Pubdate: Tue, 30 Jan 2007
Source: Florida Times-Union (FL)
Copyright: 2007 The Florida Times-Union
Contact: http://www.jacksonville.com/aboutus/letters-to-editor.shtml
Website: http://www.times-union.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/155
Author: Steve Patterson, The Times-Union

CRIST ON CRIME: 'HELP IS ON THE WAY'

The governor announced state anti-crime spending plans during a 
Northside visit.

When he ran for governor, Charlie Crist went door-to-door in a 
crime-racked neighborhood off Myrtle Avenue in Jacksonville, promising to help.

He came back Monday to say he hadn't forgotten.

"Help is on the way, and that's why we're here," Crist said as he 
walked with a crowd of supportive politicians, stopping again and 
again to visit with residents in streets police had shut down.

Crist was in town to promote anti-crime elements in his 
administration's first state budget, primarily a new drive for 
legislation punishing probation violators with violent histories.

But walking nearly an hour in the blocks of small houses below 
Golfair Boulevard also gave state leaders face time with people who 
know firsthand whether crime-fighting plans are working.

"I think y'all are doing a great thing," Clifton Nesmith, a 
49-year-old restaurant worker, told the governor and Mayor John 
Peyton as they passed his house. Florida Attorney General Bill 
McCollum and a cluster of state legislators followed close behind.

The neighborhood, one of two where Peyton launched a renewal program 
called Seeds of Change, is also an area where police patrols 
increased last year in response to surging homicide rates. Again and 
again, Peyton asked whether people were seeing improvements because 
of the patrols. Sometimes, the answer was no.

"I see them at the RaceTrac [gas station]. They don't come into the 
neighborhoods," answered Cassandra Spencer, a 46-year-old Florida 
Rock employee who said her block was struggling with drugs and gun 
crime. "It's terrible," she said.

The patrols were launched as an emergency measure with temporary 
funding, but Sheriff John Rutherford said last week he'll ask Peyton 
and the City Council for money to hire 40 more officers in the next 
budget year.

Eddie Black, 29, who operates a bail bond business across from a fire 
station that Crist visited, said the neighborhood seems somewhat 
safer these days, and he was glad for that.

He also agreed with Lonnie Johnson, a 51-year-old truck driver 
standing with him outside the business, who said police would 
probably have a bigger impact if they spent more time outside of 
their patrol cars, developing some rapport with residents.

Crist's budget announcement focused on passage of the Anti-Murder 
Act, which he pushed unsuccessfully as attorney general. The bill 
guarantees violent felons who violate their probation will be sent to 
prison unless a judge vouches that they pose no risk to the public.

"Florida has already lost too many people, too early in their lives," 
Crist said, pointing out cases where violent felons have been charged 
with high-profile murders.

Supporters of the bill estimate that more than 1,300 extra felons 
would be imprisoned over three years. Crist budgeted about $22 
million for the first year of the plan, but said it would cost $161 
million over three years.

He also said that state should budget $3.7 million this year to add 
50 new investigators to a state unit that tracks sexual predators who 
pursue children online.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman