The State Attorney's Office has dropped charges against two men who were arrested earlier this year for allegedly planning an attack on the Eustis Police Department.

Christopher Conger, 32, and Jeremy Robertson, 29, were arrested on various charges after Marion County deputies found 22 firearms, several containers of black powder and bulletproof vests and drugs inside a shed on a piece of property located along Southeast 260th Avenue, near Umatilla.

Marion County deputies in May said alleged the attack targeted Eustis police, a church and a local Elks lodge.

“There was no way we were going to sit on this. We were going to throw all of our resources at this and make sure this didn’t happen," Captain Dave Pistarelli said Wednesday at a news conference.

Conger and Robertson were inside the shed when it was raided by detectives.

An inmate at the Lake County Jail originally tipped off authorities about the attack, deputies said in May.

In an eight-page memo detailing why the men won’t be prosecuted, the State Attorney’s Office is critical of investigators for not interviewing the jailhouse informant themselves or notifying Eustis Police of the planned attack until after the arrest.

The State Attorney’s memo said since a majority of the guns, bullet proof vests and camouflage gilly suits weren’t found in plain sight, there’s no way to prove the men knew they were there.

But Captain Pistarelli said both the State Attorney’s Office and a judge signed off on the probable cause warrant for the search at the time.

The Sheriff's Office and State Attorneys plan to meet soon to figure out how to make sure more cases don't have to be dropped in the future.

“It makes me feel terrible. I don’t want to use the word angry but I’m frustrated," Capt. Pistarelli said. "It’s a learning thing we all have to learn from it, but just because you have to learn from something doesn’t mean you have to like it.”

Marion County Sheriff Chris Blair, in a statement, said he thinks the Eustis Police Department is "still standing today because of our agency's actions to interrupt criminal activity by these two individuals that could have possibly caused death and destruction to a number of innocent people."

Senior Detective Jim Franquiz, of the Eustis Police Department, released the following statement Wednesday:

"The Eustis Police Department had no investigative involvement with that case, and the decisions that were made were those of the investigating jurisdiction. We as an agency are confident with the actions that were taken by the Marion County Sheriff's Office and the (State Attorney's Office)."