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Congratulations to Officer Khaled Taha, recipient of the City of Coral Gables “Officer of the Month Award,” for the month of January, 2018.
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On January 17th, 2018 at 0127 hours, Officer Taha was patrolling his assigned zone when he observed two males acting suspicious along the 3600 block of Ponce De Leon Blvd. Officer Taha parked his vehicle in a tactical location and shut off his vehicle lights. He continued to observe the two males acting suspicious, grouching down and continuously looking around attempting to conceal themselves. The subjects appeared very young which caused concern as to why they were out so late at night.
Officer Taha proceeded to conduct a consensual encounter to verify the age of the subjects. One of the subjects confirmed he was 15 years old. The other subject was an adult. Neither one of them lived in the area. Based on this information, Officer Taha read the subjects their Miranda rights per card and obtained consent to search a backpack one of the subjects was carrying. Inside the backpack was miscellaneous property including two different identifiable items belonging to someone other than the subjects. Upon further questioning of the adult subject, he subsequently admitted to breaking into a several vehicles in the area. He also confirmed that some of the property inside of his backpack did not belong to either one of them. The adult subject agreed to show officers what vehicles he broke into. Due to the time of night, the subject could not positively identify the vehicles but indicated it was in the alley along Ponce De Leon Blvd. The subjects also left behind two bicycles along the 200 block of Aledo which were recovered and impounded for safe keeping. The juvenile subject initially provided a false name to Officer Taha.
Both subjects were arrested and charged with Loitering and Prowling and Resisting without Violence for providing a false name. Later that morning, at least two victims (18-357/18-359) and a possible t...
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