Miami's Operation Tornado results in 101 arrests

by Kaitlin | February 7, 2007 at 10:34 am

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In an attempt to target and eradicate crime in the city, Miami police will sometimes randomly perform a sweep and mass arrest in areas where suspicious activities are commonly reported. The previous sweep, two weeks before this one, resulted in 127 arrests. Imagine the paperwork...

Miami police have arrested 101 people, many of them on drug charges, as part of Operation Tornado, an attempt to curb crime in selected areas of the city.

The operation took place from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday in Overtown, Allapattah and Wynwood-Edgewater. Fifty of the arrests were felonies, the rest misdemeanors.

The arresting officers were a combination of uniformed and undercover.

''The officers are hoping to cut down on crime by reducing drug sales in the area. Crime drops about 30 percent when narcotics are not on the streets,'' said Napier Velazquez, a spokesman for Miami police, ``We had gotten many complaints from residents of the area.''

Velazquez said they did not target random people in the neighborhoods unless they looked suspicious. He said they targeted ``people who are known to stand on street corners.''