Aerial view of the Overseas Highway (U.S. 1) between Florida City and Key Largo, Florida. Photo: enrique galeano morales via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Representative image.
A Monroe County Sheriff’s Office arrest log lists a 24-year-old Homestead man on five charges, including a felony count of fleeing or eluding, from an arrest on U.S. 1 at Plantation Key on Oct. 24. His bond is $15,000. He is presumed innocent, and the log is the only public record we found, so we are not naming him.
The entry is on the sheriff’s current arrests page under incident MCSO26CAD151619 and offense MCSO26OFF006776. It gives the arrest time as 6:45 a.m., his occupation as unemployed, and nothing else about what happened on the road.
The charges
- Fleeing or eluding, Fla. Stat. 316.1935(2), a third-degree felony
- Reckless driving, 316.192(1)(a)
- DUI, 316.193(1)(a)
- Refusal to submit to a breath or urine test, 316.1939
- Driving without a valid license, 322.03(1)
The felony count
Subsection (2) of the fleeing statute covers a driver who willfully flees an officer in a marked patrol vehicle with siren and lights on. That is a third-degree felony. Subsection (3) is the higher tier: the same flight at high speed, or with wanton disregard for people or property, is a second-degree felony. The log lists (2) and no (3) count.
The log’s description column also calls the fleeing charge “RESIST OFFICER,” and labels both the DUI and the test-refusal lines “DUI-UNLAW BLD ALCH.” The statute numbers are what separate them. A first refusal to submit to a breath or urine test is a second-degree misdemeanor under 316.1939 unless the driver has a prior suspension or refusal fine.
What the log leaves out
There is no narrative: no vehicle, no speed, no statement of which agency made the stop or took him into custody, and no explanation of why the arrest location is Plantation Key for a Homestead resident. Other entries on the page carry arraignment dates. His does not.
Details circulating about this stop, including a 100 mph run, tire spikes at three mile markers and a finish at the Homestead Police Department’s front door, are not in the log, and we found no Monroe County or Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office release that confirms them. Spike strips have a court record of their own, as in the I-64 case in West Virginia, and Florida’s fleeing law has been in the news this month in the I-275 Corvette forfeiture.
The arrest report, once filed with the Monroe County clerk, should say which agency stopped him and where. Until then the log is all there is, and it is thinner than the record in our coverage of a Florida DUI arrest at 135 mph earlier this month.
Florida grades a first-time breath-test refusal as a second-degree misdemeanor. Should refusing to blow carry a heavier penalty than that?
Sources: Monroe County Sheriff’s Office current arrests page (incident MCSO26CAD151619, offense MCSO26OFF006776); Fla. Stat. 316.1935 and 316.1939.
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