The long arm of the law may be flexing a little more muscle. 

 

Last night, a new Gainesville Police unit arrested a man wanted for breaking into a business on Christmas morning. 

 

The unit focuses on tracking down burglars.

The number of home burglaries in Gainesville has dropped in the past year.

 

But police say that one burglary is one too many. 

 

The new special operations unit is made up of 13 officers, 2 sergeants and 1 lieutenant.

 

It's designed to put more officers on the street. 

 

Christmas morning for Kay Lamoth was more of a Christmas nightmare. 

"The grandbabies were opening their Christmas gifts when the Gainesville Police Department called saying someone had broken into the building and that the alarm was going off," said Kay Lamoth, owner of Land B4 Time Smoke Shop.

 

A sound caused by someone breaking into her smoke shop, stealing $2600 worth of merchandise.

"It wasn't a pleasant morning," said Lamothe.

The suspect came in through a window which is now boarded, but just last night, Frank Booker was arrested by the Gainesville Police Department's new special operations unit.

 

GPD combined different teams within the Department into one special unit focusing on burglaries.

"We've put it under the patrol operation division to give it a more street level focus on burglaries, whether they are car burglaries, residential burglaries or business burglaries," Sergeants Mike Schentrup said.

The number of home burglaries in Gainesville decreased 5% in 2012.  

 

Police aren't able to say yet whether car and business burglaries fell also. 

"We are focusing very much on residential home burglaries. we are going to try to put a damper even more than we have in the past on stopping people from getting their houses broken into," said Schentrup.

Stopping people from getting into homes and businesses, just like lamoth's "Lland B4 Time," where the culprit's fingerprints were collected by officers and then given to the special operations unit to finish the job. 

"We're catching him for burglaries he's done but we're also stopping him from burglaries that he's going to do," said Schentrup.

This way, store owners like Lamothe won't experience another lost Christmas. 

"It was a good feeling knowing he was caught and that he's not there and going to rob somebody else," Lamothe said. 

 

The unit also has a Narcotics Enforcement team that helps develop information on people who are selling or using drugs and perhaps also committing burglaries.