MELBOURNE, Fla. — Only WFTV was there when police raided a Melbourne soup kitchen Friday. They hauled off nine people in handcuffs after a 5-month drug investigation.
The soup kitchen they raided is a controversial one. Some people have been trying to kick the Daily Bread out of downtown Melbourne (see map).
AT THE SCENE: Images From Drug Raid
The director of the Daily Bread said the people he recognized who were arrested were not homeless. Police said the suspects were using the soup kitchen grounds to make their drug sales.
With dozens of homeless and hungry watching from a distance, police and undercover drug agents swarmed the Daily Bread soup kitchen, searching for suspected drug dealers. They rounded up nine people and found cocaine and prescription pills on them.
Police said undercover officers repeatedly went to the Daily Bread and made nearly three-dozen drug purchases on the property. The director of the soup kitchen, John Farrell, denied he knew so many drug deals were going down.
"Most of them are people who don't come here on a regular basis, or they come and hang out on the sidewalk and are banned," Farrell said.
No one arrested was homeless. Police said the sting was part of a 5-month operation to rid Fee Avenue of drugs and prostitutes and was not spawned by the ongoing controversy over plans to move the soup kitchen.
"We were led by an individual who basically advised us we could make drug buys on the premises," said Commander Ron Bell of the Melbourne Police Department.
The city is considering a plan to use tax dollars to subsidize a move to an undeveloped lot off of Sarno Road. People who live near the proposed site are using the raid as an example for why the soup kitchen shouldn't be allowed there.
"We are tired of it and we don't want it out here. They can't control it on less than an acre and they want to put it on seven acres?" resident Chip Allen said.
While the director told WFTV they welcomed the police coming in and clearing out suspected drug dealers, he said if the police conducted the same raid at any mall or shopping center they would find just as many drug dealers.
WFTV
