Guard Your Gas

As the price of fuel goes up in the area, so do the chances that thieves will target it. The employees at J-A lynch landscaping in Port Charlotte discovered that over a weekend. Someone had taken all of the fuel out of their work truck.'' When he pulled out the yard the tank was empty, it was missing 100 gallons of diesel'' Alicia Lynch Morris said, whose father runs the business.

Charlotte County Sheriff's Office spokesman, Bob Carpenter, said, ''When the price of fuel soars, thefts also go along with that.'' Carpenter says that the last time that fuel approached $4 a gallon in Southwest Florida, law enforcement started to see more and more incidents of fuel theft in the area. ''It's cyclic, every time they go up, our crime rate for fuel goes up, diesel and gasoline,'' Carpenter said.

To make matters worse for landscape contractors, police say that spring is the time when most landscape equipment is stolen as well.