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Officers arrest 22 in drug sweep
By RYAN DAVIS, Times Staff Writer A man wanted on drug dealing charges landed in more trouble Thursday when officials found 62 marijuana plants at his Odessa house, according to an arrest report. Another man literally backed into his arrest. He was driving early Thursday near deputies making a drug arrest in Port Richey, "He decided he was going to leave and he backed right into a police vehicle," sheriff's Sgt. Ken Gregory said. "He apologized." But he was arrested on drunken driving charges, deputies said. In all, west Pasco County law enforcement arrested what sheriff's Lt. Robert Sullivan described as 22 mid-level and street-level drug dealers and the one drunken driver on Thursday. By midday Friday, officials still were searching for eight more suspected dealers. Periodically, the sheriff's vice unit clears out a backlog of felony drug dealing cases. Sullivan and Gregory said it works something like this: Undercover deputies make drug purchases from dealers. They work with those dealers to lead them to other dealers and to buy larger quantities of drugs. Once they determine the person won't deal with them in larger quantities, they move on. Sometimes, deputies and police officers come back and arrest the dealers who sold to them. After they are arrested, those dealers might provide information that leads deputies to larger dealers. "We try to do it at least once a year," Gregory said. This time it was called Operation Spring Cleaning. A state grant, Street Narcotics Apprehension Program, allows the Sheriff's Office to work with city police departments, which don't have full-time narcotics units. The state grant money allows the Sheriff's Office to pay the officers to work with them, removing the financial burden from the smaller cities, Sullivan said. The people being arrested are not part of an organized group, but "a lot of them know each other," Gregory said. He said undercover agents bought drugs from all of them (except the man arrested on drunken driving charges) in the past six months. The charges included possession of nitrous oxide with intent to inhale, trafficking oxycodone (a narcotic painkiller), trafficking hydrocodone (a painkiller) and sale of cocaine. -- Ryan Davis is the police reporter in Pasco County. He can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6245, or toll-free at 800-333-7505, ext. 6245. His e-mail address is rdavis@sptimes.com.
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