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Hide and seek no game for sheriff's detectives

By JOSE CARDENAS
Published January 21, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - Detective Elonda Zinge knew the woman she sought hung out at the Empress Motel.

So she and Detective Robert Merson pulled their unmarked car behind the building on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street N.

As Merson waited outside, Zinge climbed the stairs to a door on the second floor.

She didn't come back down with a prisoner in handcuffs, but someone did give her a good tip about the fugitive she was looking for, a 47-year-old woman wanted for failing to appear in court on a charge of possession of cocaine.

Most people know about the patrol officers and deputies who respond to chaotic crime scenes and the detectives who build cases against criminals.

In the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, the 17 detectives of the fugitive section get to do the fun stuff.

"When you're in law enforcement," Merson said, "the fun thing you do, when it comes down to it, is putting people in jail."

Each day and evening, the detectives of the fugitive section fan out across eight regions of the county. Their targets are the thousands of people with warrants for everything from probation violations to fresh, serious crimes.

More than 52,300 warrants - some defendants have several warrants - came through the fugitive section during 2006, said sheriff's Lt. John DiBetta.

Deputies served 11,308 of them, arresting 2,580 people. They also served more than 6,200 domestic violence injunctions.

Zinge, 43, and Merson, 46, started a recent shift as they usually do at the sheriff's headquarters in Largo. Before sunup, they compiled a list of about 90 new or lingering warrants and checked databases for current addresses. Merson, 6 feet 2 and 255 pounds, got behind the wheel of the brown Dodge Stratus when they headed out.

Their first target: James Cutillo, age 22. Address: 739 53rd Ave. N. Original charge: possession of heroin.

Clad in black pants and gray polo shirts with guns and Tasers strapped to their legs, Zinge knocked on the door, while Merson peeked through the side windows and covered the back exit.

When no one opened the door, Zinge walked across the street. A couple sitting on a porch told her Cutillo had been evicted two weeks earlier.

"A lot of times you'll spend more time talking to a neighbor for a more serious crime," said Zinge, who has been on the unit six years.

The work can be exciting, but their first stop of the day showed how fugitive detectives often spend large chunks of their day.

They can make a couple of dozen stops during an eight-hour shift. They step in and out of their cars. The suspects no longer live there. No one is home. Or no one opens the door.

Detectives can break in only when they have reason to believe the person with the warrant is inside.

"Driving from place to place to place drives you nuts," said Merson, who has been on the unit five years. "Some times of the year" - like when it's hot - "you're dying."

On a good day, the detectives make four arrests. The arrests take up a lot of time because the detectives have to go book the prisoners into jail.

But on this particular morning, after knocking on several doors and peering through many windows, "we have hit nothing but vacant places," Merson told another detective on a cell phone.

"This is unusual," Zinge said around 9:40 a.m., after a bathroom break and a snack at a 7-Eleven.

* * *

The tipster at the Empress Motel told Zinge to go down the block to another small motel.

After knocking on two doors and interviewing a couple of men, Zinge found Phyllis M. Scholz, 47, hiding behind a shower curtain in Apt. 2.

Scholz, wearing a white shirt, brown shorts and green slippers, walked out in handcuffs with her head down.

"I think the most rewarding are the ones you put a lot of effort in chasing down leads," Zinge said.

The job description would seem to call for a lot of confrontation. Though there is a lot of gun pointing during searches because of the "unknown factor," Merson said, neither he nor Zinge has ever fired their guns. Merson has used his Taser twice. Zinge has used hers once.

Typically, Merson said, people mostly want to hide. Such was the case on the second arrest of the day.

Around 1 p.m., on their last stop of the day, the detectives stopped on Joyce Terrace, where Phillip James Cameron, 50, was wanted because he did not show up for a sentencing hearing on a battery charge.

Though Cameron's son said his father wasn't there, Merson had already seen him inside the house.

"This is typical: offer no resistance when we find you, but do everything to not be detected," said Merson.

All the knocking on doors paid off at the end of the day.

The mother of a 21-year-old called him and told him that detectives had been at their house. He turned himself in at the jail by midmorning.

That's often how it works. When fugitives hear detectives have paid them a visit, they frequently go to the jail and face the inevitable. Then the next day they are not on the wanted list anymore.

"This morning when I got in I had eight warrants on my purge list," Zinge said.

Times staff writer Jose Cardenas can be reached at jcardenas@sptimes.com or 727 445-4224.

52,300 Number of warrants routed through the Pinellas County sheriff's fugitive section in 2006.

11,308 Number of warrants served successfully.

2,580 Number of people arrested.

[Last modified January 21, 2007, 00:48:04]