to be honest and be able to hold your own and be confident in what you know and really know it and then people can't walk on you yeah so um in Marine I've had the really the only challenges are where do you go the bathroom right so that I wanted to ask about because that's a big concern whenever you're on a water yes right not as easy for you as perhaps for a man right right so um you have to find out where the nearest bathroom is like where the nearest marina is and it's not like the end of end of life but I think I just stay perpetually dehydrated yeah you know yeah I don't have to use the bathroom if I don't drink water hey there you go right it's my road trip plan yeah so when I get it in the morning I use the bathroom before I go on the boat and then I just very slowly consume water all day long and I mean very Meanwhile my male co-workers are like love this gallon jug of water it's great I feel great my Skin's great and I'm like and you're trying to keep keep the water intake exactly equal to the sweat yeah there's no there's no Surplus yeah perpetually dehydrated um and it's funny when I when I first started I had uh like a male fto for I had Mike of course but um I for a day or two another male Deputy subbed in for him and we're out in the boat and we're like out in the middle of the gulf and I say I just point in general direction I said we you will you take me to the bathroom and he looks at me and he goes um and he's like Whispering he's like I don't think I can do that and I'm like what are you talking about please take me to the bathroom and I Point again and he's like Jill I I don't think I can do that I think I'd get in trouble but I'm like what are you talking about he's like you're trying to like hang off the back of the boat and I'm like no I'm pointing to the Anclote river boat ramp over there he's like oh also I'm trying to get so you had an image in your head that I was just gonna like well pull down my pants and hanged over the side of the boat like that wouldn't work he's like well that's what I was thinking too but then I was thinking oh my God there's gonna be an AI investigation that's not what I had in mind oh and we like get back to the marina and he tells Serge this and he's like laughing so hard he's crying he's like he's like I think that would be pretty messy Jay don't you he's like well that's what I was concerned with so um I really think that the women in Marine need a agency issued chewy if I can get one of those please to the powers that be here listening class Nicole see if they make those in green [Laughter] [Applause] yeah because I mean truthfully when you're on these like call outs when you are trying to recover somebody and you're out there for 19 hours straight or what have you you can't just like leave and go to the bathroom so if I could get a Shoei that'd be great thank you sir I'm betting they can arrange that it'd be great I just want to write that memo there's something else that's it that's just okay all right so talk about talk a little bit about um what the tryout is like for marine what do you have to be able to do to get in the Marine not running I'm guessing oh thank God they didn't have to witness that yeah I definitely wouldn't have gotten it if you would have run at them while saying I'm never going to stop crying like whatever that looks like it's gonna keep this image in my head or whatever that looks like yeah so you have to you have to tread water for five minutes I'm out and then uh immediately after treading water then you have to swim and I don't know 300 meters or something maybe okay oh this is in a pool no no no mine was just out mine was an icw the intercostal yeah okay so uh the Salt Rock Grill is next door to us so we have to swim down there and then swim back okay and they're like it's not a race okay okay but it is because I might not be able to run but I can swim and this is with gear on no no no no no no no just bathing suit just bathing suit yeah I outswam everybody I passed all 10 people that I've had bye-bye oh and then you have to climb up on a boat unassisted like no no ladder or anything you have to pull yourself up onto the boat no problems with that either um so that and then you have to do you have to drive a boat as part of your uh evaluation so you just so people who come into Marine have to already know how to drive a boat yeah I was like I I thought you don't have to look you don't have to be like a master Operator just don't wreck the boat oh okay yeah okay so you're expected to uh safely back up the boat drive it up the intercoastal you know observe all signage along the way dock the boat then drive the boat back and dock it again two dockings because we've got all kinds of boats yeah so we switch it up every time oh so uh it's historically been Marine one which is uh 25 foot center console which is our contender so and it's twin engines so all it makes things more complicated no well if you don't know what you're doing yes right but and now there's nothing better than twin edits or triple engines the more engines you have the better it is like just the maneuvering of vessel becomes so much easier because you just have more horsepower and you can do all sorts of fancy things with it so um so that's what you have to do you have to pass all those things okay and like I said like you're not look they're not looking for Perfection they just don't wreck the boat right you know and also they want to know can you like you have somebody on the boat with you and they'll kind of walk you like if you don't know how to talk about they'll kind of verbally walk you through what you should do and they're trying to see if you can pay attention and follow instructions because the entire FDO process is going to be literally that yeah right because this is not training this is just the tryouts they still have all the formalized of all this stuff right yes so that's the tryout and you obviously did well I did yeah so you had driven a boat before or yeah I mean I know your brother but yeah but I had never driven uh the boats that we like the boats that we have I would either like driven his uh Ranger which is a bass boat or I'd like driven his huge fishing Cabin boat in a straight line at slow speeds right but I've never like docked a boat and stuff like that yeah but I do own a did I sold it yesterday jet ski I own jet ski jit so I had like boating knowledge and I know how to do certain things but I didn't I wasn't great [Music] so what's the what's the process then with obviously there's fto just like when you hit the road for the first time what is that like yeah so fto is a little bit different than on the road because like on the road you have phases and you gotta pass each phase um and Marina is a little bit more relaxed you kind of learn at your own pace you're expected to kind of be squared away but at the end like if you're not squared away by the end of month three there's a problem like they kind of there's kind of that Unwritten rule there you know you know you should be learning you should have pretty much learned making progress right right yeah so with me specifically there was a little bit of a rush we were we were short staffed at the time we didn't have all the people that we have now and we were going I was hired at the very beginning of January and the whole thing was like by March 1st she needs to be on her own and ready to go for spring break so they put me with the hardest fto possible [Music] and he was great okay hi Mike um he uh he was tough you know he was he's like that can be good it is it's tough is the best you should be tough because you don't want to bake mistakes mistakes out there or anywhere can cost you your life so he just has an expectation that like you need to listen to everything I tell you to do and you're going to do exactly the way I tell you to do it and if you don't I'm gonna make you feel like crap [Laughter] very effective so so um I was kind of like thrown to the Wolves a little bit and it worked out great we got along fine and I turned out to not be a good boat operator in my opinion I think I'm pretty great operator so yeah so just a little bit for context where we get too far in the Marine here so talk to us a little bit about just like the general structure of marine and environmental lands and how it works so you know things like are you on a boat by yourself or are there you know or yeah with a partner you know how do the shifts kind of work tell us a little bit about that first okay so uh we are a full-time Marine unit there's I don't know 12 of us I'm just throwing out a number here no right I think that's correct okay so there's like 10 in Marine and then there's two designated for environmental lands and so they're in our preserves and stuff like that the 10 of us that are in Marine um we work from 9am to 11 p.m and that's two separate shifts so there's like a daytime shift and then there's the evening shift and the daytime is from 9 A.M to 7 p.m and then the evening shift is from 1 pm to 11 p.m so it's a little bit overlapped a little bit of overlap everybody on day shift works alone on a boat so one person on a boat and then the people on night shift there's two people assigned to a boat and that's for safety reasons obviously lower visibility you have more hands on deck so you're pretty much always by yourself are you day shift I am nalia yeah yeah again like back to the how people think Marine is I mean it is very dangerous yeah you yeah I mean at any given time so let me back up a little bit again at any given time uh how is the structure as far as uh units like how many are on the water and so forth you're making me give up the Secret Squirrel that's all right there's all of us [Laughter] realistically there's three people on so three vessels three vessels yeah so imagine three deputies for all Pinellas County you know on the water yeah and there's when things go bad they go real bad and you're not going to be there in four minutes yeah it takes time yeah especially leaving out of the intercoastal yeah you've got to go a long way around everywhere yeah yes yeah yeah it's just it's something you have to be cognizant of when you're out there like where is your backup realistically your backup is 30 minutes away from you and that's them driving all as fast as they possibly can to get to you so you better really be able to handle yourself like keep the situation under control or have the the the integ not the Integrity but like the peace of mind to know that when you can't win you can't win this battle with somebody maybe you need a retreat maybe that's the only safe option is swallowing your pride and retreating until backup can get to you right and you got to know the difference and when it's appropriate for each each moment so yeah that's something that's talked about you know for Citizens Academy when we're talking about use of force things and deputies respond to things like if you show up with a warrant for somebody and there's one deputy and five or six people that are saying yeah he's not coming with you tonight or she uh you don't have to get them right then you can come back so same concept no they already know where they live and so I'm wondering if that um I'm all over the place because it's fascinating that has to impact the way that you consider use of force oh water oh yeah I mean think about taser in the water that seems to be like a No-No yeah those are things you have to consider right um and you going in the water I mean that's like automatically a deadly four situation if somebody gets you in the water right yeah I mean you can drown in like six inches of water yeah let alone like uh literally I mean if your head is faced out if you're unconscious Face Down On The Water you're drowning oh yeah yeah so as soon if if you're fighting with somebody and all of a sudden you end up in the water you're at deadly force because there is a very likely problem probability you're going to drown yeah and you've got to take that into consideration so let me tell you Verbal Judo that is your biggest friend out there knowing how to talk to people I mean if somebody has bad intent for you they do that's what it is you know and you better be ready for whatever's coming but yeah and one thing that's amazing to think of is that almost everybody is armed yeah oh yeah yeah because as long as you're fishing you can yeah but you can carry people have guns everybody has a knife at least one knife oh yeah everybody has a gun or a knife yeah it's scary so how frequent are those instances it's probably not a frequency feeling but I mean most of the stuff obviously you're out to deal with it and then we'll talk about it but vessel stops and of course a lot of environmental enforcement type things but how often do things get yeah I mean beyond the a bunch of people that have had too much to drink and probably not pick the right Captain but beyond that I mean how how frequent is that I mean how many have you experienced it others I mean what yeah so I've gone to lots of domestics on the water and stuff like that I've never had a use of use of force in the three years I've been in Marine so I mean it's good yeah yeah and I mean so I've never had anybody fight me when I've gotten there people have gotten Molly with me or kind of resisted a little bit but nothing crazy [Music] um and I think they know I think you know even the perpetrators know hey if they want to they can dunk me in the water you know it goes both ways and I promise you if it came to that you know they would go right into the water and they can swim out there and I'll save them when they're tired I won't let them drown but they're gonna get tired first if they want to play that game so thankfully it's never had to come to that that's good but yeah uh you'd be surprised like how many domestics happen out there on these sailboats and cabin boats that are like anchored permanently so we get called to those quite frequently or they'll be like little Wars between the sailboats they'll start like stealing each other's crap look on each other's anchors lines and stuff stealing each other's boats and it's just like oh it's like babysitting children sometimes yeah yeah I mean knives and guns yeah with knives and guns and yeah yeah what would um be like the most common call you guys respond to out there is there is there one that kind of stands out as being the most common or really it's probably going to be like domestics really yeah yeah across the board generally in Marine oh no I mean water rescues are like our most okay okay yeah yeah talk about the liverboard sailboats that's a different story Yeah well yeah I know I meant just like in Marine overall oh no in Marine overall it's definitely going to be water rescues or derelict vessels that was a big that was a big thing oh yeah really the last year kind of been working on because you when you drive over you know Tom Stewart or some of the different Bridges you may see boats sitting over there and different uh municipalities and depending on what water they're sitting in depends on if you can leave the boat there how long and it's all different and it's been quite a mess but been pretty proactive with it I think you guys have have made a big dent in it out there getting them cleaned up yeah it we've definitely gotten it locked down compared to what it was um they're still turning up you know they just all of a sudden appear overnight sometimes and then I was just when I was just out with you guys a couple weeks back a few weeks back uh there was a boat that was a hurricane boat from down south that showed up all of a sudden I think that somebody had purchased or whatever and it just popped up there yeah so he's gone again oh so you guys spent a lot of time just kind of going around and meeting who's who because another time I think we were in the midst of starting to do the enforcement I just thought it was so funny how you all knew all the people in all the boats like first name basis and they were all like cartoon characters it's just crazy it's crazy oh you know you go over there and knock on the boat and this crazy guy comes out of the boat and I'm like wow I think it's great that's that's just part of it it's just another Dynamic out there so so you guys what's go ahead Lauren I want to talk about water rescues why do they go out in those conditions because then you have to go out in those conditions no I can't wrap my head around it myself it's crazy what what are some of the the worst conditions you've been out in say the worst I've been out in eight like eight foot Seas yeah I've been out in some those for a rescue for a rescue yeah um so this 19-foot Center Council with a single engine decided to go like 40 miles offshore fishing right apparently he didn't look at the marine weather forecast there was a horrible storm that came in and he got in to about 15 miles offshore when he started like taking on water and both of them were it was so rough and they were so seasick that they were they were basically incapacitated wow and they could no longer Drive their boat because their boat when they would try to drive it would like sink so they called for help and the Coast Guard said for some reason that they were not going to respond too rough for the Coast Guard I guess so you'll have to say that we'll say that yeah we'll say it okay so I don't know why they did they weren't available to respond but they said they weren't responding and my thought was well that is absolutely not our jurisdiction 15 miles we can we're supposed to only respond nine miles offshore that's state water so yeah um that was way outside but I was like if we don't go they're probably gonna die and then we heard the FD they're gonna go and I'm like oh we're definitely not just letting FD go let me tell you this and we're going now it's a race yeah it is a race and they don't have a huge boat right so I don't know what they were saying either because they had like some like 27 foot 25 foot maybe little cabin type boat and they were gonna go out in these season I'm like I just don't think they're gonna make it FD is going to end up what I was really thinking in my mind is we're gonna end up saving FD and this these other people to be honest so we go and um What boat do you take we took like the safe boat yes we took the safe boat yeah brand by the way it's a boat brand oh is it it is I'm just thinking that one but the enclosed yes yeah we were in the enclosed boat I was trying to remember if we were in the the bigger one but no we were in the enclosed one um which is great like it'll keep you dry but much rougher ride because it is shorter in length but that was what we were in and so we get out there and um I had like an ocean helmet because I was like this is bad eight foot Seas you said yeah it was bad are you on your own no I was with Brandon so I was on the evening shift at this time okay so the sun was going down when the call came out and all I could think of is like it takes you a while to get out there yeah and seas like that it's gonna take a long time and all I could think of is like okay let's just not sink this boat right and those boats are supposed to be Unsinkable you know right but we don't say so is the Titanic I mean you know wow bad Juju but I mean these things can make and roll like 360 degrees in the water and keep floating oh you don't want to be rolling 360 degrees seats so it's great um kind of it doesn't quite save the vertebraes in the back but maybe a little bit before you got so many of them just use them yeah yeah so uh all I could think of is like look we just need to make it we need just need to find them before the sun goes all the way down because when the seas are eight feet your bow is going straight up and it's coming straight down and you can't see what's on the other side of that wave yeah and even though we have a radar on our boat and it just to clarify radar on a boat is not weather radar okay it's it's radar that's picking up uh structure in front of you and it's meant for like low visibility well the radar was confused and the charts were confused because what the radar is doing is when the boat goes straight up it's facing backwards right yeah so it's just spit like the radar on the screen is just spinning in circles so you don't know what direction you're going you don't know what you don't know anything really you're just going by sight so I was like we just got to make it out there and find them and get them on the boat and then I can figure out my way back like I don't care about that and we'll slow down and um when they give you when they dispatch you these calls they don't always have good coordinates in fact they don't have coordinates so in like this instance um the person did not have a VHF radio so he did not know his coordinates at all okay he was calling from a cell phone so we had like rough coordinates from the cell phone but those coordinates we get on cell phones they do not translate over to Marine technology you have to use a coordinates converter and get the coordinates and put them into your so you're doing math while you're driving fast through eight foot seats yes yes and the goal is always to try to figure out the coordinate situation before you get out into the eight foot seats because once you're out there it is the whole boat went down you'd never known right right yeah so uh you do math and you put those in and then it's never like perfect the trans the coordinate translator but it's close and I'm like you know what it looks about 15 miles I bet this is pretty close so we get out there and we do find them and um it's bad and uh I was really questioning how are we going to get these people on the boat without crushing it yeah and crushing the boat I don't even remember how we did it but it it was they got onto fd's boat because the biggest thing is we thought they needed medical attention and in hindsight they did they had to get like IV and stuff but so they get them off the boat and then we're looking at this boat and it's like this boat's gonna be a total loss if we leave it out here yeah and usually we don't like care about property People First Property later and I'll never make this Choice again but me and Brandon we were a little a little ballsy and so I was like let's just try to tow it and he was like okay I'm gonna jump up onto it and then I'm going to tie the toe rope off to the front and then I'm going to jump back onto the bow and I'm like sounds great don't die um were there body cams at this point because that would be fun to see yes I think there was so I get up to I get we get up to the boat and Brandon leaps and ends up on this bow and it was it was super sketch I thought he was I'm not gonna lie I honestly thought at one point that he was gonna die I was in yeah I will never make this decision again but it all worked out he gets the boat tied off and then we get him back onto our boat and he was like dude I'm never doing that again I was like yeah so now is it like still actively raining and stuff oh yeah it's terrible out and now we're like we are just like moments from not having sunlight and he's like all right so we're gonna have to go slow I said oh no honey we're not going slow We Are Gonna Do the fastest long line toe you've ever seen in history I'm probably gonna set a world record here in a second but I think I think I did like 38 miles an hour while Towing this boat and leave it out there or try so yeah yeah and to clarify like before we did something like Reckless like this because you could you could lose the vessel in the process of this we ask permission from the other from from the owner to do this not because he knew that if we didn't attempt he was going to lose it anyway right so um I am just hauling ass with this thing behind me and every few minutes I'd ask Brandon how's it doing back there he's like looking good we made we made it all the way back to the boat the book and um once the um the owner was cleared from FD he came and met us at the boat ramp and he you know thanked us and he was so grateful and he's like do either of you want to buy a boat he said he was done yeah he said that was the scariest moment of his life and I thought I'm not sure he was gonna die and honestly he probably would have they didn't have they did not have pfds they had um they had to throwable they only had one PFD and the I think the father was wearing it so they would have drown but and that was scary it was scary for us and it was scary for them so if he like really the scariest thing that happens out in Marine is all weather yeah like lightning storms do you guys go out in those it's up to the captain's discretion okay yeah so if it's a really severe lightning storm I'm not going yeah I can't save it anybody if I die in the process yes right and they don't happen like terribly often you know there's lightning in storms yeah okay I'm going for in things like that but when it's like you know whatever something I'll read just 100 strikes a second or a minute you know what I mean like I'm not going I'm not going to die I'm not going to kill my crew members because uh you decided to take your boat out yeah right before school right you can't Boggle the second one though you know that clears up or the conditions get better but weather is definitely the scariest thing that can happen out there and fog which is weather obviously but people don't think about it I've been in fog that like I got so nervous that my hands were sweating because you could not see four feet in front of you yeah and I was like not worried about my driving it's worried I'm worried about other people yeah because they get stuck in it and they panic and so they just like Full Throttle they don't yes they do what yes they do and they don't have radar so I can see them coming you know I can see them coming on my radar and you're like okay something is moving towards me and that is the scariest thing that can ever possibly happen holy crap yeah yeah it's like why people panic and they they just like some people are smart they panic but you know they put it down an anchor but some people panic they don't even think it to put down yeah I mean it's gonna pass just yeah I don't know maybe a person I don't know but I'm getting out of here speaking of hitting houses with boats did you see that Lake of the Ozarks deal with that triple engine boat to hit the house yeah oh that was that was impressive okay so not having pfds that's bad one and that is one of the things that you all check for when you do a vessel stop yep yep so uh one thing that people don't realize I think is that uh you all can stop a boat for any reason at any time uh which is quite different the traffic stops so talk about vessel stops a little bit a little bit Yeah so we have the right to stop you uh anytime to conduct a safety inspection and uh you're gonna need like pfds a Type 4 throwable flares if you're out in like open water or the Tampa Bay something like that uh which I just you just told me it was so cool that your gun can be your noise making device yes it can that's a US Coast Guard approved noise making device really crazy so if I have a distress I can just go out there and pop one off yeah wild to get your attention yeah can't do that on land nope nope well I mean I mean can things are gonna happen yeah yeah I just think it's funny because uh vessel stops are the most to me because I've obviously I've been out with Marine a few times more than a few times they're the most awkward thing ever right because also awkward because it's like it depends on who you're stopping right some people it's like this guy's a because he was doing something egregious you know uh but then these other times like these people are just having a great time and then Captain buzzkillington comes rolling up we just sit there and stare at you everybody's you know while we basically potentially ruin your day if you don't have yeah but you have to have what you need to have a case in point guys stuck out at Sea yeah so it's just it's interesting because then you have to try to tie off to them to be right next to them you got other votes flying by you there's you're bouncing around it's just it's different yeah yeah you get over that awkwardness after doing it so many times but I think it's it never stops being awkward for the poor people we're stopping and then we can also stop people to do a fishing inspection whenever we want if we have any evidence that suggests that they have been engaging in a regulated sport such as fishing we have the right to stop them and inspect so which I mean I would imagine that's all that's obviously going on all the time obviously is there some boating days that aren't are not as busy as others but you can always jump back on the on the fishing enforcement stuff and let's let's talk about all that in the environmental stuff in just a second but the other thing that's just a chopping the pit for that you know that I know you're ready um because it's just interesting stuff one thing that people don't realize and actually when we were out last time we were dealing with the swim buoys yes and uh people don't really you know you go throughout different beaches along the Gulf Coast uh the golf side you see the buoys out there where people are in the water and then sometimes there's no buoys at all and they all vary by uh by municipality wherever you're at which is it's like the alcohol thing is is a pain on land but in the water you have these swim buoys and some of the swim buoys which I learned all this I mean I knew what a swim booty was but I didn't realize you know the different rules for boats some it's like no boats at all Summits the boats can come to the shore to pick people up and go straight back but that's it uh and then others are no boats at all some they're they're crazy out there and that's a that's a big thing though because then you see there's people out there bobbing around the water and then there's a boat passing them and then some don't care so it's just like it's a designated area so that's fascinating too because we caught a couple people out there that were doing things they weren't supposed to be doing um but it's just another another thing you have to look out for yeah and people need to be aware of and obviously it's it's a bad education but I think that one that one guy we stopped it was like 30 feet from the buoy just sitting there he's like oh can I not be here it's like yeah and and that Bowie said vessel exclusions around so it's just like okay you're getting a ticket here you go yeah and it was he's just like fishing he's fishing so he has hooks in the water bait in the water and there's a swimmer right next to them yeah power poles were down too I think on the boat or that might have been the other one but no that was the other one yeah but they were yeah yeah how do you take someone 10 15 on a boat how do you arrest somebody oh yeah when they're on one boat you're on the other boat there's all this dangerous water between you they might be fighting they would how do you how do you arrest somebody yeah so it depends on the situation right so if this is a situation where like you're tied up to them and then you find out you have a violation like a warrant or something like so it could be probably controlled most of these people out here are yes people they're going to cooperate and there's procedures for if they're not going to cooperate but like let's just give a yes person for instance you immediately call for your backup because it's going to take them a hot minute to get you to you and you really just need to keep that person calm and engaged in conversation but when it comes time to do the deed the biggest thing is like you want to make sure the boats are tied up really tight to each other so there's no Gap in between the boats that's a big thing because you don't want this person falling into the water unless you put them there yeah as long as they're a yes person you don't want them right or getting smash between the boats yeah yeah for sure no squishing fingers no so you know you have them turn and face away from you in their boat and then you have them back up to their uh the side of their boat their gun oil and then you have them sit down on it and you at that point throw a PFD over their head to tie it on them handcuff them and you're doing this all with two people at this point right and so you're doing these things simultaneously you want to be as distracting and quick about it as possible and then you just kind of grab them by the back of their shoulder and they're then you tell them okay when I tell you to I want you to swing all of your legs to the right of you with throw all your momentum and when they do that you grab their leg and then you pull them over onto your boat real fast and Swift like and um it always goes perfectly it does it does really it really does yeah and you you practice that in training because you don't want it to not go perfect value so and I'm a small person so I really like I ask practice it because if I'm gonna do it I need to make sure that I have control over this person for their safety and for mine yeah and it does work pretty well so love for you guys to see it sometime yeah definitely want to the way you said that and look to me it's like you want to arrest me is that yeah you can be the bad guys I like that I would totally do that yeah we can do that I volunteer to spend a couple days in jail for research this morning so yeah yeah you did okay yeah yeah no thank you all right so the environmental enforcement side which is I just have to say I I met Jill and I just I I found like a kindred spirit because the way you love snakes and snails and puppy dog's tails no and and sharks and fish yeah yeah so it's the it's the other side the the really important piece of another important piece of what y'all do protecting the Fisheries protecting the ecosystems that make Pinellas County so unique yeah um let's talk about it Laura this is this is your time I've been hearing about these snails and that's not let's do it so I really want to talk about the thing that made you famous worldwide well Nationwide anyway definitely at least as far as New York um you risked your life to save a manatee and you know how much we love manatees in Florida you can't not like a sea potato they're just the most wonderful gentle thing people put them on their license plates yeah so there were two other guys with me that day and they're great and they they all played an equal part in this so I want to make sure they get a little credit so uh we get this call for service in Treasure Island and this latest concern because she sees a manatee close to her Dock and it's like behaving abnormally now sometimes when we get these calls it's like total bull crap it's like oh manatee's struggling and really the manatees like I don't know you know being a manatee yeah being a sweet potatoes sometimes yeah I could not be the heck out of a day you know so I should clarify that it's like not super often that you actually get one that it's injured or it's sick yeah so I still I love a manatee right so I'm like let's go call about a manatee and so all three of us get on one boat which is abnormal but we all get on one because you're all at the at the station at the marina yeah and we had multiple boats down but I was just thinking to myself you know what if this is something I can't do it alone yeah yeah so we all thankfully all we all had the mindset to go together and uh we get out there and we're looking and sure enough we find this thing and it is acting strange so it will it it's just on the surface and it's kind of like it's in this weird position where like it's almost like in a half moon it's like stuck in a half moon and it can't like straighten its tail out and I'm like what is it doing and it's it can't go underwater it you can see that it tries to go underwater and it can't and I think it's because the mobility of its tail it couldn't couldn't move it and it's taking breaths of air like every eight seconds and that is really strange that's labored breathing sure because these manatees will take a deep breath of air at the surface and then they go back under and they continue moving along and they really don't have the strength in the neck to just stay up on the surface of the water and just breathe continuously like that takes a lot of energy so for this Manatee to just keep doing that it was beginning to exhaust itself and then it got to a point where quickly because we were only there for about like 15 minutes before I decided to do something but it was like very quickly going downhill and this he kind of made it over to these rocks next to the sea wall and actually tried beaching him him or her we'll just call it him okay him on the on the rocks to try to keep himself up so that way he was no longer having to keep his body weight up on this and I was like okay we need to do something because there wasn't a lot of rocks so he wasn't he wasn't doing this successfully and I was like okay this thing is going to drown right here in front of us and I'm not going to let that happen so um Manny who was with us I was like somebody needs to get on the phone with FWC because it's not like we have a manatee hoist yeah and these guys are big I mean this is going to be over 10 feet over a thousand pounds easily yeah probably over 2 000 pounds easily this is a big big animal wow and um I'm like somebody get on the phone with FWC tell them to get like a rescue crew in or out I'm getting in the water I don't care what anybody else is doing but I'm telling you what I'm doing and everybody's like you're doing what I'm like oh I'm getting in the water watch this so we docked the boat and and then Brandon he's on board he's like okay well if you're getting in the water I'm getting in the water too and I'm like that's a good idea so we both just take off our take off our gun belts and jump in the water and I'm in my boots because there's rocks yeah you know so I'm in soggy boots and Brandon he takes off his booze and we can both get in the water and uh Manny is on the phone with FWC and they're like yeah our ETA is like two hours and I was like huh and then they actually ask can you get in the water and hold its head up so to help it breathe and I was like well we've already we're already in the water so see you in two hours so um you know we did put a rope on this Manatee and there are some people that don't like that but the reason we did that is because where we were at it wasn't shallow water it was like shallow water for like three feet and then it drops off at ledge so if he did try to swim at all and went to that deeper part then we would not be able to support its head so we put the Rope around it just so Manny was holding it and kind of keep it nearby so I could support its head and we did that legitimately for like two hours before FWC showed up and the reason it took them so long is they were actually up in Homosassa for a manatee rescue oh okay yeah and um I think that one was for like a bullet strike or something so it took them a long time and these are just like they're not law enforcement so they don't have lights and Sirens they're just biologists and rescue teams so it took them a long while and then um you know after two hours of holding it you know it's re it's regained some strength so at first it was like super cooperative and you could tell you can just kind of tell when animals know that you're trying to help them and they become they kept they are cooperative for the most part and you could tell that's there was a situation but towards the end the the same Manatee had regained some of its strength and it was like I'm tired of being held now thank you and it was game on there was flailing and there was me almost drowning you could have been pinned right under it yeah well I was next to the dock and so crushed between yeah and when it was flailing it was pushing me underneath the dock and I was like I'm gonna drown and then Braden actually said Jill if you don't move you're gonna end up getting killed and I was like you're right I like shuffled all the way but um oh we passed the manatee off to FWC and we quickly got out of there because we're like all right we tamed the Beast have fun do they have a hoist to get it out of the water then they do yeah they have a whole specialized boat just for them yeah yeah it's neat and they have specialized Nets and all of that stuff so I had to bring the boat down drop it in the water and then yeah so it's a long process and where'd they take it there's several actually across the state uh there's like Sea World there's Clearwater Marine Aquarium but there's there's others too so yeah good stuff nice Laura let's just keep going this is all you and I was sick it was what we think it was sick from was Red Tide paralysis so which is a temporary thing as long as you can get them into clean water and they can start you know breathing and living in clean water and not be affected by the the red tide yeah so people cause a lot of problems for marine life I know um shark fishing is another issue hot tapping yeah yeah it is for this community right now yeah um because a lot of shark species are critically endangered and a lot of them are protected you can't you're not allowed to catch them at all like tiger sharks yeah so what kind of sharks are people out there catching that they're not supposed to right now tiger sharks Hammerheads like great great Hammerheads uh those are really the two like common ones in this area that we've kind of had a problem with people trying to land intentionally to take pictures of and stuff like that and that's it a tiger shark is a prohibited species even with a shark fishing permit you are not allowed to land them people Target them specifically and do it intentionally and they end up dying there's one tragic one recently right yeah a pregnant female yeah in Indian Shores their person intentionally landed a tiger shark and I think took some pictures with it and then took off because a crowd started to gather and uh the crowd I think tried I don't know if they tried or I shouldn't speak that say that they did or didn't but they could not get her back into the the shark died there on land and she was uh heavily pregnant and she birthed all 41 pups on the beach and they all died too so the whole generation lost yeah and because I wanted to take pictures with us because somebody wanted to take picture of the shark and it's not like these were little sharks that were ready to go like she was ready to birth any day they were fully developed yeah so and they died because somebody was greedy so it was very just tragic so when when that happens you see videos and stuff that popping up where sharks of each themselves or find their way of somehow on the onto the shore should people actively try to get them back on the water as soon as possible I would say yeah yeah you know I can't tell people to do something dangerous you know but you would I would yeah I would do anything what does that look like like how like I saw that what can I do grab them by the mouth that's well I know not that but I'm like is it possible yeah I mean I'm not that professional Shark wrangler yeah yeah I don't know the right answer for this but I would say the safest course of action would be everybody getting near the Tail behind well away from the hen and just dragging it backwards as fast as possible into the water and getting them out of the way you know because they got to move forward to Breathe Right yeah they have to move water through the gills yeah so what else environment I I know I know you got welking is a thing yes oh yes let's get to it operations what are you shared with them yes I I did I did it's a great talking about snails they're like awesome so in Marine you really have to be like proactive right people think they have this misconception you have the best job in the world which is partially true right and they think that like we just get to drive the boat around all day and then when we're not driving the boat around we get to have these lavish lunches at the marina no okay you are expected to work and to be proactive and go out there and find stuff be it representative of the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office so as you know I love fish and wildlife stuff yeah so this thing happens where I'm down in shelkey and there's this group of individuals and they're collecting something on the mud flat of Shell Key and I'm like what and I like looking through binoculars at this point I'm like they are collecting so I'm like bam we got something right so we go and make contact with them and they have just tons and tons of Wilkes now I'm pretty new in the Marine unit at this point and I love you to Florida and New to Florida and so I'm not really sure what species these walks are I'm not really sure if they're protected or not protected other than I know I have at least a local ordinance violation which is the doing shellfishing within The Preserve yeah and so I run this person in ncic and um all that stuff take down their info take pictures of all these Wilkes and I gave them a warning all the welks were still alive because they were in water so I gave them a warning and said you know don't come back here never do this again and I released all of the the whelks because I really wasn't sure like what state violations if any I had at that point but I I needed to research it yeah so I let this person go and all of a sudden I get a phone call from dispatch and they're like we have somebody down the line that wants to speak with you I'm like CIA literally thinking who did I just run and I'm like terrified that like this is I don't know who it is I don't know and so the other person on the line is like yeah this is Agent so and so he says he's an agent and I'm like with who the are you from the FBI and he's like no FWC and I was like okay let's simmer down on the agent agent okay thank you he's like glaring at this point and he's like what are you running that person for he's like whispering and I'm like uh fishing violation What kind he had welks didn't he and I'm like yeah where are you at are you watching me he's like no that's what he does he sells them on the black market there's a wealth black market and that's what I'm thinking I'm like there's a Welk black now for all the simple people a whelk is a snail it's a type of yeah yes it's it's univ valve it's not like a YouTube like a typical spiral shape they get pretty big they get like like foot foot and a half yeah yeah quite big Hefty um okay so you're not allowed to to take these things do they eat them yes okay it's a delicacy yeah so he tells me this person needs to be on your radar he's poaching huge amounts of them and it is legal to take them though yeah you have to have a valid Florida fishing license and you can take up to 100 pounds for personal use yeah so this person obviously was selling them right that's illegal okay so uh with fishing licenses you can have like a commercial saltwater products license and that allows you to catch fish and sell it right and um and then fishing there's a saltwater fishing license you know you can only you're taking for your personal use yeah right and then there are certain species that you can only take for personal use you can even if you had a saltwater products license you're not allowed to harvest them and sell them and so any snail like any whelk species you're not allowed to harvest them and sell them you just go grab the shells basically and pick them up yeah and or you can collect the hundred pounds of them and eat them for personally it's like clean them and freeze them and stuff like that which is fine and dandy but we are being we were being told that this person you know was collecting hundreds and hundreds of pounds a day because he was selling them on Facebook Marketplace and other venues and there are that many of them out there oh yes yeah they're pretty common they're really common so far I mean people keep coaching them yeah you know and when I stopped this person he definitely had 100 pounds um because you gotta you gotta count that shell with it and so you got these shells and everything in a five gallon bucket and that would get a five gallon bucket probably weighs 40 pounds wow yeah yeah each Welk's gonna be like five pounds ship a big big yeah yeah yeah yeah for sure so it the the it adds up fast yeah so this person's on my radar now and I'm like okay so then all of a sudden I start these people start popping up everywhere and all of a sudden there's more and more of these people coming in the area and and doing it in the same spot and I'm like what in the world is going on here and so then I'm like okay then I start creating a Excel spreadsheet uh and keeping track of like what species there are out there and then I was like putting in a picture and then putting in the the state ordinance for each species so I made a whole Excel spreadsheet and PDF and all this stuff identifying and it was getting so out of control that when Brandon it was Brandon and I again when we'd show up we'd catch one but there'd be four others and they'd scatter you know it's We There were so many like we couldn't detain everybody at once so finally I was like this is out of control so I go to my sergeant and I'm like sir we've got to do an operation and he was like for what I'm like people are snailing and he's like what and he is not thrilled about the situation he's like they're doing what and I was like they're they're collecting snails they're collecting whelks he was like and what's wrong with that and so like then I get into this whole thing he was like all right put it together put an operation together I'm like sweet so what is an operation like an agent oh yes I was an agent a welcoming agent it's gonna be my new thing so an operation um you have to come up with an ops plan and you have to submit that to your chain and command and you know you gotta get and you have to come up with a cool name oh yeah yeah and you have to come up with a name and so the first thing you deal with is what are we going to call it I'm like operation snail Trail so um we put the ops plan together and um we went out and it was like we picked some crappy day to do it because we only got three people it did we got three different groups of people doing it so we got three different like arrest stats so then nipple no I don't don't snail so what else what else is is Big out there that that you guys gotta kind of keep under control yeah uh big thing right now is liveries which is like rentals okay Livery is when like you rent a vessel out to somebody uh that's a big thing right now people are doing it illegally it's like if you to you have to be you have to carry a livery permit and then you have to carry a million dollar insurance policy and all sorts of other things in order to rent Your Vessel out to somebody else you can't just willy-nilly get on Facebook Marketplace and do that and all those regulations are in place because it protects the writer you know if they take off on the jet ski and they kill themselves who's liable well I'm telling you your recreational Progressive Insurance is not going to cover that so um people oftentimes jet skis especially are the culprits of this and um we were dealing with something like that last night and people get hurt when they rent these jet skis from people who are not legitimate businesses because they don't give them any training right they just right that's part of the regulations is that like you haven't seen any of the training that the legit rental places give or nothing yeah so better than nothing but better than nothing right so that's a big thing that we're dealing with right now do they rent them in bad conditions too like are they cognizant of that or they'll just send them out so they send them out get the money to get the money wow and they're charging like 500 oh for like a half a day so they're charging a lot of money and these writers have no experience no education no anything and should charge the rescue to them I know because yesterday turned into a rescue oh yeah yeah what happened with that one yeah so um this couple went out in a jet ski and uh it was very rough out last night it was like six Footers probably and the storm came in and for whatever reason they were possessed to go out to the gulf with little to no experience and they flipped the jet ski and they went to the water and the jet skis quickly got separated from them and they were really far out well I should say really far but they weren't near shore yeah there was no swimming around no and um we got out there and we plucked them out of the water and they didn't really have any training or knowledge and the female on board was pregnant oh boy and she had to be transported to the hospital and then it turns out you know you asked them is the dress he yours no or where'd you get it from my uncle what's your uncle's name then they give you a name that's not their uncle and then you can't find the owner of the jet ski and then it turns out after all of it it's because they rented off Facebook Marketplace oh so they just don't have any training or experience and they go out in these terrible conditions and then tragedies tragedy waiting to happen yeah yeah well I want to do a non-animal thing because I know you were involved in something that was one of our more popular videos which was a which was a Pursuit that went it was a carjacking another carjacking and it went through the camera and it ended up in the water it was it was a fantastic we have a aerial view from the eagle of the whole view all the way from Dunedin to Indian Shores and you were the person on the boat I was yeah I was the person on the boat that's actually probably the coolest funnest call I bet honest don't think that's a word that is like still one of our most watched videos on YouTube yeah let me just let me let's just uh for context for everybody so that one was it started up in Dunedin I think at the Dunedin Cove Motel I believe so which is not known for its accommodations no and and he just fled and it was just one of those things where we have we don't have those very often but this is this was an individual that had really no regard for anybody else and despite how many deputies we have on the road we were having a hard time kind of figuring out where he's going because they usually don't you know call ahead and let us know so we were kind of all over the county and it went down the beach and carjacked crashes it was it was a it was a great day uh crap show it was so we made it down to he was he was sort of approaching the beaches so you were listening to this on the radio yeah watching the units yeah and you were in the water on the boat so it's coming my way and you know I am the only person for whatever reason that day I was the only person on the water everybody else was at the office doing administrative stuff and I think at this particular time at this particular time of day um it's not Jill versus the world out there no no no no no it feels like it sometimes but uh I'm all the way down in John's Pass and I'm like hearing this transpire on the radio and I'm I start listening to it when it's like way up on Clearwater Largo Road and ends up like signal forwarding another vehicle which is a crash and then it leaves the scene and all that stuff so I'm listening to it I'm like this is really getting bad and then all of a sudden it turns on to I think West Bay and I was like that baby's coming to the beaches and it was just like this crazy feeling in my gut that he was going to end up in the water I don't even know how to explain it because I've really never had a sensation quite this strong that I did that day and I was on a vessel stop when this was happening and I cut my vessel stop short I said I gotta go there's a carjacking and they're like what like disregard goodbye I like take off and um I start going and uh it does turn onto Golf Boulevard and I as soon as I hear that it's about to turn onto Gulf Boulevard I text everybody that was at the marina I said get in your trucks and go because we were getting there he was coming straight from the marina and I was like there's three people there and they are Partiers they are gonna get this guy right and this was this was wild I mean this was one of the wild this is the wildest thing I've ever seen since I've been here yeah and like I said we don't have it often but even other things that I see I mean this guy was in absolutely driving crazy down it was crazy there's two lanes at that point uh there's people around I mean they crashed right by Crabby Bills it was crazy and watch it there were so many near misses yes it was pedestrians flying everywhere I think there was just like divine intervention after divine intervention all that entire time because it was just insane it was a lot of people's lucky day yeah but um everybody from the Marine unit that was at the marina gets in their trucks and they're going north right and they have big pickup trucks they're lifted and everything and uh my Corp will get gets on the radio and he's like do I have permission to Ram it and Lieutenant was like stop it by all means necessary and I was like oh it's definitely going in the water and uh he goes through he goes to Ram the vehicle and he just kind of like tapped the rear end because if he would have hit him straight on he would they probably both would have died to be honest they were traveling but him just getting a little quick tap in was enough that this person kind of like slowed down and kind of lost control a little bit and that allowed Patrol to kind of speed up and then they ended up like pitting him and he spun out of control oh yeah yeah and landed the vehicle in the mangroves and I'm very close at this point and the guy gets out of the car and he runs through the mangroves and he jumps in the icw in the water intro goes to Waterway yes and everybody chases him out and they run out onto a dock because though you never want to go into the water after them yeah you're gonna die somebody is at least do it okay like so they're all on the dock and uh Rob gets on the radio and he tells me they're just north of caddies well they weren't north of caddies they were actually just south of Canada so I'm like I'm coming baby follows the wall running this thing as fast as possible and I'm driving and all of a sudden I catch all the corner of my eye people like waving at me and I look over it and it's all of them out on the stuff and they're like we're right here and you know they got to be in the city of North they're pissed at me they think I've made the mistake yeah and the the icw in this area is really narrow you can't just whip a 39 foot boat around when you're running 60 miles an hour well I tried to though so I gotta turn it real hard and uh I'm like this ain't gonna work I'm gonna end up hitting somebody's dock because I was not be able I wasn't able to make a full U-turn and uh I'm like okay I want a collision course with this duck and I was like well I can either hit this doc fast or I can hit it slower so reverse it is so a last second right before I collided with this uh this pole I hard reversed it which ends up killing the engines uh but it was enough that I just tapped they can't see me thankfully everybody else I'm giving up my secret because I could play this off like nothing yeah maybe we'll end up cutting this out so people don't know this happened it was a funny oopsie on my part because I'm like panicking inside holy crap they're seeing me and they're judging me right now and I'm like as soon as I could I start all three motors and I'm like Zoom back over there and they nobody has any idea this happened so I still look like the hero and then so I'm like pulling up to the guy and he's like pretending like he has something in his waistband right and so this is my gun is out at this point now that I'm going slow and not driving like a mad woman my gun is out at this point because I don't know what he has on his hand and I have to drive past him to pick up anybody that's on the dock right so I'm not trying to get shot in my back okay so I'm like going up to him nose up because I'm like if he starts shooting at me he's gonna end up shooting the underside of the boat which is yeah aluminum so or it's metal or some sort and I'm like so he's not gonna kill me that way and they're all screaming me at the dock what are you gonna do pick them up out of the water yourself and I'm like that is not what I'm doing I'm just trying to see if he really has a gun well I can the water's so clear it's Crystal Clear I can tell he doesn't so I'm like okay you're not gonna shoot me gotcha so so then I scoot past them and I go up to the dock and also I make contact with the doc and all of a sudden everybody starts running on and I'm like oh oh how many how many people are we taking and at first I think there's four that runs on the boat and so they run on the boat and then I back up and they go to take them out of the water they get them handcuffed so we get back to the marina then he starts overdosing oh gosh yeah he had when he jumped in the water he had ate a whole handful of something and he starts overdosing at the marina and so now we're like oh God this is bad so we Narcan them and FD can't get to us because there's so many accidents on Gulf Boulevard that Gulf Boulevard is blocked with like seriously injured people too from from the initial like crash when it crashed and and it took probably 25 minutes for them to get through Golf Boulevard and I think literally somebody pushed a vehicle all their way with their vehicle for them to clear the road to get to us and all I could think of first of all 25 minutes is a very long time yeah five minutes is a long time yeah when you're waiting yeah yeah and um I'm like getting on the radio and I'm like I don't care what they need to do but they need to get here now because we're not letting this person die in custody and he didn't he ended up being totally fine after after he got told him the Narcan worked or he did yeah I mean it worked for a little bit but we I don't think we ever found out what exactly he ate but it was whatever he had been high on the entire time is what he had ingested to get rid of it um but he ended up getting medically cleared and he went he went to jail so yeah no yeah and we got a helpful video out of it we sure did so uh thanks for coming on I loved it yeah we appreciate it uh we do like to always give her an opportunity for your own little personal PSA what do you want the public to know what can our listeners do to make your job easier please check the weather um okay the weather in Florida changes so rapidly all I ask is that you please check the weather statement before going out on a boat check it throughout your trip your Voyage check rip current statements do yourself a favor because you do not want to become a statistic and it's sad what it does not it's sad for us and it's sad for your family so don't be vigilant yeah a lot of stuff is is preventable so yeah you guys are burning up resources in some cases risking your own lives for for folks that are just not uh not being responsible yeah absolutely all right so Jill constant marine environment lands unit thanks again for coming on yeah as we said at the beginning we really enjoy getting your feedback and hearing from you we want to know what you want to hear about if you guys have questions you want us to ask whatever it is get in touch with us and you can do so by emailing us at let's 56 at pcsonet.com thanks again to our listeners thanks Joe for coming on we appreciate it and we'll talk to you next thank you