{"id":54221,"date":"2025-02-24T16:52:06","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T21:52:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=54221"},"modified":"2025-02-24T16:52:42","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T21:52:42","slug":"police-officer-trainee-arrested-for-shoplifting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2025\/02\/24\/police-officer-trainee-arrested-for-shoplifting\/","title":{"rendered":"Police Officer Trainee Arrested for Shoplifting"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On February 24, 2025, Officer Huascar Evangelista Vargas resigned from his position after being arrested for a retail petit theft which occurred on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. Had Vargas not resigned, he would have been terminated.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Huascar Evangelista Vargas<\/strong>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On February 19, 2025, shortly before 6:00 p.m., the Winter Haven Police Department was called to a shoplifting incident at Walmart, 7450 Cypress Gardens Boulevard Southeast. Vargas was observed by a Walmart Asset Protection employee failing to scan items while utilizing a self-checkout register. He was also observed scanning a lower priced produce item for a more expensive one. Vargas was found to have paid for a total of $83.80 worth of merchandise, but did not pay for $124.50 in food and household items. He was arrested for misdemeanor shoplifting and transported to the Polk County Jail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vargas (age 27) was sworn in by the Lakeland Police Department on November 1, 2024, and was most recently in the field training program. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On February 24, 2025, Officer Huascar Evangelista Vargas resigned from his position after being arrested for a retail petit theft which occurred on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. Had Vargas not resigned, he… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"12","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDJcL3VubmFtZWQtMjAyNS0wMi0yNFQxNjQ4MzcuMTQxLndlYnA_Zml0PTM0MiUyQzQyOCZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6IlBvbGljZSBPZmZpY2VyIFRyYWluZWUgQXJyZXN0ZWQgZm9yIFNob3BsaWZ0aW5nIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.GahFlqK0vg_kbG9wjSzKOqwHjwgHgOIBs7k7c7L4P3wMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":54222,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/unnamed-2025-02-24T164837.141.webp","type":"image\/jpeg"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[10978],"class_list":["post-54221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-news","tag-police-officer-trainee-arrested-for-shoplifting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54223,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54221\/revisions\/54223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}