The Big Story / Cemetery Burglars Caught and at Large
by Rick Boettger
Some vigilant police work by KWPD Officer Cynthia Williams resulted in the arrest of two burglars in the area pillaged by someone we’ve been calling the “Cemetery Burglar” for the last year. Just after midnight on New Year’s Eve she saw two men with backpacks walking east on Fleming past Elizabeth. She was patrolling the area due to another recent rash of burglaries in that part of Old Town.
What caught her eye was one of the men seeming “too intoxicated to walk without assistance.” When they noticed her, the sober one tried to rush the drunk, who almost fell as they fled the officer. She smartly drove past “so as not to alarm them” and turned onto William Street. But they noticed her car, which did indeed visibly alarm them.
Having been noticed, she then followed them in her patrol car. When they saw her, they ducked into Shippens Lane. It goes nowhere. You have to live there to belong there. So Officer Williams parked her car, got out, and stopped the two guys as they came back out of the lane.
Her suspicions were confirmed. After Mirandizing them, she found a Garmin GPS on one, a bit of cocaine, and no reasonable explanation of why they were on Fleming, much less Shippens Lane. They said they were “going to Bahama Street to catch a bus to Marathon Key,” but Bahama Street was in the opposite direction from where they were headed. One had a long record of arrests. The other had no I.D., so no way to know. The GPS had indeed been reported stolen up in Marathon.
As a three-time victim of a cemetery burglar myself, I offer my grateful thanks to Officer Williams for her vigilant initiative in arresting these criminals BEFORE they made away with more of our stuff. This is exactly what we idealize about our police. Watchful. Insightfully suspicious. Careful in observing and following the suspects. Meticulous in following proper apprehension and arrest procedures. Even the report is discursively well-written. (Aspiring cops, I suggest you get an A in a college-level English class as a prerequisite for the paperwork part of your job.)
And, as aside #1, I infer from the first name of “Cynthia” that officer Williams is, indeed, like my own wife Cynthia, a member of the female species. A lone woman confronting two men. Two likely bad men. By herself at midnight. Which she did without hesitation. It’s her job. It’s a cop’s job. She is a cop. Still more evidence that the self-selecting set of women who want a “man’s” job can do it as well as we can.
Aside #2 is that both guys are White. This was not another case of being stop-and-searched for the suspicious crime of “walking while Black,” something of a mortal problem recently across the U.S. My goodness, this has become such a feel-good story that to retain my Debby Downer cred I must now segue to not one but two real bummers….
Note I said above she arrested “a,” not “the” cemetery burglar. For a while we’ve been pretty sure it is not just one. In fact, another one, of the scariest, most threatening variety is being investigated. I cannot discuss it here so as not to violate the confidence of a source. But the KWPD is on it, and we must have every confidence they will take this one off the streets as well. I have to say at least this much as a warning to my kind that it is still lockdown in Old Town. I was burgled in large part because I had no idea a rash of break-ins was ongoing in my formerly who-locks-the-doors Meadows neighborhood.
The second bummer is my saying it here first: it is time for KWPD Chief Donie Lee to gracefully resign. In defense of his officers who mortally mishandled the Charles Eimers arrest, he has essentially fallen on his sword. He made the decision I probably would have made myself in his position: defend his people, not betray them to us civilians.
Sometimes true leadership means taking the fall for the people who work for you. I have done the most unethical things in my life in defense of my MIT fraternity pledge brothers and my military comrades. In extremis, Chief Lee works for his fellow officers more than he works for us. He has done what he has had to do.
Now We the People, through our civilian leadership, must do what we have to do. Chief Lee can take his currently excellent record to get a job someplace else. We need an outsider to spend a couple of years here changing our police culture and either re-educating or firing the—how many?—two or five “I dropped like a f—king bomb on his head” officers.
Commissioners, there is absolutely nothing brave in standing up for violent authority figures, the police or our military. We still have civilian leadership of both. Use it or lose it, as is happening in New York, where the police are openly defying their mayor. It is your job to direct City manager Jim Scholl to encourage a change of leadership of our KWPD. Ray Peterson was fired for not promoting an incompetent bubba. Bill Mauldin was fired for an unconsummated sexual liaison. What we have now is at a mortally higher level.
Please do not make us go through a year of crucifying Donie for having his troops’ back. We can’t begin to start healing until our commissioners act as bravely on our behalf as he has acted on theirs.
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Yes, I agree with you, Rick, that Officer Cynthia Williams acted as a police officer should. I would have felt better about it (there being more than one subject) had she called for backup before attempting to apprehend the two men, but was glad to know she received no resistance to her arrest of them. It has been my experience as a former local that the female officers of the KWPD always performed their duties as they were trained to do and as the people of the island would hope they would do. Sorry you still have one or more cemetery burglars at large, however, and that you got hit not twice, as I’d believed, but three times. I think your house should be retired by the roaming thief or thieves! As for your suggestion that Chief Donie Lee gracefully submit his resignation, as highly as I’ve always thought of him, because the other offending officers (Eimers’ case) were neither placed on extended unpaid leave or better yet, fired, yes, I believe it might be the right thing for the chief to do for both Key West and himself. Perhaps it is time for a non-local to take the helm to see whether this kind of situation can be stopped before another innocent person is seriously harmed or killed by the over-zealousness of a few officers of the law, who unlike Officer Cynthia Williams, do not act with intelligent diligence and sensibility in performing their duties when coming upon a suspect or suspects. I also believe the city should follow the lead of the city of West Palm Beach and outfit every patrol officer with body cameras, so there will be no more Charles Eimers’ cases to cloud the good name of the KWPD and the city of Key West. Thank you as always for your intelligent and thought-provoking column. Enjoy your morning!
Praise where praise is due and condemnation where condemnation is due. This is a very good example of the nuanced real world that we actually live in. Some can’t seem to grasp the fact that one can support the police and at the same time demand responsibility and accountability. It’s really not that difficult to do, if you THINK about it. Good on officer Cynthia Williams and time for Chief Lee to go along with the “effing bomb droppers” and deposition liars.