Pasco Warrants Sweep Showcases 'Overwhelming Force of Presence'

They sought suspects at residences throughout Pasco County. They visited motels on the U.S. 19 corridor. They lit Holiday up at night.

Over 36 hours, law enforcement officers arrested a total of 244 people in what’s being called the largest warrants sweep conducted in the county.

The multi-agency sweep, dubbed "Operation Law and Order,” flooded parts of Pasco with nearly 110 law enforcement officers from noon to midnight, Tuesday through Thursday of this week. 

"Our citizens saw an overwhelming force of presence out there, and they deserve that," said Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco.

The sweep included law enforcement involvement from the Pasco Sheriff’s Office, U.S. Marshals, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the U.S. Postal Service and the New Port Richey, Dade City, Port Richey and Zephyrhills police departments, among other agencies.

Law enforcement personnel attempted to serve 1,053 warrants. A total of 302 warrants were served, including 130 felony warrants and 172 misdemeanors.

Of the 244 total arrests, 68 were on probable cause.

The arrests were made in the county, but some were of warrants from other jurisdictions that listed their subjects’ residences as being in Pasco.

There were warrants issued for drug crimes. Officers found marijuana, methamphetamine and prescription pills.  

The most violent of the crimes people were served warrants for were aggravated assaults, batteries and domestic violence offenses, said Sgt. Dan Olds, head of the sheriff's office's warrants unit.

At the point of the sweep, Pasco had accumulated 22,000 outstanding arrest warrants, the oldest on file dating back to 1972, Olds said. He did not know if that one was worked.

The largest warrant sweep in the county before this was in the late 1980s, he said.

Nocco said that he remembered that one warrant officers were working dated all the way back to 1988.

“We were driving down some streets, and there was probably about seven houses that had possible warrants,” he said.

The Pasco Sheriff’s Office receives about 1,000 warrants a month on average, said Capt. Michael Ferrantelli and serves about 800 of them. 

A key component of Nocco's administration is fighting pill crime in Pasco.

“Make no mistake about it; we arrested a lot of people in the past three days that were addicted to prescription pills,” Nocco said.

In one incident, officers arrived at a residence to serve a warrant and found the intended recipient absent, Nocco said. What they did see there was a female with a year-old baby in bed with her. She had black and blue marks on an arm, needle marks on her legs and pills on her. Nocco said she had warrants out on her.

"It breaks your heart when you see that little baby," he said.

Nocco said he plans to continue sweeps.

“We feel the pain of our citizens in those neighborhoods that are crime-ridden,” Nocco said. “We hear them, we understand them and we’re going to rescue them from the situations they’re in.”