The Osceola County Sheriff’s Office in Florida are well-equipped when it comes to responding to calls about suspicious activity. However, one call took them slightly by surprise late last week when responding officers found themselves wrestling with an alligator.
Fortunately for local residents, it seems as though this alligator will be reconsidering being generally suspicious in the future!
Arresting an alligator is just another day on the job for the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office.
Well, it isn’t perhaps the most ordinary day on the job, but Osceola County Sheriff’s Office handled themselves pretty well when confronted with a somewhat antsy alligator last week!
Sheriff Marcos R. Lopez took to the Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page after the incident to post some images of the confrontation and advise people how to deal with alligators in the future.
It all stared when the police received a call of “suspicious activity” in a resident’s backyard.
Sheriff Marco Lopez explained that the startled resident claimed, “There was noise at the back door, hissing, scratching like if someone was trying to make entry into her house.”
The responding officers decided to investigate the disturbance immediately, only to find that a fully-grown alligator was behind all of the suspicious activity!
The alligator fought against being removed, but the officers safely removed him eventually.
“He fought. He tried to run. He twisted and turned, but guess what? He was no match for the Osceola County deputies,” Lopez explained in a video detailing the incident.
In a video of the confrontation, the alligator can be seen to be snapping at the officers and spinning furiously as they try to catch him in a neck harness.
The pesky alligator was then “taken into custody and safely released into another side of the lake,” according to Lopez.
Lopez and the other officers escaped without injury, and the alligator was safely released on bail to another part of a nearby lake. The police department gave the alligator the codename “Swampy Chops,” and Lopez ended the humorous video on their Facebook page by warning people to be on their toes due to it being alligator mating season.
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Lopez also warned local residents to “be alert” and to keep small animals and children away from the edges of local lakes at all times.
Hopefully Swampy Chops will keep away from a life of crime from now on!