Police Officer Lassos And Wrassles An Alligator Like A Total Boss All To Save The Gator’s Life


A police officer in Boynton Beach, Florida is being heralded as a hero after using a lasso to contain an alligator before wrestling the gator into submission. The office did so in order to relocate the alligator before the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission arrived (video below).

If the FWC had arrived first there was a better than good chance the alligator would’ve been euthanized. Instead, the officer wrestled the alligator into submission and relocated it to a nearby canal so the confused and disoriented alligator could continue living out his days in the wild.

Footage of this alligator encounter has started going viral as the story of this heroic Boynton Beach officer begins to spread. The Boynton officer first used his lasso to subdue the gator and then threw his jacket over the alligator’s head to disorient the animal so that he could pounce on it and carry the alligator to his vehicle for relocation:

The Boynton Beach Police Department shared the video on their Facebook page with this caption:

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).

Here’s the Facebook version of that video, just in case the Twitter embed above from ABC isn’t loading:

 

Great work from a great officer. An alligator’s life was saved. A viral video was made. And nobody got hurt.