JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – In response to the recent spike in gang shootings and killings, Sheriff John Rutherford announced late Tuesday he is reinstituting a program that flooded high-crime neighborhoods with additional resources.
Rutherford said he has had and is continuing to have discussions with community stakeholders. Officers are already working in the affected neighborhoods and some of the strategies used last year in Operation Ceasefire, including "knock and talks," will begin Wednesday. He said he'll hold a news conference next week to discuss a new initiative to address gang violence in Jacksonville.
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Operation Ceasefire was used for a few months last year when violent crime spiraled out of control. Over the 30-day period between April and May 2014, the Sheriff's Office said the number of murder and shooting victims in the targeted area dropped by 50 percent and the number of incidents where shots were fired decreased 61 percent.
Other concentrated programs used in the city over the last decade have also been effective in reducing violent crime.
Eight years ago, the murder rate soared in Jacksonville, surpassing 100 victims in 2006, 2007 and 2008. In July 2006, the death of 8-year-old DreShawna Davis in a drive-by shooting shook the city. Police said she died when three brothers looking for payback for a street robbery shot up the house of DreShawna's uncle.
Her shooting death and scores of other shootings and murders attributed to gang activity prompted the city then to create the Jacksonville Journey, a crime-fighting initiative that brought together police, the city, schools and neighborhoods to create programs to keep teenagers off the streets.
To help fight the violence, Jacksonville spent millions of dollars and implemented several new programs. The Journey, and more recently, Operation Safe Streets, were credited with helping bring crime down.
The Journey still exists, but not in the same form. Operation Safe Streets ended last year.
Some community members are calling for these programs to return. The Sheriff's Department said they've learned a great deal from Operation Safe Streets and continue that in a different form while the Jacksonville Journey is still around but there funding is far less than it used to be.
Journey started with a $30 million budget., but over the years funding has dwindled to $2 million. Many of its programs, like truancy centers and park programs now fall into other agency budgets, and some City Council members are not sure about the Journey's future.
"The leadership of that group is not doing a very effective job keeping the Council informed of what they are doing and making the situation better," Councilman Matt Schellenberg said. "Until they demonstrate they are doing well with the little bit of money they have I am not giving them any more."
Operation Safe Streets brought back community policing and targeted more than street crime Gil Smith, News4Jax's crime and safety expert, said. Smith was an officer with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office during that time.
"They did a lot of proactive things and they did a lot of things with the community," Smith said. "The crime rate did go down for a while so those things did work."
Statistic show that murders in Jacksonville dropped for eight years, from a high of 123 in 2007 to 72 in 2011. But the murder rate has crept back up, with 95 murders last year.
Operation Safe Streets ended in 2014, but Operation Ceasefire focused additional resources on Zone 5 in Northwest Jacksonville part of last year.
"When we stared Operation Ceasefire, it was never intended to be a multi-year operation," said Chief Pat Ivey, head of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office patrol division.
Ivey said they have taken the best of those programs and have concentrated them in specific areas of town while the Sheriff's Office works with the city on blight and other measures.
"A lot of people don't know this but in what we call a crimes meeting the sheriff pulls up his crime issues on a map and holds that zone commander accountable and says, 'What are you doing about the robbery problem? What are you doing about that burglary problem? What are you doing about these arsons we are having? What are you doing about these issues?"' Ivey said.
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The same thing is happening with gang problems.
"We pool our resources together now and we address the overall issue that we need to address," Ivey said.
Ivey received calls Tuesday from people and business owners concerned about riots in Baltimore, wanting to know if JSO is prepared if a similar situation were to happen here. He said they have a plan and are prepared.