ST. LUCIE COUNTY — After weeks of police officer training in a classroom, Indian River State College students move on to a small platform that provides a high-tech simulation of how they react in a real-life situation.

They’re given a weapon that only emits lasers and equipped with a belt that zaps them if they put themselves in danger.

“It teaches consequences if they make bad decisions,” Stephen Huntsberger, associate dean of Public Service Education for IRSC, said of the VirTra Systems simulator at the complex.

The simulator is one of the planned demonstrations at Friday’s public open house at the new Indian River State College Public Safety Complex.
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STUART — A resident of The Crossings apartments in the 3600 block of Gatehouse Circle walked into her apartment Saturday at 3:45 p.m. and surprised a burglar in her home.

The suspect, a black male, 6 feet tall and with a medium build was wearing a gray T-shirt and black shorts, according to Sgt. Martin Jacobson of the Stuart Police Department.
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FORT PIERCE — St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputies arrested 503 people this summer, seizing about $92,000 in cash, cars, drugs and guns during stepped-up patrols in some of the city’s most crime-ridden areas.

Deputies, who seized 10 guns and three cars during the operation, arrested people on 556 total charges. Of those, about 155, or 28 percent, were felony charges.

“The results were pretty outstanding,” Sheriff Ken Mascara said of the operation.

This is the ninth year that the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s office has increased patrols in the city during the summer months. The Fort Pierce Police Department usually participates in the effort, but couldn’t this year due to reductions in its police force, he said.

The summer operation evolved from the philosophy that “street-level crime (in Fort Pierce) affects crime throughout the entire county,” Mascara said.

“We wanted to target street-level dealers and vice,” he said. (more…)

STUART — Described as a loving father and caring person, Jerome Hutchinson was found early Monday morning face down on the sidewalk leading to his East Stuart residence.

The 24-year-old man had been shot in the chest, the second to die in an exceptionally violent weekend in Stuart. The first was Michael Morrison, 43, found early Saturday morning on his back next to his Jeep at The Crossings at Indian Run Apartments less than four miles away.

Morrison also had been shot in the chest, but police haven’t found a nexus between the two killings, police spokesman Sgt. Marty Jacobson said Monday.
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A young man was found shot to death face down on the sidewalk leading to his Stuart apartment overnight.

Stuart police report they were called at about 12:03 a.m. to 931 Nassau Ave. for reports of shots fired in the area. They found 24-year-old Jerome Hutchinson sprawled on the sidewalk with a gunshot to the chest. He died there, police report.

Witnesses said they heard three gun shots and saw three or four men run from the scene. Those witnesses said they men then jumped into a silver Ford Escort with tinted windows and “some type of black stripe designs down the sides of the car” and sped away, police reported.

Anyone with information is asked to call Det. Mike Gerwan at 772-220-3918 or Treasure Coast Crime Stoppers at 1-800-273-8477.

Note to teens facing a potential prison term: don’t use your MySpace page to post photos of police officers and wish “AIDS and genocide to all law enforcement.”

That’s what Stuart resident Jesse Alan Walker, 19, did while awaiting a June trial in which a jury convicted him of robbery with a firearm related to a 2008 home invasion armed robbery. At trial, he was accused of planning the robbery with two then-20-year-old co-defendants, who once played football for Jensen Beach High School.

“I hate the (expletive) police,” Walker posted on MySpace last December, along with photos of Stuart Police officers and derogatory comments.
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ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Law enforcement agencies are working to get rid of the hundreds of backlogged DNA cases to make for a safer Treasure Coast.

The Indian River Crime Laboratory hired a DNA criminalist through a $94,922 forensic science improvement grant with the Port St. Lucie Police Department from the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice.

Lab Director Dan Nippes said the backlog for St. Lucie, Indian River, Martin and Okeechobee counties at the end of June was 646 cases.
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Asked in a questionnaire by Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers for TCPalm.com’s “Ask the Candidates” page whether they had been convicted of a felony, both candidates on the ballot for state Senate District 28 seat wrote “no.”

The answer from one of the candidates isn’t accurate, according to a Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers investigation.

According to court records and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern Pennsylvania, Democrat Bill Ramos, a mortgage broker from Jensen Beach, pleaded guilty to a single count of embezzlement of postal funds — accepting a three-year probation and repaying the missing money — in 1989. That charge is a felony.

Ramos said Thursday he didn’t consider pleading “no contest” the same as a conviction.

“I answered specifically as it was asked,” Ramos said. “It just said have you ever been convicted of, and I answered no. I plead no contest.”

The court documents show Ramos pleaded guilty.

Assistant State Attorney John Cannizzaro, of Florida’s 19th Judicial Circuit in Fort Pierce, said judges advise defendants before they enter a guilty plea that the action is the same as being convicted at a jury trial.

“There is no difference,” he said. (more…)

FORT PIERCE — The State Attorney’s Office has decided a Port St. Lucie man was defending his grandmother when he stabbed and killed a man assaulting her.

According to Port St. Lucie Police Department reports, 39-year-old Scot Smith stabbed Michael Gary Sherman, 51, in the early morning hours of Jan. 21 as Sherman was attacking Smith’s grandmother, 87-year-old Augusta Smith.

A report made available Friday at the police department said Assistant State Attorney Linda Baldree had determined Scott Smith’s act was justifiable homicide, and State Attorney Bruce Colton agreed.
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FORT PIERCE — A 14-year-old boy who police say fled from officers, brandished a gun and barricaded himself inside a home Monday afternoon surrendered after a few hours, officials said.

Patrick Casimir of 1105 North 29th Street was arrested just before 5 p.m. after he walked out of the house in the 3000 block of Avenue L with his hands raised, according to Sgt. Dennis McWilliams. No one was injured, and no shots were fired.

Casimir was charged with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer, armed burglary and two counts of resisting arrest without violence, officials said.
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