Duncan-Walker and Book discuss ideas to prevent gun violence at Sunshine meeting

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward and Commissioners Desmon Duncan-Walker and Ed Book met in a “Sunshine meeting” on July 6. Duncan-Walker and Book originally scheduled the meeting, and Ward announced on July 6 that he would also attend.

Duncan-Walker led off by saying to Book that the City Commission has done “some really interesting things… where we have declared gun violence as a crisis in the city, and we haven’t had the chance, as two colleagues, to sit down and talk about what that means, individually.” 

Book, who is the Santa Fe College Police Chief, said gun violence is “one of the areas I have some expertise in… because I’ve been in law enforcement for 37 years.” Book said he worked at Gainesville Police Department (GPD) for 26 years and has now been at Santa Fe College for 11.5 years.

Book said it’s necessary to “come at [gun violence] from a very comprehensive view; it’s not just prevention, it’s education. And there is an arrest component and enforcement because you have to take the people who victimize off the street, that’s just a fact… Especially personal violence–no mercy for that.”

Open container ordinance

Book said he had looked at four ordinances, beginning with Gainesville’s open container law. Book said, “There is not another city that operates currently as we do with open container… [Alcohol] is not the key problem; the key is the correlation between alcohol and substance abuse–or misuse–and what then can lead to potential violence… We cannot be talking about gun violence and partner violence and people hurting each other and say that we rolled back open container merely for the pandemic and then not come back to where we were, because the rationale for that was the pandemic.”

Duncan-Walker said she was looking forward to looking at the ordinance again “because we [want to] preserve our downtown district and the businesses… [but we need to] prioritize safety.”

Bottle clubs

The second ordinance deals with bottle clubs. Book said bottle club ordinances are designed to “take places that rent out their venues and serve alcohol and create circumstances and procedures of how they do that.” He said some venues may admit teenagers and “sell everything but the alcohol,” which can result in large numbers of teenagers drinking. He said other cities’ ordinances should be researched to see if they have regulations on occupancy limits and limitations on who can drink alcohol.

Nuisance abatement

The third ordinance deals with nuisance abatement. Book said the ordinance was designed to regulate the management of establishments where crimes take place, and it gives the City civil remedies to shut down nuisance businesses. The crimes currently listed in the ordinance include drug crimes, prostitution, and criminal street gangs, and he thought other crimes should be included, such as partner violence and crimes that involve weapons; Book said a well-managed establishment should call law enforcement when these things happen, and a business can become a nuisance if it is not well-managed.

Ward agreed, “We have to create a situation where there is responsibility for the person who’s profiting off of this.” Ward said the City knows which businesses are problematic for violent incidents including homicides “and shame on us if we don’t find a way to help hold folks responsible in that scenario.”

Duncan-Walker said that with a new Assistant Chief being installed at GPD, “we may have at least the beginning of some leverage to start to address the enforcement of everything we’re saying because, yes, people need to be held responsible, but if being responsible can’t be enforced, this whole conversation is moot.” She mentioned personal knowledge of a fight at a business “that wasn’t responded to in an immediate way.”

Ward said the nuisance abatement ordinance is enforced by Code Enforcement since it is a civil ordinance.

Crowd Manager ordinance

The fourth ordinance dealt with staff training. Book said, “They have to know how to ID, they have to know what over-serving is.

Gainesville Fire Rescue Chief Joseph Dixon said the ordinance requires a Crowd Manager if a venue will have over 50 people; more Crowd Managers are required for higher attendance. Certain events also require a Safety Assessment; penalties can involve fines and imprisonment since it is a criminal ordinance.

“I don’t think you can declare something a crisis and then just leave it alone.”

Duncan-Walker said she hopes the upcoming Gun Violence Summit will impact City policies and that “this work will get embedded in the City… There has to be a way that we figure out how to engage with the citizens of Gainesville on this situation. For me, that’s a priority. I don’t think you can declare something a crisis and then just leave it alone.”

Book interjected, “Then it must not be a crisis. It either is or it isn’t.”

Duncan-Walker continued, “Well, we’re making the statement that it’s not really a crisis to us if we do that. We’re making a statement that it’s been a crisis only in name, and I don’t believe that’s what our intention is… That task force is important to me because it pulls together institutional partners, it pulls together community members, it pulls together nonprofits, etc., etc., to do this work.”

Book said a task force has the potential to slow down the City’s response to gun violence: “You talk, you talk, you talk, and at some point, there’s time for action. We have to be doing things.”

Book said Code Enforcement should be looking at venues that are planning events as fall and the football season approach: “That should be occurring, no matter what happens on the dais.”

Duncan-Walker said it could be true that a task force will slow things down, “but the fact that task forces are springing up all over this country and that people are committing to the work in a unified way, with the public health approach that we’ve said we’re going to take–I guess I am confused now because the City unanimously supported a motion saying this is a public health crisis. We have to do something beyond that… Perhaps we’re the glue that holds [the task force] together.”

“If we don’t start addressing this as a City, just like Orlando, just like other places throughout this state are convening task forces, municipal governments are convening task forces and literally giving them the ball to do the work, I think we’d be making a huge mistake” – Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker

She added, “If we don’t start addressing this as a City, just like Orlando, just like other places throughout this state are convening task forces, municipal governments are convening task forces and literally giving them the ball to do the work, I think we’d be making a huge mistake, and we’ll be sending a message to the citizens of this town that we don’t want to send and that we don’t need to send. How we do it, I think, is critical… You have to be deliberate, and you have to be intentional.”

Duncan-Walker said she had reviewed the blueprints that have been prepared by these task forces, “and they don’t happen overnight… it happens over a period of several months or a year. So just like Rome wasn’t built in a day, our strategic approach to addressing violence and gun violence will not happen overnight, and it shouldn’t, but I think someone has to do the work, and what I heard was, ‘We don’t want to commit staff to doing that.'”

Ward said his concern is that “we are one lane out of about eight lanes, institutionally, and people in those other lanes don’t have to do what we ask them to do… As much as we have the bully pulpit in lots of ways, as the City of Gainesville, we are not on co-equal footing with some of our other partners.” He said he hoped the institutions would find ways to reach across lanes and help each other at the Gun Violence Summit. He also agreed that the City could be the “convening authority” for a task force.

Duncan-Walker said, “When we’re gone, years after this Summit, gun violence is still gonna be an issue… There is a culture of violence that is proliferating that no one has found a way to solve, but people are coming up with strategic ways to approach it.”

“Public health–those aren’t just two words that come together; that is a particular approach, and it is a comprehensive, unified approach” – Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker

She added, “Public health–those aren’t just two words that come together; that is a particular approach, and it is a comprehensive, unified approach, so since we said that’s how we’re approaching this, it now becomes [a societal approach]… The public health approach is–everyone’s lane that they are in, they do come to you, they do say, ‘Here’s what we are prepared to do, here’s what we’re able to do.'”

Duncan-Walker said she would like to emulate Louisiana, where “the mayor of Louisiana [sic]” is taking “a generational approach to this… meaning years down the line, they will look at the data and they will see how gun violence has been impacted… The City, I envision, is the glue in all of this… It seems negligent for us not to, it’s just how we do it.” She said that if they don’t collect the data, “we’re missing the opportunity to really stem this.”

Beaty: Focus on core services

Duncan-Walker had earlier invited citizens to sit at the table and participate in the discussion, and Jo Beaty said that the City should be focusing on core services and the budget; she emphasized properly funding and staffing the police and fire departments. She also supported looking at the ordinance changes proposed by Book. She said, “I really think you need to look at what tools you’ve got right now and stop looking at what I’m going to call ‘pet projects’ and spending budget money on things that are better put off… When a family has a problem with finances, you cut out the frills.”

Duncan-Walker responded that the summit funding came from American Rescue Plan Act funds, and Beaty said, “I don’t care where funds come from.” Book added, “An external source.” Duncan-Walker added that GPD has been doing “extensive work” to hire more people; Beaty said, “The salaries need to come up,” and the mayor and commissioners all pointed out that the police budget is set to increase by over $5 million next year. 

GPD Chief Lonnie Scott said money is not the issue, “it’s the national condition that recruitment of people into professional law enforcement is very difficult today, in large part because of… the way law enforcement has been portrayed in the media.” He said the problem will not be solved overnight and that it can take 9-18 months to bring a new officer on board because of training requirements, but three groups of recruits will start the process this year.

Parole and probation

Book said, “Parole and probation is a biggie. Parole and probation can do things that virtually no other area does… A key preventative is, the youth that have not yet committed violent crime but we know have committed crime, and they’re under the Parole and probation umbrella, we can offer them opportunities. This is critical.” Book said GPD did this when he worked there and that these young people could be offered education and vocational training if they stay out of trouble, but they would be told that the outcome would be very different if they continued to commit crimes. 

Book also brought up the threat assessment teams at Santa Fe College and the University of Florida and suggested inviting them to the Summit because they have experience in identifying low-level complaints that can turn into violent incidents; he said the City should learn from their experience. 

Duncan-Walker said that sounded like the City’s Interrupters program, but Book said, “It’s a little different in that it does interrupt and gets to the root of what’s causing the person’s circumstance, but it’s different in that… it evaluates the person, 360 degrees.” 

Public records and the email portal

During a general public comment period at the end of the meeting, Beaty said the City is probably breaking the law in fulfilling public records requests and offered to provide specifics in private meetings with commissioners. She said that when the JustFOIA public records portal was announced, City officials said it would show all public records requests, but they haven’t “flipped that switch.” She also said it’s unacceptable that the commissioners’ email portal is down for maintenance and is expected to be down for another 2-3 weeks. Duncan-Walker asked Beaty to speak with the new Interim Clerk about flipping the switch in the public records portal, and Beaty promised to bring it up again at the July 20 City Commission meeting if the change is not made by then.