Coral Gables Historical Archive
The Times
Wednesday, May 26, 1976, page 11 (of 37)
The page
The text of this pageRead by computer from the scan, so some words may be wrong. The page picture is the original.
Special police unit birddogs burglars
By ERICA MEYER Staff Writer Seven men and a woman are sitting around, drinking coffee and making plans. They joke together, calling each other nicknames like Snow White, Sherlock and Mad Dog. They could be any group of Sunday loafers relaxing without a care in the world. But under those jeans and T-shirts they carry guns, and the plans they are making involve stopping Coral Gables' wave of house burglaries. They are the eight plainclothes officers of the Coral Gables Police Department's new Tactical Patrol Unit and they want burglars who consider coming to Coral Gables to realize that any car that passes, any stroller out with a dog and anybody passing by on a bicycle could be a police officer looking for a jimmied lock or a broken jalousie. The disguise works. Two of the unit's officers were following a suspected burglar on foot when the man turned around and asked the officers for a cigaret. Shortly thereafter, they arrested him breaking into a house. "It was an amazing thing," the unit's head officer, Lt. Richard Bannon said. "Most of the time is spent following dead ends. But we keep psyched up and we plug away. It's 99 per cent boredom and one per cent sheer terror." The unit went into operation on March 6 and became fulltime on March 17. They have handled everything from burglaries to extortion to a Peeping Tom, but their focus is the thief breaking into a house. Working on information they have developed on tips from other police departments or Gables uniformed officers, detectives or communications officers, the unit watches for potential burglars. "There's a domino effect," Bannon explained. "You learn who associates with who and everyone we've arrested so far has some kind of criminal record. You arrest one and you learn about several others. We just keep an eye out for activity." All eight officers — Susan Lubow, Sgt. Ralph Wheeler, Ron Bruszer, Bob Buchanan, Tom Farroh, Don Muirhead, John Holmes and Bannon — work at the same time. But when the burglaries are happening at night, they work the night shift and when the crime moves to daytime, they work days. "We analyze the crime day to day," Bannon said. "We don't just sit around or drive around. We follow on foot and by bicycle. When the dogs are working, we call them in. Dogs can track a man when he's already gone into a house. "I wouldn't say this is a harder approach to burglary," Bannon said. "It's a more specialized approach. We had a serious rash of residential burglaries and Chief (William) Kimbrough decided to take unusual steps to stop it." Bannon selected the officers in the unit based on their "report writing, their capabilities, enthusiasm, initiative and ability to work as a team," he said. "I consider them the cream of the crop." The unit doesn't handle follow-up investigations. They make arrests. They work in plain clothes, one officer explained, "because it takes longer for suspects to recognize you as police officers." To reinforce their anonymity, the officers use a series of unmarked cars and they switch around in them. "Anyone involved in criminal activity has to be aware that any car driving down the street could be a police car," Bannon said. "That has a deterrent effect. They have to begin to think that eventually you will get caught in Coral Gables." Although saying he doesn't know how much recent statistics relate to the work of the Tactical Patrol Unit, Bannon cites 172 attempted or actual house burglaries in Coral Gables in January and February compared to 118 in March and April. "I can't really attribute it to the effect of the unit," Bannon said. "But in the two months we've been operating, we've had a 45.2 per cent reduction in these offenses.
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