Wild Police Chase in Coral Gables Ends With Arrest, Injured Officer

CORAL GABLES — A license plate reader set off a wild police chase on Tuesday night that ended with an injured officer, two smashed police cars and the arrest of 21-year-old Richard Grissom-Rodgers on charges of grand theft auto and multiple other offenses.

The incident began around 6:45 p.m. in the 500 block of South Dixie Highway by Rivera Drive when a mounted license plate reader alerted police that it had detected a stolen 2011 silver Toyota Camry heading south on South Dixie Highway.

"Within a minute, the officers picked up the vehicle as soon as the hit on the stolen car was broadcasted," Officer Kelly Denham of the Coral Gables Police Department told Patch on Wednesday morning.

The entire chase unfolded in only about four minutes, Denham added.

According to arrest documents, Grissom-Rodgers led police on a high-speed chase when they attempted to stop him "weaving in and out traffic and going over the curb at times in the 1300 block of South Dixie Highway."

Police said Grissom-Rodgers of the 200 block of NW 21st Avenue in Miami "intentionally crashed" into two police cars, tried to run over an officer on foot, went over a curb into a Metrorail parking lot, drove without headlights on the wrong side of busy Ponce de Leon Boulevard and fled on foot over a chain link fence onto the baseball field of the University of Miami.

He led police across the baseball field and over another fence onto nearby San Amaro Drive where officers finally wrestled him to the ground, but not before Officer A. Toledo suffered a broken hand, according to Denham.

Following the takedown, Grissom-Rodgers allegedly told detectives that he attempted to run down the officer because "it was either the officer's life or his life."

Tuesday's arrest is the latest example of the growing use and interest in license plate readers by Miami area law enforcement agencies — essentially fixed or mounted devices that take an image of license plates when motorists pass by and then run those images through optical character recognition software.

Tag numbers are cross-referenced against the same law enforcement databases that officers access when they manually center a license plate number, but in a fraction of the time and more of them than any one officer or group of officers could enter manually.

In addition to the grand theft auto charge, Grissom-Rodgers was also charged with attempted premeditated first degree murder of a law enforcement officer, aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest with violence and attempting to elude police after an accident with damage.

Photo of Grissom-Rodgers by Miami-Dade County Corrections.