LEWISTON – For more than a year, police searched almost daily for Jose Osorio. The 33-year-old Lewiston man was wanted in connection with a 2003 rape of a girl under the age of 14 in Auburn. But he had moved out of his Bates Street home and he could not be found.
Last week, with a little help from nearly a thousand officers across the country, Osorio was found in Lowell, Mass. He was captured and arrested on a charge of gross sexual assault.
Osorio was just one of more than three dozen people from the Lewiston area arrested during a U.S. Marshals Service fugitive sweep dubbed Operation Falcon. For local, federal and state police searching for fugitives in Maine, Lewiston proved to be a good place to focus. Of the 101 people arrested across the state during the sweep, 39 of those were nabbed in the Twin Cities area.
“We had the team with the highest number of arrests,” said Lewiston Deputy Police Chief Michael Bussiere. “To some degree, it makes the street safer almost overnight. It also gives some sense of closure to the victims of the crimes. They know those suspects are no longer out there on the run.”
In total, 112 warrants were cleared in Maine. Of that number, 11 of the suspects were either detained in another state or determined to be dead.
The Lewiston Police Department was one of a dozen Maine police agencies to participate in the operation. In that city alone, local police working with their state and federal partners arrested four people from their 10 most wanted list.
The Lewiston area also proved to be fruitful for police trying to get weapons off the street. Police said three guns were confiscated as police swept through the area, tracking down wanted suspects one by one.
A gun as well as a quantity of Ecstasy and marijuana were seized during a raid in downtown Lewiston on April 5, the first day of the operation. Two men and a woman were arrested in that bust.
On April 8, the third day of the operation, a teenager was caught in Auburn after escaping from the Long Creek Youth Development Center in South Portland. Agents from the Central Maine Violent Crime Task Force who tracked the teen down said he was carrying a loaded .32- caliber handgun.
Nationally, police involved in Operation Falcon nabbed 10,340 fugitives, the highest number of arrests ever in one coordinated effort. The officers involved ranged from sheriff’s deputies, to agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Secret Service.
In Androscoggin County, local police seized the opportunity to use the extra staffing to find and arrest long-sought criminal suspects. Acting on tips, Lewiston police or task force agents would contact their counterparts in other parts of the country in an effort to track down the fugitives they were seeking.
“Sometimes literally within an hour, someone we were looking for here would be apprehended in another state, Bussiere said.
Such was the case with Osorio. Police in Maine were knocking on doors and talking to their informants. When it was learned he might be in Lowell, members of the operation in Massachusetts went looking and found him.
A Portland man wanted on a rape charge was tracked down by team members in Tampa, Fla., police officials said during a press conference Thursday to announce the conclusion of the operation.
Across the country, fugitives considered the most dangerous in the world were arrested during the sweep. In all, 162 people were arrested for murder, 553 for rape and 638 for armed robbery. And 4,291 drug cases were cleared during the operation.
Locally, police picked up several people wanted for sex crimes, more for drug violations and others for assault. In Jay, Operation Falcon investigators arrested 29-year-old Christopher Jasud, wanted for a probation violation stemming from a negligent manslaughter in Oxford County dating back to 1998.
“The agents were out there working 12-hour days,” said deputy U.S. Marshal Chris Clifford, coordinator of the task force. “I would try to be the last guy to leave every day so there weren’t any teams left on the street. I wasn’t always successful.”
In Maine, roughly four dozen police officers worked in four teams, searching for suspects in York, Androscoggin and Cumberland counties. When they began, the officers were shooting for 200 warrant arrests. They fell short of that number, but investigators said they are much closer to finding suspects still on the loose.
“The people who were arrested are a good example for those who are still out there,” said South Portland Chief Edward J. Googins. “We are going to keep on looking for you.”
Maine police agencies participating in Operation Falcon:
• U.S. Marshals Service
• Maine State Police
• Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Office
• Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office
• York County Sheriff’s Office
• Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office
• Lewiston Police Department
• Portland Police Department
• South Portland Police Department
• Kittery Police Department
• York Police Department
• Bangor Police Department
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