A.G. Gancarski
On Thursday morning at J. Gardner Nip Sams Park in Northwest Jacksonville, Mayor Alvin Brown announced two anti-crime initiatives he hopes will combine to limit crime locally this summer.
The first initiative: an expansion of the Rec N’ Roll Jax program from eight parks last year to 18 this year. Nip Sams Park is one of 10 new locations targeted for the expansion. Seven are located in or near the Operation Ceasefire zone, where a great deal of violent crime associated with competing gangs is located.
The expansion is being funded in large part with a $50,000 check for the second straight year from Steve Pajcic, a Brown supporter and prominent local lawyer who grew up as a “park rat” and who holds this initiative close to his heart.
The second initiative is, likewise, the culmination of previous efforts. The mayor will get outside assistance from the Department of Justice’s National Gang Center, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and Center for Faith-based and Community Initiatives, along with assistance from Cities United, a program of the National League of Cities that seeks to stop violent deaths of African-American men.
At the sheriff’s debate Wednesday night, Florida Politics asked Mike Williams, the Republican running for sheriff, what he thought about outside help from the DOJ. He was enthusiastic, citing the DOJ as a “clearinghouse” for strategies to combat what has become an epidemic of gang violence.
Much of the discussion at the park Thursday, however, focused on the merits of the Rec N’ Roll program toward “prevention and intervention,” and its supervised activities for teenagers and young people. Mayor Brown credits the program with a decline in crime rates within a half-mile radius of a park using the program. That’s a remarkable feat, given the usual uptick in crime rates during the summer.
“Rec N’ Roll is an old school solution,” said Brown, who like many from his generation and those nearby, grew up in parks during the summer while their mothers worked. “It’s what I grew up with.”
He described it as an example of a public-private partnership that solves “Jacksonville problems with Jacksonville solutions.”
Two other featured speakers, Pajcic and Nat Glover, likewise spoke eloquently of parks’ benefits.
Pajcic said he “spent the whole day at the park,” from the time he woke up to the time he went to bed.
For him, the park was a “safe place to go,” and one that is safer with adult supervision, which comes with the Rec N’ Roll program.
Former Sheriff Glover, now president of Edward Waters College, spoke of the realities of his previous profession.
“I put a lot of young men in jail. I did it with a heavy heart in many instances,” because they needed “guidance” since they came from “dysfunctional environments.”
The Rec N’ Roll initiative is intended to reverse that trend. The summertime, for those without reliable parental supervision that kids in many areas of the city are blessed with, can be a time when bad habits and toxic associations take hold to fill the gap that an effective societal superstructure creates. It will be worth tracking the crime rates this summer to see what impact this expanded initiative has.
