Published: May 03, 2008 06:55 pm            

Most avoid park amid crackdown by police

By Kelly Young

kyoung@jacksonvilleprogress.com

Lincoln Park this past weekend was deserted, but safe.

Detectives with the Jacksonville Police Department say news of their plans to increase patrols in the area of the park preceded them last weekend, as an area that usually boasts hundreds of people on Sunday afternoon saw only a small handful of visitors.

“There was probably a total of 10 people at the park on Sunday (April 27) evening; just a few people walking around and two men on the basketball court,” said Detective Daniel Franklin. “The news of our presence being there definitely had an effect on the number of people who decided to show up at the park.”

Sunday marked the beginning of a zero-tolerance policy for JPD which was prompted by the almost weekly reports of violence at the park. In what is called a saturation patrol, four police cars patrolled the four-block area surrounding Lincoln Park last Sunday, and will continue to do so each weekend until they are no longer needed.

Franklin said no arrests of any kind were made April 27 at the park. He believes there are several reasons why the park attendance was so low.

“I think it’s a combination of a few things. The decent people who are going down to the park to have fun and to have a good time are scared to go down there because of the violence, and the ones who are making all the trouble were too scared to go down there because all the police were down there,” he said. “I think once the decent people find out that there’s not going to be trouble, the number of people going to the park will start picking up again.”

In the past few days, the police have arrested six of the seven individuals they believe to have been involved in shootings during the month of April, including one which occurred inside the park, and they expect other arrests to be imminent.

Police Chief Reece Daniel understands that the heightened patrols in the area of the park will anger some residents, but he said stopping the violence is too important to worry about stepping on a few toes.

“When we made some of the arrests in this case, someone walked out of their house and complained to the officers that we never do anything about this sort of stuff, and then turned right around and complained because we were arresting these people — who they felt were innocent,” Daniel said. “There’s no way for us to be right, so we are just going to have to do what we have to do. My job at this point is not to please people, but to stop the gunfire.”

        

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