SARASOTA STINGS

Police Are Attracting The Wrong Kind Of Business

Chamber of Commerce officials like to cite the benefits of attracting
high-income tourists to town: Once these upscale visitors see beautiful
Southwest Florida, so the story goes, they'll want to move here and maybe
start a business.

The Sarasota Police Department's efforts to lure major drug dealers to the
area, however, are probably not what the Chamber has in mind.

In fact, police and city officials should rethink the wisdom of exposing
the community, local residents and police officers to what has become a
lucrative but dangerous sideline.

As reported by the Herald- Tribune's Mike Saewitz this week, over the last
three years undercover police detectives have worked with the federal Drug
Enforcement Agency to set up "reverse stings" based in Sarasota. In these
operations, paid informants contact major dealers in this country and
overseas, offering large quantities of cocaine. The dealers are brought to
secret locations in the city where the staged transactions are conducted
and arrests are made.

The operations have been beneficial. Court records show that 40 people have
been arrested on federal drug trafficking charges and many are now behind bars.

Also, the stings have netted the Police Department more than $1.3 million,
under state and federal laws that let police keep money and valuables
seized from suspected drug dealers. This money has paid the department's
costs of the undercover operations and supplemented its regular budget. The
police have also donated a small amount to local nonprofits, as required by
state law.

Yet, police and city officials should consider whether participation in the
stings is the best use of the department's resources -- primarily the
officers involved.

In most cases, these are federal matters -- drug deals that would not take
place in Sarasota except for the local department's involvement. While the
police should be willing to assist the DEA on occasion, Sarasota officers
have enough crime in the city to keep them busy, without going out of town
and overseas to solicit more.

More troubling, however, is the danger to which these transactions expose
local officers and, potentially, the public. While the detectives say the
transactions and arrests take place at night and away from local residents,
there's always the possibility that plans could go awry. A recent bloody
shootout at an East Manatee shopping center, deputies say, was the result
of a drug deal gone bad.

Sarasota is not Miami, and few residents relish that city's connection with
international crime. High-rolling drug deals are not the type of economic
development that any community should encourage.