DEPUTIES INCREASE STINGS TO COMBAT CRIME

One week it's prostitutes. The next week it's underage drinking. Week three
might see burglars or drug dealers.

With an increased force and a new transport van, Lee County sheriff's
deputies in Bonita Springs are making arrests and handing out citations by
the handful by increasing the amount of undercover stings in the city.

In the past two months, there have been stings for prostitution, vehicle
insurance, selling alcohol to minors and drug dealing. In each case a
handful of people were arrested or cited.

"We are going to focus our attention somewhere anytime there is a problem,"
Bonita community policing Lt. Morgan Bowden said. "There is something
planned on a weekly basis to address the problems that come up."

Bonita Springs is unique in that approach, because of the resources the
city puts toward law enforcement, Bowden said.

In addition to contracting Bonita-specific deputies, the city also helped
buy a transport wagon that can take up to nine prisoners to the Lee County
jail in Fort Myers for processing.

"It all shows that we're being tough on crime," Bonita Springs Mayor Jay
Arend said. "We were concerned with problems on Old 41 and we told (the
Sheriff's Office) to pay attention to that area."

What the Sheriff's Office found was a large amount of small problems that
were affecting the quality of life, Bowden said.

The increase in undercover stings, coupled with reports from the City
Council and Bonita Springs Code Enforcement, helps identify some of those
issues, he added.

If done consistently, the influx of stings can do a lot to help clean an
area, Bonita Councilman Richard Ferreira said.

Ferreira, a former police captain in Rhode Island, said that putting extra
attention on what are essentially victimless crimes helps in the long run,
because larger crimes don't follow.

"When you concentrate your patrols on prostitutes and drugs, you lessen the
opportunity for those things to get into the whole community," Ferreira said.

The stings are scheduled to continue for the foreseeable future, Bowden said.

"I'm very pleased with the results of the stings, and I'm glad that they're
going after what seemingly isn't that important," Ferreira said.