Pinellas deputies have arrested scores of suspects this month in a crackdown on looting and unlicensed contracting in Pinellas beach towns after hurricanes Helene and Milton displaced many residents.
In a news conference in Madeira Beach Thursday afternoon, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said the severe damage wrought by the hurricanes has drawn an unprecedented amount of bad actors to the beaches.
“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,” he said.
Between Oct. 2 and Thursday, deputies conducting looting patrols on the barrier islands had arrested 45 people on charges including armed robbery, burglary, loitering and prowling, grand theft, vandalism and trespassing.
Two of the suspects were Pinellas County residents and 41 were not U.S. citizens, Gualtieri said.
“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 also made contact with nearly 200 people who appeared suspicious, but could not establish probable cause to arrest them. Deputies instead told them to leave.
A majority of the suspects and the people deputies told to move along were not from the area, often in vehicles with out-of-state tags, Gualtieri said.
Detectives by Thursday afternoon had also arrested 62 people on more than 100 unlicensed contracting charges as part of a three-day undercover operation in Madeira Beach.
