Background: News footage of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office that employed Carle Miranda Blum (WFOR). Inset: Carle Miranda Blum in bodycam footage from 2022 (Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office via WFOR).
A sheriff’s deputy from Florida’s Miami-Dade County was taken into federal custody on Wednesday after she was charged with two counts of child exploitation.
According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Florida, Carle Miranda Blum, 51, a deputy with the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, was charged with receipt of visual depictions involving the sexual exploitation of minors and production of visual depictions involving the sexual exploitation of minors. Blum was accused of exchanging several sexually graphic videos with a 17-year-old girl, with whom she was having a physical relationship.
Blum was accused of recording herself engaging in the illicit acts with the underage girl and traveling across state lines to see her. And when the “relationship” hit the rocks, Blum allegedly threatened to kill the girl.
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According to a criminal complaint obtained by independent news outlet WPLG, the sheriff’s office received a tip on July 14 that Blum was engaged in a relationship with an underage girl. When the girl attempted to board a flight to Miami — the day after she turned 18 years old — she was held under the Baker Act before she got on the plane, the complaint said. Blum retrieved her bags at the airport.
The witness told authorities that the girl’s mental health “had significantly deteriorated” over the course of the year she was allegedly involved with Blum.
Once authorities gained access to the teenager’s cellphone, they allegedly found many graphic videos depicting Blum with the girl, including two in which Blum was allegedly “violently choking” the teenager.
Further investigation into the alleged messages exchanged between Blum and the girl led authorities to believe that their correspondence was “romantic or sexual in nature.” Blum allegedly “continuously provided a ‘count down'” to the girl’s 18th birthday and promised to marry her, referring to the underage girl as her “wife.”
The complaint reportedly cited messages between Blum and the girl going back to February, including explicit photos and videos sent to Blum from the girl. Blum’s texts allegedly verged on being violent, including one that said, “I really need to RAPE your a—.”
When the relationship hit a rough patch and the girl attempted to break it off, Blum’s reactions were allegedly explicitly violent. One text read, “Leave me and see what happens.” Another read, “I will f—ing drive my favorite knife thru your throat and watch you [die] slowly. I swear on my [grandparents].”
According to WPLG, the complaint stated that authorities learned that Blum was planning on flying up to see the girl in Atlanta, Georgia, once she was out of the hospital. Blum was arrested in Atlanta on Wednesday.
In a statement obtained by local CBS affiliate WFOR, Miami-Dade Sheriff Rosie Cordero Stutz called the charges “very disturbing,” and “a betrayal of the badge, the public trust, and the oath we swear to uphold.” Cordero Stutz added, “The actions alleged stand in direct opposition to everything we represent as law enforcement officers and as human beings.”
