Somewhere in front of him, a skulking gray van has disappeared into the darkness, leaving telltale wheel ruts in grass.
With Rodrigue closing in, the driver of the rickety van misjudges the depth of the grove and runs smack into a chain-link fence. He bails out into the night -- leaving behind burlap sacks full of stolen mamey.
''I hate it when they get away,'' said Rodrigue, his flashlight cutting a wide arc across barbed-wire fencing and orderly rows of tree trunks.
For the 16 road officers and three sergeants assigned to Miami-Dade's Agricultural Patrol, barreling through an isolated grove in the dead of night is just part of a job description that puts them squarely in the often bizarre world of crime in South Dade's farm communities:
Stolen horses slaughtered and sold for barbecue at illegal cantinas. Prostitutes abandoned along dirt roads by ungentlemanly clients. The occasional grow-house stocked with hydroponically grown marijuana or the clandestine cockfight that erupts in gunfire.
Mammoth tractors and irrigation pumps may vanish without a trace. And teams of well-organized produce thieves can spirit away thousands of pounds of avocado in a single night -- to the dismay of South Dade growers who find their well-tended trees stripped bare by dawn.
COMMUNITY FRIENDS
It's also a place where neighbors not only know each other by name, they can recognize each other's cows by sight. Farmers don't call 911 after a break-in because they know the patrol's cellphone numbers by heart -- and think nothing of swinging by a sergeant's home to report a fertilizer theft or simply to chat.
Think Miami Vice by way of Mayberry.
''It's kind of like being Andy Griffith,'' said Sgt. Melisa Peacock, who like many of the Ag Patrol -- as they are known to the locals -- lives near the farmland. ``Sometimes your hand gets tired from waving so much as you pass by in the truck.''
South Dade's housing boom has eaten away at the old farmland that once spread out, free of landmarks, toward the Florida Keys.
According to Miami-Dade's department of planning and zoning, the county lost 7,428 acres of agricultural land between 2000 and 2004.
But even in this changing landscape, the Ag Patrol is still very much in demand -- and has had to adapt to a new kind of trouble.
Recently transplanted suburbanites have been known to ignore the no-trespassing signs and treat fields like open-air produce aisles.
''It's easier than going to Publix or Winn Dixie,'' Peacock said.
And then there are the punks who ride their all-terrain vehicles through fields on the weekends, destroying thousands of dollars worth of row crops at a time.
POLICING MODEL
Amid the real estate boom, the Ag Patrol has embraced a community policing model, which encourages officers to forge deep ties with neighbors.
Face-to-face encounters with residents -- from farmers to suburban transplants -- have jumped 80 percent since 2002. At the same time, the index for agricultural crimes has fallen 55 percent, according to Miami-Dade police. This summer, the section won top honors from the National Association of Counties for its innovative techniques.
Despite the rapidly encroaching suburbia, there still remains 440 square miles over which the Ag Patrol roams, a terrain that runs from Biscayne Bay to the Everglades, from Monroe County to Tamiami Trail.
KEEPING BUSY
In the past year, the section has made roughly 80 felony arrests, 180 misdemeanor arrests and recovered more than $900,000 worth of stolen equipment -- which can range from small hand tools to irrigation pumps and tractors.
The modern-day ag officers are an offshoot of the so-called grove patrols Miami-Dade created in the 1970s, when the fields of Florida City and Homestead were a world away from bustling Miami and its suburban environs.
''Before, you were just sort of on your own,'' said Larry Dunagan, whose family has been farming the Redland since the early 1940s. ``My dad would carry a gun, patrol the grove and catch people.''
Nowadays, folks are more reluctant to dispense homegrown justice.
''You don't want to come up on the wrong group out here in the middle of a grove in the middle of the night,'' Dunagan said. ``I'm a grandfather.''
The isolated outbuildings, fields and nurseries offer prime pickings for ag-savvy thieves. Diesel engines, back hoes and tractors are known to vanish. Even water pumps that took several days to put into the ground can disappear.
Ag patrol officers now urge farmers to etch their driver's license numbers into equipment -- just in case it ends up on an auction block in Ocala or Belle Glade.
TOP TROUBLEMAKER
One local man is such a notorious troublemaker that farmers would check in just to see if he was out of custody, Peacock said.
The man, 43-year-old Daniel McCormick, was instantly recognizable by his shaved head and heavy tattoos -- including the motto ''American Made'' across his chest and a devil inked into his left leg.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for attempting to burglarize a nursery.
''My client is no angel,'' said attorney Gregg Richard, adding that McCormick's long rap sheet and habit of mouthing off to the judge did not help his case.
``But he is just one small cog in a very big problem down there.''
Not even fertilizer is safe in South Dade. Security cameras at a local nursery recently filmed thieves heading straight for a $6,000 stack of premium stuff.
Dunagan -- who grows squash, avocado and beans on more than 500 acres -- notes workers are often too far afield to stop someone swiping farm gear. Even if they could catch them.
''I don't know what we'd do without them,'' Dunagan said of the Ag Patrol. ``I mean, how are you going to chase someone down on a tractor?''
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