DRUG BUST SHOWS TOTAL COMMITMENT

Last month Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio launched Operation Commitment, an
initiative to renew east Tampa.

For about two weeks, police officers and other city officials targeted code
enforcement issues, drugs, traffic violations and more. It was the numerous
arrests of street-level drug dealers that garnered most of the attention.

Some east Tampa residents, however, have expressed concern that not enough
effort was being made to stop the flow of drugs into their community and
that the low-level street dealers were targeted, while the big-time
suppliers were ignored.

Not true. The Tampa Police Department and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's
Office have worked with federal and state agents for years to stop drug
trafficking. One such effort paid off the other day with the announcement
that an international drug-trafficking ring that had transported about
$450,000 worth of cocaine and heroin a month into Tampa had been put out of
business.

The effort, dubbed Operation Cybersmack because hard drives of computers
were often used to conceal the drugs, was successful partly because
Operation Commitment made it nearly impossible for dealers to move drugs,
thus creating a shipping logjam. When local members of the ring cautioned
the suppliers to slow down, those calls provided a break investigators had
been waiting for.

According to Tribune reporter Cassio Furtado, "Between September 2000 and
May, investigators intercepted eight packages. Collectively, they contained
about a pound of cocaine and nearly 4 pounds of heroin sent from Colombia,
[Capt. Hugh] Miller said. More cocaine was driven here by conspirators from
Houston."

The work done to stop drug smuggling is painstakingly slow and clandestine,
unlike street-level busts that are easy to set up and visible to the
community. That is why the closing of a major drug pipeline to the streets
of Tampa is something east Tampa residents should recognize. It was a
three-year operation, and Tampa's High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task
force deserves kudos for its efforts.