ORANGE, ORLANDO COPS SET CRACKDOWN IN MOTION

The 2 Agencies Unveil Sweeping Changes Aimed at Curbing a Spike in
Violent Crime.

Orange County's two largest police agencies announced sweeping
changes Tuesday to combat soaring violent crime that has led to a
record murder rate in the city and an alarming number of deaths in the county.

Within weeks, the Orlando Police Department will reorganize its 700
officers to target street-level drug dealers and criminals most
responsible for this year's record 37 murders.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Kevin Beary will call in federal agencies and pull
some of his 1,348 deputies from other duties to run down criminals in
Pine Hills and along South Orange Blossom Trail, where most of the
county's murders have taken place. With about four months to go this
year, Orange has registered 39 murders, 10 fewer than all of last
year. In addition, there has been a 20 percent jump in overall
violent crimes from 2005.

The changes by both agencies are in response to growing community
frustration about the violence. At meetings across Orlando, religious
leaders have complained that their churches are being burglarized,
and that they too often are having to officiate at the funerals of
murder victims.

At the first meeting of the Safe Orlando task force on Tuesday,
organized by Mayor Buddy Dyer to fight the surging number of murders,
members blamed a culture that celebrates gangsters and shuns
conventional values.

"Some folks don't want to hear it, but there needs to be personal
responsibility and familial responsibility," said Orange-Osceola
Circuit Chief Judge Belvin Perry, part of the 27-member task force.

During the past few weeks, city police and Beary's staff have been
reaching out to community and church leaders to seek support for the
aggressive new policing.

They also have been conducting special street operations in
high-crime areas since the beginning of August. Orlando's Operation
Felony Focus is targeting its north and west sides, which include
high-crime areas such as Parramore and Mercy Drive. The effort has
yielded 170 arrests so far, according to the most recent statistics
available, and will continue until the reorganization is complete.

In the past month, Beary's Operation Street Sweep has resulted in 359
felony arrests, 1,122 misdemeanor arrests and the seizure of 50
firearms. Both agencies plan to ask the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to ask the U.S. Attorney's Office to
prosecute some of the gun cases.

This breaks with a long-standing practice to have gun cases handled
in state court by the Orange-Osceola State Attorney's Office. Federal
prosecutions of gun cases, especially against convicted felons,
routinely produce much longer prison sentences -- some lasting
decades. Much of the city's plan is based on practices of the Tampa
Police Department, which underwent a similar crime spike four years
ago and responded, in part, with stepped-up crime analysis. That
program, nicknamed "Cops on Dots," has officers heavily patrol
"dots," or places on the city map identified by analysts as
high-crime intersections or streets.

A new crime analyst will identify such areas in Orlando to the Police
Department's three sector commanders. Each sector will have tactical
squads whose sole objective will be to target specific areas with
extra patrols, surveillance or other operations.

The squads will report directly to the sector commanders, who will
judge their success on how many arrests they make.

At Tuesday's Safe Orlando task-force meeting, community leaders
warned that the city's ranks of criminals will continue to grow
without fundamental changes in the way the city treats its poor --
the population hardest hit by violence.

"They're going to be climbing the walls of Isleworth and heading to
Disney World," said Lance McCarthy, a member of the task force and
president of the Metropolitan Orlando Urban League.

For months, authorities have downplayed the problem, saying
law-abiding citizens are unlikely to be victims. They also
emphasized that Orlando's figures reflect a nationwide increase in
violent crime. If Orlando was not a tourist destination, its crime
rate wouldn't make national news, police Chief Mike McCoy said during
the task-force meeting.

"Had it not been for the name 'Orlando,' we would not be mentioned at
all," McCoy said. The task force has 120 days to find solutions.

About 51 million tourists a year come to Orange County, where many
business and political leaders fear a return to the highly publicized
violence of the 1990s, when the killings of a few tourists across the
state prompted state officials to post armed guards at highway rest
stops and to remove license-plate designations identifying rental cars.

Police officials acknowledge that they have been worried about the
jump in violence since last spring, when murders in Orlando surpassed
last year's total of 22.

In Orlando, police estimate the number of violent crimes will jump
about 9 percent this year, according to figures announced by the task force.

In Orange County, Pine Hills as well as parts of Holden Heights and
South Orange Blossom Trail are at the center of a 20 percent increase
in violent crimes and 1,500 robberies so far this year, a 50 percent
jump from 2005.

At Tuesday's task-force meeting, Dyer tried to reassure residents
with tough talk.

"We're not going to relax and rely on the fact that this is a
national trend. We're going to take care of business in the city of
Orlando," he said.

Across town, Beary echoed a similar theme.

"It's time to take the trash off the streets," he said. "Folks, cops
can't do it alone. It takes a community . . . to clean up violent crime."