Story and photos by Phil Rudin

When I joined the West Palm Beach Police Department in 1973 I was already an advanced open water diver with more than 500 dives under my weight belt. It seemed only natural that I would be asked to join the department’s dive team since there were few divers within the department with my level of experience.

West Palm Beach is bordered on the east by more than 10 miles of Intracoastal Waterway. In the center of the city are Clear Lake and Lake Mangonia, which cover over 1900 acres combined. In addition there are dozens of canals, small lakes, ponds, water retention areas and wetlands.

Back in 1973 we had five divers on the P.D. who were called upon mostly to recover vehicles and bodies from local waters. Being the largest city in Palm Beach County, we were often called into action by smaller cities and towns that did not support dive teams. In the early days when I was called for service as a diver I would leave my road patrol duties and go home to get my personal dive gear. I would then go to the scene of the dive recovery and often dive solo while other officers looked on.

At that time the dive team did not train on duty and the department did not own any of the gear. Our budget included five regulator overhauls a year and $150 for air fills.

In the early 1980s police administrators became aware of the liability related to specialty units such as SWAT, bomb squads, K-9 teams and the dive team. Documented training and department-owned equipment were finally approved for the dive team.

By the time I became commander of the dive team in 1996 we were up to eight members, training once a month, had eight sets of high-quality dive gear, full face masks and environmental dry suits. And for the first time we had a storage area within the department building.

When we selected members for the team, training and experience were the top areas of concern along with a long-term commitment to continuing training. We had several new divers quit within the first year when confronted with the challenges of diving in zero visibility and contaminated water, confronting snakes and alligators, and with the idea of running head-on into a week-old corpse.

Once those issues were overcome the real training began. Hundreds of hours were devoted to searches in “black water” with lines, grids, metal detection equipment and by feel in a world of three-dimensional muck and sediment bottoms. Sometimes we located evidence hidden under three feet of decaying sediment that engulfed our entire bodies.

On one beautiful summer afternoon I was able to dive the Intracoastal near high tide when visibility was more than 20 feet. I was surrounded by small schooling fish, warm waters and overhead sunshine. It began to feel like a recreational dive over the white sandy bottom, until I located the body of the 9-year-old who had been missing from a nearby park. At that point the area became a crime scene and was handled in the same way as any above-water death investigation.

All below-water CSI work was handled by the dive team. First the body was marked with a buoy so that it could be easily relocated. By this time in most drowning investigations someone has called the local media to the scene and it would not be good to spend time having to relocate a body. The underwater investigation included photographing the body, making detailed measurements, searching the entire surrounding area for additional evidence and more. The body was then placed into a plastic body bag so that any evidence attached to the victim would not be washed away and to reduce the trauma for family and relatives who may have gathered.

Once the body has been released to the medical examiners at the scene the investigation is turned over to detectives. Other evidence like firearms is placed into PVC tubes and turned over to the crime lab and later it’s removed from the tube and dried. Trace evidence and fingerprints, which can remain on a weapon underwater for several weeks, can then be located.

When dealing with submerged vehicles, boats and aircraft the process is much the same. An attempt needs to be made to determine how the vehicle entered the water. I recovered vehicles that had been stolen and stripped of body parts, “lost” to collect on insurance and crashed by accident or while running from the police.

I also recovered boats and aircraft, including one plane that had crashed into Lake Mangonia while transporting drugs. Issues involved with making these types of recoveries include preventing contamination by the loss of oil, gas and aviation fuels into the surrounding water, which could harm the divers.

Removing large items from the water involved cooperation between the divers and the towing operation. Divers were required to drag very heavy tow cables to the sunken vehicle and then attach them. If the tow truck operator retracted the cable at the wrong time it could injure or trap the diver under the vehicle. Lift bags used to float aircraft and boats could also cause injuries if the system failed.

After 9/11 the federal government began to rely much more on local police department dive teams for additional port security. I had been trained to do hull inspections at the National Academy of Police Diving, run by the Metro Dade P.D., so I trained the 50 police and fire officers from 13 Palm Beach County departments that are called upon to do hull inspections.

The inspection requests are made by U.S. Customs officers. Once a ship has been targeted, customs officers contact local police and a team is charged with boarding the ship in port or at sea. A long checklist of procedures is then followed to shut down all machinery, electronics and dumping of waste that could injure divers under the ship.

Once this is done a second team forms a plan for getting divers safely in and out of the water where the ship is located. Divers then enter the water and make a line search which covers the entire ship from waterline to waterline and bow to stern. The idea is to attempt to locate any contraband attached to the underside of the ship. Drug smugglers have become quite proficient at concealing large amounts of drugs in “parasites” (e.g., sealed PVC tubes) attached to the exterior of ships and also hidden behind access plates in large rudders. Divers are required to inspect all running gear, bow thrusters, stabilizing plates, prop shafts and any other areas where the “parasites” could be attached.

The other concern is of course explosives. I was called upon by the Secret Service since the 1970s to perform hull inspections for U.S. and foreign presidents boarding vessels. We also performed this service for the Harry Winston jewel collection which each year attracted high rollers from around the world to their yachts at the Palm Harbor Marina.

When I left the department in 2003 I had made more than 500 dives for the department and was commander of a 12-member dive team. After 30 years as a police diver my interest in diving has continued to grow. While most of my retired colleagues have moved on to other careers in the criminal justice system I have followed my passion for diving and underwater photography. Now with more than 5,000 dives under my weight belt I have become senior photographer for Dive Chronicles Magazine and I am looking forward to another 30 years in more tranquil waters.