Port St. Lucie Police Officer Tim Bordt uses a flashlight as he writes out a list of addresses on a recent Friday night along Helmsdale Way where he's tried contacting residents to see if their cars have been burglarized. Photo by Sarah Grile.

Still, the police were at Ashley Cenk’s front door on a recent Friday night.

Cenk was getting ready for bed when Port St. Lucie Police Officer Tim Bordt stood before her, asking about the morning she discovered her car had been ransacked.

That night was Day 19 of a specialized patrol unit intended to douse out what police dub hot spots of crime.

The department calls it the Direction Action Response Team, and it works like this: If a rash of vehicle burglaries is reported one day, you can expect that Bordt, the two other officers part of the newly minted unit, and their supervisor, Sgt. Derek Brieske, will be scouring the streets the next for the culprit.

“It gives (residents) a little peace of mind that their police department is addressing these issues,” Brieske said.

So that night, a day after police had learned that a Port St. Lucie man arrested in Martin County might be responsible for a string of recent car burglaries, DART was tracking his path.

The 18-year-old suspect trolled Helmsdale Way, Milner Drive and Canterbury Court, a tipster reported to Bordt and Officer Russell Jackson as they drove him around the city.

And that’s what led Bordt to Cenk’s front door.

On the Monday morning before New Year’s, Cenk found her Mazda with its dome light on.

Only some loose change was missing, she said, but what disturbed her most was the thought of someone daring enough to slip inside her car while she and her family were sleeping a few feet away.

“It just blew my mind,” she said.

When she reported the incident to police last month, she said an officer told her it was unlikely they would find the person responsible. Two weeks later and DART said it had.

In its first 18 days, the group made 40 arrests, closed out eight burglary cases and seized two vehicles.

The group is like other road patrol units in the department in that its officers are responsible for watching after certain areas of the city’s 115,000-square miles. What makes it different, though, is that the assignments vary from one shift to the next. The unit goes wherever there are high volumes of crime and then swarm the neighborhood.

Officers could spend one shift trolling through side streets and making traffic stops, and another chasing a lead.

Most of the time, though, they’re trying to crack down on the most reported crime in the city: vehicle burglaries.

In 2007, Port St. Lucie residents claimed 908 of them. The year before it was 899.

In Cenk’s case, police had good news – they had a suspect.

“That was the last thing I had expected, that they had caught the guy,” she said.

After Cenk, the officers kept knocking on doors, looking for more victims to beef up their case. After all, the more evidence they collected, the harsher the penalty that their guy might face. Which police want to translate to fewer burglaries down the line.

DART has hit other targets too.

Late last month, for instance, the unit found a U-Haul truck parked in front of a wooded lot. Someone was loading it with home appliances, police said. It might have been part of a ring that target foreclosed homes, take off with the appliances and hawk them down south, Brieske said. Detectives are now investigating.

But sometimes the most important part of the job is just talking to people.

At times, the officers interview folks they see out in the streets — especially if it’s in the middle of the night and in a neighborhood in which the person doesn’t live in or know anyone.

Police document the encounter and if any crimes are reported in the next few days near where the person was spotted, officers know someone who was around at the time. They can then follow up with more questions and hopefully close a case.

It takes the kind of time that a road patrol officer typically might not have because he or she is busy responding to 911 calls.

Brieske said the unit has not only put suspects in jail, it has also been able to recover prized possessions for some residents.

He recalled returning an iPod filled with hundreds of photos chronicling someone’s family memories. There was a headstone. A graduation. The pictures obviously meant something.

Not so much for the suspect — at least when police found the device in his possession. “For him, it was just sitting in his car,” Brieske said.

Police officers Tim Bordt (left) and Russell Jackson investigate a recent rash of vehicle burglaries in Port St. Lucie on Friday, Jan. 9. Bordt and Jackson are part of a four-man unit called the Direction Action Response Team. The group patrols neighborhoods where sprees of crimes are reported to police. DART is a separate road patrol unit whose officers don't get dispatched to 911 calls. "We can actually work on our cases start to finish," Bordt said.<b>Photo by Sarah Grile/The Post </b>

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