POMPANO BEACH, FL. A state inspector visited Booby Trap on Hammondville Road on July 14 and found food not cooked to the required minimum temperature, a violation that means customers may have been served meat with live pathogens still inside.
That was one of six high-severity violations documented that day. The facility was not closed.
What Inspectors Found
The inspector also cited the facility for food in poor condition, mislabeled, or adulterated. That violation, alongside the cooking temperature failure, puts the two most direct food-safety risks in the same visit.
Three of the six high-severity violations were tied to the same root problem: employee illness management. Inspectors found no written employee health policy, found that employees were not reporting illness symptoms, and found that handwashing technique was improper. All three were cited on the same day.
The person in charge was either not present or not performing duties during the inspection. The two intermediate violations were improper sewage or wastewater disposal and multi-use utensils not properly cleaned.
What These Violations Mean
The cooking temperature violation is among the most direct paths to a foodborne illness outbreak. Salmonella in poultry survives below 165 degrees Fahrenheit. A customer eating undercooked meat has no way to know the food was not brought to the temperature required to kill those pathogens.
The cluster of illness-related violations compounds that risk in a specific way. Without a written health policy, there is no mechanism requiring sick employees to stay home. Without a reporting requirement being followed, a worker with Norovirus can handle food without any supervisor being aware. Norovirus is responsible for roughly 20 million illnesses in the United States each year, and food workers are a primary transmission route.
Improper handwashing technique means that even when an employee goes through the motion of washing their hands, pathogens can remain. Studies show that incorrect technique, meaning too brief, incomplete, or without soap, leaves contamination levels nearly as high as no washing at all.
The sewage violation adds a separate contamination vector. Improper wastewater disposal creates the possibility of fecal matter reaching food contact surfaces, utensils, or food itself. The utensil cleaning violation means that bacterial biofilms, which form within 24 hours on improperly cleaned surfaces, were present on equipment used to prepare and serve food.
The Longer Record
The July 14 inspection was not the first time Booby Trap has accumulated this level of violations in a single visit. State records show 31 inspections on file and 192 total violations across that history.
The October 2025 inspection produced eight high-severity violations and two intermediate, the highest single-visit count in the recent record. The July 2025 inspection, almost exactly one year before this one, produced six high-severity and two intermediate violations, an identical profile to the July 2026 visit.
The pattern holds across years. The August 2024 inspection produced four high-severity and three intermediate violations. March 2024 produced three high and one intermediate. The facility has never been emergency-closed.
Two inspections in the record, January 2025 and August 2023, produced zero high-severity and zero intermediate violations. Those visits show the facility is capable of passing a clean inspection. They also make the surrounding pattern harder to explain as a matter of isolated incidents.
Still Open
Florida's emergency closure authority is triggered when inspectors determine that conditions present an immediate threat to public health. Six high-severity violations at Booby Trap on July 14, including undercooked food, no illness reporting, and improper sewage disposal, did not meet that threshold.
The facility accumulated those six high-severity violations in a single visit, matched the violation profile of its inspection from one year prior, and remained open to serve customers that same day.
State records show no emergency closure in 31 inspections on file.
