115-degree heat index prompts one Florida sheriff to ask criminals to postpone crimes

Mark Price
·1 min read
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It’s getting dangerously hot in parts of Florida — so hot that one county sheriff made an unusual request of the community’s bad guys.

“Folks ... due to the extreme heat, we are asking anyone thinking of conducting criminal activity to hold off,” the Hardee County Sheriff’s Office wrote Sunday, June 25, on Facebook.

“It is straight up H-O-T and humid. Criminal activity in this kind of heat is next level henchmen status, and also very dangerous for everyone involved.”

Instead, the sheriff’s office suggested would-be criminals consider staying home with the air conditioning turned up and “binge watch Netflix, scroll the BeReals or check on your old friends with the FaceTime.”

Maps show Hardee, Manatee and DeSoto counties are included in a circle of southwest Florida where oppressive heat is expected in the coming week.
Maps show Hardee, Manatee and DeSoto counties are included in a circle of southwest Florida where oppressive heat is expected in the coming week.

“Seriously, let’s meet again when it’s cooler,” the sheriff’s office said.

The request was made the same day forecasters reported Hardee, Manatee and DeSoto counties are part of a hellish doughnut hole of heat appearing in southwest Florida this week.

Heat indexes in the circle are predicted to be 110 to 115 degrees on multiple days. Daytime temperatures will be in the 90s, but the heat index measures “what the temperature feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with the air temperature,” the National Weather Service says.

The extreme weather is credited to a “heat dome” preventing hot daytime temperatures from cooling overnight, forecasters say.

Hundreds of people reacted and commented on the Hardee County Sheriff’s Office Facebook post, but none admitted to being criminals taking the idea seriously.

However, considering summer has only just begun, some citizens say the sheriff should have specified a longer waiting period.

“Y’all stop breaking the law til winter,” one man suggested.

Hardee County is about 55 miles southeast of Tampa.

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