The call came through the radio - the kind that makes your pulse skip before your brain catches up to what you’re hearing. Officer Ron Dixon was inside the Sarasota Police Department’s marine office finishing paperwork when he heard it. “It was a bunch of yelling, couldn’t really make sense of it. But when you hear that? You know something is going on.”
He got the coordinates from the Coast Guard. “Got down to my boat, punched in the coords, and saw that it was not very far away at all, only a mile and a half north of where I was.”
The situation: a boat, unmanned, full throttle, circling in choppy water. The operator had been thrown overboard and was out of the water with the Coast Guard providing medical attention. But the vessel remained a significant threat. “It was right in the middle of the intercoastal waterway, which was very busy that day. We had dozens of boats driving through the area, not knowing that a boat was out of control.”
Dixon began maneuvering to warn other vessels and trying to contain the hazard. “At first it was trying to warn people. That’s all I could do is go back and forth, back and forth. There were big barges coming down. So, I got on our police radio and said, hey, we need some more marine units up here.”
Lieutenant Bruce King got the call from Dixon’s sergeant. “Ron could really use some help,” the sergeant said. King responded from the marina with another SPD boat and additional officers.
“Just to stop a boat like that is more than a one-person job,” Lt. King said. “Ron is very talented at his job, and very skilled at driving the boat. But you can't drive the boat and make efforts to stop it and keep the public out of the way at the same time.”
Dixon had already attempted to stop the vessel solo, throwing lines of rope to snarl the propeller. “It wasn't working. [The boat] was going so fast that it was just skipping over those lines, and the lines weren't getting entangled.”
When King arrived, they coordinated and tried again, but the boat’s propeller cut the lines because it was going so fast.
King proposed the next step. Officer Dixon recalled, “Bruce said, Ron. I know you can get me beside that boat. Let’s try to do it.”
Lt. King said, “I was formerly in the Marine Patrol. I know what Ron's thinking, how he's driving the boat and I have the ultimate faith in his ability. I said, Ron put me on the boat. He can put me up there, and we're going to do it. The first attempt—it just wasn't right, you know, and you trust your gut.”
The first attempt to jump aboard was called off.
Sea Tow, a commercial towing operation, joined them on scene. “They ended up throwing out a big, thick tow line with a big float on one end, and they let it go free on the other end. When the vessel hit it, it actually hung up on the lower unit. It didn't get it entangled in the props, but there was enough drag on that line that it slowed the boat down maybe 5 miles an hour.”
With the boat slightly slowed, they threw more lines, attempting to stop the boat. Then: another shot.
Lt. King said, “Ron, put me back up there. We're gonna do it this time. Once that boat slowed just that little bit - this is our window of opportunity, it's now or never.”
Dixon said, “My whole thing was just to get as close as I can to that boat without hitting it, where he can jump off safely and still use our fender systems if we need to. When they're unmanned like that, it's crazy because the wheel is doing whatever it wants to do. If he hits it too far forward in the wrong place, it might change the trajectory of the boat.”
Lt. King said, “He put me in a beautiful placement — it couldn't have been any better. At one point he's driving, and he yells, ‘I'm not going to get any closer,’ but I was waiting for the boat. The other boat was bouncing, and I was waiting for it to come up. I didn't want to jump on the deck because it was wet, and I would slip and fall out, or hurt myself. I was waiting so I could jump and grab a hold of something.”
Lt. King made the leap, all of it caught on Axon Body 4. “I finally jumped in it. I'll be honest with you. I didn't think it was a big deal. But looking back on it, and it was all said and done, it was exciting, and we stopped the boat.”
This kind of operation wasn't new to Dixon. Officer Dixon said, “Two weeks prior to that, we had just practiced these scenarios—not going so much in a circle but doing high-speed boardings. We were right up beside them at 40 miles an hour, just pushing people off and making contact. This was just two weeks ago in Port Charlotte and then, you know, this happens.”
The stakes had been high. Lt. King said, “It was drifting to the northeast. It would have eventually hit something, whether it was property or people. There were boats going through, there were lines in the water that could have fouled other boats Once we got into it, we owned it. We had to stop this boat.”
In the end, the response included Sarasota Police, the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, Venice Police Department, Sarasota County Sheriff's Office, and Sea Tow. But it was Dixon and King who brought it to a close.
The officers hope this is more than just a rescue story — it’s a real-world example of why basic boating safety measures matter.
“It’s very important that everybody wears their emergency cutoff switches,” Dixon said.
A simple tether. A critical safeguard.
It’s the difference between a controlled stop and what could be high-speed hazard in crowded waterways.
Skill and bravery stopped the boat that day, but taking the proper safety precautions will stop the next one before it starts.