DRUG SWEEP NETS 490 ARRESTS

Some St. Petersburg Residents Who Faulted The Police In The Past Have
Praise For Their Recent Efforts

ST. PETERSBURG - Nearly 500 people have been arrested by a police task
force that targeted violent drug dealers after an innocent bystander was
killed this spring in a gun battle.

Police also seized guns, tens of thousands of dollars, 12.3 pounds of
marijuana and 2,805 pieces of crack cocaine during the 90-day campaign
known as the Gun Abatement Project, or GAP.

"The intent was to address the street violence, and I think it has had an
impact," police Chief Chuck Harmon said Tuesday. "There's been a decrease."

Results of the operation, which ended last week, were announced at a news
conference attended by Mayor Rick Baker, City Council members, clergy and
residents.

"We are not going to back down one inch on our efforts," Baker said.

Police administrators said the arrests helped cut violent crime but
acknowledged many who were arrested are out of jail on bail.

"It's frustrating," said Officer David Gerardo, a GAP member. "But the way
I look at it is, you just have to go out and work that much harder. You
just have to try to catch them again and eventually the charges will build up."

Some St. Petersburg residents, many of whom have long criticized the police
administration's drug enforcement effort, praised the department. They
pointed to empty street corners and quiet nights since the operation began.

"We don't hear the gunfire," said Greg Pierce, 46, an 18-year resident of
Childs Park, a neighborhood plagued by drug dealing.

Harmon formed the task force after Cynthia Bethune, a 41-year-old mother of
four, was killed in April by a stray bullet from a combat rifle. She got
caught in the cross-fire of two rival groups fighting over money, drugs and
another killing.

Most of the 490 people charged since May are African-American men suspected
of committing drug offenses in neighborhoods south of Central Avenue. About
a half dozen of those charged were arrested twice over the three-month
campaign, and at least two others face federal charges because of their
criminal records or severity of the charges.

Now that the campaign has ended, Harmon must decide whether to make the GAP
squad permanent. That could reduce the number of officers devoted to
popular community policing efforts. He also could merge GAP with the poorly
staffed street narcotics unit, or activate it occasionally.

"We're going to continue this effort in some form or fashion," Harmon said
Tuesday.

Among the considerations are cost and the number of work hours necessary to
make the operation a success. The Police Department spent at least $115,000
in overtime over three months.

"It was a lot of hard work by a lot of people," said Lt. Tom Edwards, who
supervised the GAP task force.

Since May 14, about a dozen GAP team members - plainclothes and uniformed
officers - worked seven days a week.

They spied on drug holes from rental cars, building cases and then sweeping
through to make arrests. They bought drugs with confidential informers.

And most often, they patrolled neighborhoods popular with drug dealers and
pulled motorists over for traffic violations or car stereos that could be
heard beyond 100 feet. Those tactics usually led to seizures of cash and drugs.

For example, Officers David Gerardo and Richard Kenyon saw a man driving
erratically on June 20 in the 1600 block of 19th Ave. S.

The officers pulled behind the white Chevrolet Caprice, but the driver,
Bennie Neeley, sped away. He ran several stop signs, "forcing a pedestrian
to run while changing a tire," a police report said.

The officers followed Neeley, 22, to his girlfriend's house, where he
jumped out and ran inside with a sack. Inside the house, police found 1.3
pounds of marijuana, nearly a pound of powder cocaine and $55,204. Police
also recovered an assault rifle used in a street shooting last year.

Facing an armed trafficking cocaine charge, Neeley was released from the
Pinellas County Jail on bail June 23.

While many of the people charged are out of jail, police said their arrests
have reduced violence on the city's streets.

Homicide Sgt. Mike Puetz said fewer shootings have been reported. In May,
June and July, no one was murdered in Midtown. During the same period last
year, two people were killed in Midtown.

"We do know that drugs and guns and violence seem to go hand in hand,"
Puetz said. "The majority of homicides that we've experienced over the past
several years have had a drug element to them."

It may be too early to say what effect the GAP operation will have on the
city's violent crime rate.

George Kelling, the criminologist known for the "broken windows" theory
that cleaning up areas helps reduce crime, said crime can drop if
residents, the clergy and the criminal justice system work with police over
time.

"How are things going to be two years from now?" asked Kelling of the
Police Institute at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Darryl Rouson, president of the St. Petersburg chapter of the NAACP, and
the Rev. Louis Murphy, pastor of 3,000-member Mount Zion Progressive
Missionary Baptist Church on 20th Street S, attended Tuesday's media
briefing in the Bayfront Center. Jail mug shots were displayed of the
people charged.

"It's not a great day for me," Rouson said. "And it's not a great day in
St. Petersburg when I look around and see these black faces on these walls
here."

He and Murphy said they would support campaigns such as GAP as long as
police did not violate anyone's civil rights. Harmon said the department
received no complaints about GAP officers.