HomeCrimeStrategic chaos is the plan

Strategic chaos is the plan

September 23, 2025
Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash

OPINION

BY LEN CABRERA

On October 1, 2025, the Alachua County Strategic Guide goes into effect. Almost half (14 out of 33) of the Board Level Objectives formalize what the Alachua County Commission has been doing for years: funneling money to “public-private partnerships” to reduce transparency and accountability, with the goal of transforming Alachua County into a far-left replica of San Francisco or Portland. 

The most egregious focus area should be called “law and order,” but the Strategic Guide uses the term “social justice” to make the objectives the exact opposite of those that lead to law and order. The board objectives under “Public Safety and Social Justice” do not focus on protecting the life, liberty and property of Alachua County residents; instead, it’s a bunch of gibberish heard in every failed urban area with soaring crime rates and rapidly dwindling populations. The County Commission’s approval of these objectives has incredibly poor timing, given the recent stabbing in Charlotte, NC, by a man with 14 prior arrests whose own family said should not have been on the streets. Are the Commissioners really this far removed from the realities faced by business owners and innocent citizens who are too often the victims of crimes committed by individuals who are arrested but quickly released to offend again?

The board’s goal is to “Reduce the County’s jail population through diversion programs, alternatives to incarceration, addressing causes of recidivism, supportive services for individuals awaiting trial, and reentry programs.” If this was about public safety, the goal would be to reduce crime. Instead, the County Commission focuses on the criminals at the expense of their future victims; support for victims, by the way, is completely missing from the board objectives.

The result of these efforts will mirror the discipline issues that only increased after the School Board’s 2018 equity plan focused on “narrowing the suspension gap” between students of different races, rather than reducing the bad behavior that leads to suspensions. That led to chaos in the schools, teachers resigning, and the School Board scrambling to make excuses. 

76 people arrested this year have been arrested 10 or more times since 2020

Between January 1 and September 19, 2025, 3,966 individuals were booked into the Alachua County Jail (not including those booked under “ICE DETAINER” or “ICE INTRANSIT”). Nearly one in five (760 or 19%) were booked twice in the same year. Ten of them were booked five or more times this year. Over half of those booked this year (53%) have been booked at least twice since June 8, 2020 (the first day Alachua Chronicle started publishing daily booking logs). About a third (32.7%) have been booked three or more times; 76 people (1.9%) have been booked ten or more times. These are not simple misunderstandings or one-time mistakes. These are people who do not care about the law or the victims of their crimes.

Some of these repeat offenders are harmless, although their actions show a disdain for the rules of living in society that can escalate to more serious crimes. They are booked for driving without a license, failure to appear, or a civil action (usually unpaid child support). However, that’s not always the case. Here are examples of repeat offenders who were arrested in recent weeks:

  • A man entered into a pre-trial diversion agreement on September 10 for a June incident where he was caught pulling door handles on cars and carrying crack cocaine (an unwarranted chance to have a charge dropped after a recent conviction for throwing a rock through a window at Santa Fe College in March 2024). Eight days after entering into his pre-trial diversion agreement, he was arrested again for breaking into vehicles.
  • A man arrested in March for punching a gas station employee was released on his own recognizance, then arrested again in August after violating his pre-trial release conditions twice. He entered a plea and was released on September 2 after serving 30 days in jail. Two weeks later, he was arrested for shoplifting, hitting a store employee with a stick, and breaking and stealing the victim’s glasses. He has nine felony convictions, so the victim, whose only crime was showing up for his retail job, now has to buy a new pair of prescription glasses because the justice system decided this defendant needed a tenth chance. 
  • A man who was arrested on June 29 for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and resisting an officer was let out on bail — and then allegedly raped a woman at gunpoint three weeks later. He was also on probation in another state, by the way.
  • A woman with nine felony convictions and eight misdemeanor convictions was on probation in three previous cases and declared an absconder in February 2025 after failing to report to her probation officer. This month, she was arrested after allegedly hitting two people with a vehicle and attempting to hit a third person.
  • A man was arrested on January 29 for stalking and battery with a flashlight. He was released 84 days later and violated his probation within two weeks of his release. After he was arrested for the probation violation, a judge released him again in August and required him to get a mental health evaluation, but he again failed to report to his probation officer. Earlier this month, this man allegedly used a machete to assault someone on the Depot Park Trail. 
  • A GRACE Marketplace resident was arrested in January 2023 for threatening to shoot multiple people with an air rifle and then kicking and spitting on police officers. He was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading to a reduced charge, and earlier this month he allegedly broke the glass door at a Publix store. 
  • A man with 12 criminal convictions was arrested a few weeks ago for drug possession and child neglect after hiding a bag of fentanyl in and infant’s car seat and was also booked on a warrant for his second failure to appear at a hearing for driving without a license; he is also facing a charge of conspiring to steal a paint sprayer and tankless water heater from Lowe’s.
  • A man released from his third state prison term in July 2024 had previously violated his probation and then violated it again on September 3 when he allegedly rammed a police car during a routine traffic stop.
  • Two 18-year-olds with multiple juvenile convictions were recently arrested for carrying concealed firearms (one of them stolen). One of them was also charged with property damage for breaking a car windshield in April 2025, and the other is suspected of being involved in a recent shooting. 

These are cases of obvious anti-social criminal behavior, and unleashing these criminals on the public just to reduce the County’s jail population is negligence on the part of our County leadership, whose policies are essentially a Babylon Bee headline: Tough-On-Crime Democrats Propose ‘100 Strikes And You’re Out’ Law.

Consultant recommends not reporting some probation violations to the court

Today, the Alachua County Commission heard a presentation from a consultant hired to assess, design, and implement a reorganization plan for the County’s Court Services Department. Along with recommendations on ways to combine positions and reorganize the County’s Court Services Department (Department), the consultant recommended that Court Services stop reporting some probation violations to the court “for behaviors that do not threaten public safety.” Commissioners asked staff to bring back specific recommendations within 60-90 days.

Board’s focus is on defendants, not victims

The authors of the Strategic Guide probably feel really good about themselves and their benevolence toward “marginalized” people who would do the right thing if they weren’t “oppressed by our system.” They tell themselves that they’re better than the rest of us because they care more about these troubled individuals who can’t seem to function in civilized society. All their caring blinds them to the victims of their virtue signaling, the people who suffer crimes that would never have happened if the repeat offenders weren’t constantly released back out into our community.

It’s bad enough that the State’s 10-20-life (775.087) and violent career criminal (775.084) statutes have been so watered down as to be meaningless. We don’t need to further coddle criminals and give them more opportunities to increase their victim count. If they are mentally unfit to stand trial, they should have inpatient treatment, not be released to reoffend with a promise to go to group therapy.

Alachua County is an example of what Blaze News senior editor Daniel Horowitz calls anarcho-tyranny: criminals are given free rein to perpetrate their crimes against residents of Alachua County, who are in turn fearful of the iron hand of overzealous local officials monitoring their air conditioners, fertilizing and irrigation schedules, and pet vaccinations. Don’t dare get caught providing plastic straws in your Gainesville restaurant! Alachua County’s Climate Action Plan has an actual numeric land conservation goal of protecting 30% of Alachua County land and waters through acquisitions and conservation easements within five years, but the “public safety” focus has no such goals to protect victims.

In June 2021, then-Gainesville Mayor Lauren Poe said, “You know, we laid out a challenge about five years ago to find a way to arrest fewer people.” That lunacy has infected the County leadership. Every time you read about an innocent victim of a random crime from a repeat offender, remember: our leaders are devoting resources to helping that offender stay out of jail.

  • Well written opinion piece!

    It seems there are countless definitions of fascism in this day and age but citizens need to take note of this trope: “public-private partnerships”. It all boils down to total government control.

    It doesn’t matter if the PPP is a local initiative like we constantly and wastefully see here or if it’s a federal initiative like Operation Warp Speed or the nascent Stargate Project with Oracle and the Feds. There is a very obvious slow walk to merge public and private interests at all levels of government, with the government being the ‘regulator’ and financier of these private entities and their agendas. Public-private partnerships, also known as the merger of business and state, is a bipartisan issue that requires attention from all citizens and at all levels of government. This method of governance must be reversed ASAP.

  • Fla. DOGE must step in now before it’s too late. No amount of excuses can justify 👿ACLUSPLCDNC👹one-party rule any longer.

  • Interesting analysis.

    Now, here’s my conjecture: most victims of these “marginalized” perps aren’t the most well-heeled citizens of our county. These perps are released into and reside in communities filled with “marginalized” but law-abiding citizens.

    Thus, in their attempts to help the perps, they are making life worse for law abiding citizens in our county’s most socioeconomically challenged communities.

  • 1. Commisioners have nothing to do with sentencing guidelines and their obvious intent in “arresting fewer people” was the creation and aiding of programs aimed at keeping youth from a life of crime. In fact, some national and regional programs aimed at that goal are also aimed at helping crime victims and most just had their dereal funding cut by the Trump administration. – https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/09/05/trump-grant-local-justice-programs

    2. The incident in Charlotte had as much to with Lakeland and Sarasota and Ocala as it had with Gainesville – nothing! – and featured a lunatic who should have been in a mental institution, not a jail.

    3. What commisioners can do directly about our criminal justice system is raise our taxes to build more jail space and hire more cops. By the way, the US already incarcerates more than any other developed country in the world, and that includes China.

    3. Maybe Mr Cabrera doesn’t care what kind of world he leaves for his grandkids but those who do and understand that every single narional and international Academy of Sciences as well as all relevant Associations of Sciences have endorsed the consensus that anthropomorphic climate change is happening and a potential threat to humans worldwide, want our leaders to address the threat and do something about it. – https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/scientific-consensus/

    4. Who GAF what an editor of a Glenn Beck publication thinks about anything?

  • 1. Commissioners enact these wild policies that bring in the homeless and allow criminals right back on the street (violent or not) Diversion programs, code for no jail go commit more crime.

    2. The incident in Charlotte, since you seem to lack a basic understanding, was an EXAMPLE of criminals that were let out instead of kept in jail. It has everything to do with EVERY town in America with these lunatic policies.

    3. Mr. Cabrera is more concerned with this world than you think, he obviously took the time to compile facts and write a well thought out piece. He brings up valid points regarding the disregard of victims, and coddling criminals. All I have seen you do is deflect to Climate change (news flash- the climate is ALWAYS changing) no amount of tax will change the Earth’s mind, or temperature.

    4. I do, so FO.

    • The homeless situation is a good example. I can’t even take my walker into the mall by myself for exercise without being approached. Nor can I sit in McDonald’s and eat my food while it is warm. I can’t walk in my nice and new neighborhood on Tower Road for the same reason. Harvey’s homeless visitors to Gainesville rule the city.

  • Mr Cabrera has taken the time to again point out the inadequacies between those who commit crimes and the victims. It is not often that we read about recovery times of bodily harm and possible lack of income because of recovery time; expenses to recover items destroyed or damaged; mental anguish of rape victims, and the hardship of families who are the caregivers of victims of crime. These are just a few of the issues. No, let’s give the criminals more and more chances to commit these crimes, use our taxes to allow them more phone time. We have seen these cities who are soft on crime. It’s hard to find somewhere to move that may be safer than Gainesville. When will people wake up, vote out these commissioners and vote for people who actually care about honest people who are just trying to live their lives and keep their families safe?? VOTE!!

  • Nice piece Len.

    What some local deniers don’t want to consider, let alone acknowledge, is that it starts at home. As some have mentioned before, much of the anti-societal issues can be directly traced back to the home environment, or in many cases, lack of.

    Some here blame society for an individual not being able to conform to the laws that were made by the society they live – that’s ridiculous. Good point mentioning the local SBAC who likely bears some responsibility; to a point mandating less referrals based on a child’s color instead of their behaviors. When the earliest exposure to disciple and responsibility fails in its application, what else should be expected as these children mature and set out for their own journeys into life? Students who adhere to the rules shouldn’t be subjected to the acts of the unruly just because someone doesn’t feel it’s politically correct.

    Some here talk how more jails would cost more money – I, and likely many would agree. The logical, and least expensive conclusion would be to apply more discipline at an early age. Why don’t local leaders promote that as much? Why won’t leadership promote a nuclear family as much as they do saving a tree? It simply doesn’t meet their agenda. If they can continue to convince people that a specific segment of society is restraining them and preventing them from reaching their potential, and more importantly, convince those people that only government will get them there; it creates a dependency on those who rule over them.

    • >