ORLANDO, Fla. — For five months, undercover officers from the Orlando Police Department have been going into clubs like Bullit bar, Casey’s and Wall Street and for five months they said they have been buying drugs not only from the customers but also employees.
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So far 11 people are under arrest and more to arrest are to come.
Orlando Police Chief Eric Smith told WFTV exclusively on Tuesday morning, “”It’s a lot of arrests in a short period of time. what is the message here? The message is the clubs need to work with us, they need to police themselves along with us we need to make a safer downtown for everybody and drugs are part of what is tearing down our community.”
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Operation Night Cap began as an effort to crackdown on crime in downtown.
It began after the midnight sales permit requirements went into effect but wasn’t originally the focus.
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That city code means that bars had to have ID readers and wand metal detectors, but soon Chief Smith said they realized there was a pattern and found that two dozen bars weren’t doing what they were suppose too.
Police served 150 violations on top of those arrests.
“My bigger issue is that officers were able to walk into clubs with guns, the after-hour permit is supposed to take care of that.” Smith said, “Some of the undercovers were able to walk in with the opposite sex, the opposite race and they were all carrying guns and what we found is that most clubs aren’t correctly wanding and aren’t correctly searching. This is something that had to be done to stem the tide.”
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