A.G. Gancarski
The Thursday meeting of the Jax Journey Oversight Committee outlined the sheriff’s office “violence reduction plan,” presented by Undersheriff Pat Ivey.
This plan, at least in the concept outlined Thursday, moves away from the tried and true zero tolerance model to a more targeted (and arguably more pragmatic) approach.
On Tuesday, the JSO will get an extra half million dollars to police hot spots in light of a recent crime wave, money made necessary as the extra policing started as soon as 22 month old toddler Aiden McClendon was gunned down in a drive by shooting.
Ivey outlined the approach, reviewing the breakdown of calls in the six zones in Duval County.
Zone 4 on the Westside and Zone 2 in Arlington have seen an uptick of violent crime in recent years, due to families moving in
A focus: “non-domestic shootings.” Ivey noted that there were 90 shootings in January, with 22 in the ten most crime afflicted neighborhoods.
“There’s a lot of different factors that are causing them,” Ivey said, in blighted neighborhoods like Grand Park, Woodstock, Springfield, Mid Westside, Hillcrest, and other hot spots of violent crime.
Violence reduction efforts include seizures of guns or drugs, and the initiative will have “new and fresh ideas to Jacksonville,” including meaningful “citizen contacts.”
The new approach moves away from “zero tolerance police work,” which Ivey said “pisses people off.”
Instead, the new approach is to engage stakeholders in the neighborhoods, Ivey said.
“Reengaging,” said Ivey, is “the bigger picture of this.”
Teams with a supervisor are going to be the approach… not just “tacking on two or three hours at the end of the shift,” Ivey said.
Existing instruments of outreach, such as Sheriff’s Advisory Councils (ShAdCo), are instrumental to creating community buy in, as is continued blight remediation.
However, those efforts are hampered by having predominately “older members,” where more and younger members are essential to making the model work.
Another issue in these neighborhoods: absentee landlords.
“I can arrest the doper,” Ivey said about a recent bust of a “drug house” in one of these neighborhoods, but “there can be another one that pops up in two days.”
Landlords, Ivey suggested, could do a better job vetting tenants.
With the Sheriff’s Office having less officers per capita than anytime since Jacksonville’s Consolidation, it is clear that the department under Sheriff Mike Williams has to try new strategies to solve old problems. With the murder rate increasing in recent years, and resources constrained, new approaches, perhaps field tested elsewhere, will help to stem the tide.
