Overview
- Officers responding before dawn to a reported intruder at a Tampa home found a roughly 9-foot alligator in the backyard pool, according to local reports.
- Working with a state-licensed nuisance alligator trapper, police guided the reptile into the water to tire it and then secured and lifted it out.
- Video published this week shows the officer and trapper hoisting the animal from the pool and loading it into a truck.
- Tampa Police later posted on Facebook that the alligator was removed safely and that residents could return to “gator-free” sleep.
- Such removals are routine in Florida neighborhoods, where police rely on trappers to take large alligators off private property without harming people.