45 People, including 41 non-citizens, have been arrested in Florida for looting in the weeks after Hurricanes Helene & Milton tore through the state.
Pinellas County Deputies launched a crackdown on both looting and unlicensed contracting after the damage drew an unprecedented amount of ‘bad actors to the beaches.’
Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said
“We’ve never seen anything of this magnitude before, we’ve never seen this influx of people from out of the area that are clearly just here to steal and to pilfer and to do bad things and to target these vulnerable people”
The people arrested are being charged with armed robbery, burglary, loitering and prowling, grand theft, vandalism and trespassing.
“They’re going into people’s homes, they’re taking stuff, they’re rummaging through their things,” Gualtieri said. “In one case, it was an armed robbery where they went in and stole from them forcibly.”
Deputies ran into almost 200 people who looked suspicious and had out of state tags, but didn’t catch them in the act so they told them to leave.
62 people were also arrested on unlicensed contracting charges.
