Incredible footage captured on a Florida police officer’s body camera shows the officer face off with one of the state’s deadliest creatures.

Alfred Vargas of the Boynton Beach Police Department, a community about 90 kilometres north of Miami, was called to a local home when a resident complained about an alligator lingering outside their front door.

Run-ins with the reptiles aren’t unheard of in Florida, and Vargas is one of the officers in his department trained to handle alligators.

In the three-minute body-cam video, the alligator brandishes its jaws and lunges at the officer’s feet. Vargas gingerly approaches the reptile and uses a wire loop in repeated attempts to fasten a cord around its head.

After several tries, Vargas finally gets a hold of the alligator and pins it to the ground. Its jaws are eventually fastened shut with tape.

Vargas made a call to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, but he was concerned that they would want to kill the animal.

Instead, he placed the gator in the back of his patrol car and drove out to a nearby canal, where it was released back into the wild.

The dramatic video of the incident, which police say happened a few weeks ago, has been viewed more than 17,000 times on Facebook.

Aside from a small dose of fame, the successful take-down has earned Vargas the title of “official alligator wrestler” on the force.

 

The Gator Boys Alligator Rescue will be proud of this one…A few weeks ago, Officer Alfredo Vargas responded to a call from a resident of Hunter’s Run who found an alligator laying by his front door. Watch Officer Vargas’ body camera video to see how he was able to safely secure the alligator. He learned how to handle/wrestle alligators at the Native Village in Hollywood, Florida. There, he was mentored by Michael “Skeet” Johns and Jimmy Riffle, who remains one of his best friends. Officer Vargas called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and learned that it would be about 30 minutes before a trapper could arrive, and it was likely that the trapper would kill the alligator. Officer Vargas said he didn’t want that to happen given his background with learning how to capture nuisance gators and return them to their natural habitat, which is what the Gator Boys Alligator Rescue does. FWC advised that he could release the reptile elsewhere, so he put the alligator in the back seat of his patrol car and took him out to a canal by Congress Avenue and Miner Road. Officer Vargas removed the tape from around its mouth and put him back in the water. Officer Vargas doesn’t know it yet, but we’ve just made him the department’s official alligator wrestler (kidding but not really). #bbpdpride

Posted by Boynton Beach Police Department on Wednesday, 26 July 2017