Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum spoke to local faith leaders Wednesday about Operation Safe Neighborhoods. The effort aims at preempting crime during the summer and is coming to a close
Leading up to June, there was a rash of violence in Tallahassee, prompting Mayor
Andrew Gillum to launch a summer-long program called Operation Safe Neighborhoods. It’s a door to door effort each Saturday evening to deter crime in neighborhoods that have seen the most. And it leans on volunteers from the faith community. Folks like Bill Shiell, the pastor at First Baptist Church of Tallahassee.
“We responded to the call to be a part of Operation Safe Neighborhood and chose July 12 as our Saturday,” Shiell says, “and we were assigned the providence heights neighborhood.”
While they were out, Shiell says he met a boy, about the same age as his two sons, named DJ. But Shiell says DJ faces challenges his family and many others in Tallahassee might take for granted.
“What DJ worries about every night is not what I’m worried about,” Shiell says.
“And to have the chance to walk a few blocks in his shoes just for a couple of hours, makes me a better person, makes me a better pastor,” he goes on. “I can pray better for my city, and I can hopefully be a better influence in my own life and share that with my own sons.”
The initiative is part of a broader attempt to build trust between police officers and minority communities. It’s a model known as community policing aimed at making people feel comfortable coming to the police when there’s a problem. Major Audrey Smith is directing the police department’s side of Operation Safe Neighborhoods.
“We’ve been out every Saturday and every neighborhood that we’ve been in we’ve had positive results,” Smith says. “We have citizens who come out, or even when you go to the door and talk to them, they are appreciative that we’re there. And in some neighborhoods we’ve even had citizens who say I didn’t know this was going on, where will you be next week, and so they would actually come out and walk with us. So with that, I think we’ve had a great impact.”
Despite those efforts, Tallahassee has seen several more shootings this summer. Still, Mayor Gillum and Tallahassee Police Chief Michael DeLeo believe building community policing is important. And they say it will require more than just volunteer efforts. Gillum says the city needs to hire more officers and he’s supporting a property tax hike to pay for them. That increase is currently pending before the City Commission.
