TAMPA, Fla. — For hours Saturday night, leading into Sunday, June 1, an out-of-control crowd burned businesses, smashed ATMs and caused chaos all along Fowler Avenue.
“It was rampant,” said Det. Sgt. Justin Martens, of TPD’s District 2. “Almost every business had some sort of damage.”
Tampa Police Department officers were outnumbered and overwhelmed. But as hundreds of people shattered front doors and looted local businesses, plenty of cameras were recording.
And now, one by one, detectives are working overtime to identify those responsible.
“We’ve spent the past week solid, seven days a week 12 hours a day, 13 detectives, basically have been devoted to this,” Martens said.
Tampa Police have already arrested 60 people but say that’s just the beginning. They’re pouring through hundreds of hours of video surveillance and cell phone footage posted to social media and are now posting still images of potential suspects to the Crime Stoppers of Tampa Bay website.
“We’ve broken them down by business,” said Martens of the suspect photos. “Here’s who we have on video at this business, we’ve numbered those businesses, so you can call into Crime Stoppers and say hey I know who person number seven is.
“Give us that information.”
Among their most wanted is a man who police say is caught on camera lighting the Champs Sports store on fire.
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“I’ve got a detective specifically assigned to that case,” Martens said. “We were able to track him at multiple locations throughout the night. He’s at the mall, he’s at Champs, he walks westbound down Fowler Avenue.”
Det. Scott Savitt worked Saturday night and met some of the business owners who lost everything.
“It’s not just big corporations that were victimized,” he said. “These are small mom and pop stores three or four employees they’re cleaned out.”
For that reason, Martens says he and his detectives are committed to tracking down those responsible.
“This is a large undertaking for us but we feel it’s important to the citizens of Tampa to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” he said.
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