How Does Sarasota Stop the Violence?

The violence has to stop in Sarasota, urged Commissioner Willie Charles Shaw, noting the increase in gun violence. Shaw is calling on the city to help.

“I’m tired of it. The community’s tired of it,” Commissioner Willie Charles Shaw said at a Dec. 5 City Commission meeting.

The topic may be brought up at the city’s next Police Complaint Committee meeting, City Manager Robert Bartolotta said.

Shaw pleaded for agencies and officials to work together to drop the homicide rate and reduce shootings.

His call for action was nearly a week before the latest spate of violence – a that hospitalized three in serious condition and the discovery of a , just over the county line.

Shaw's comments had followed a  on Thanksgiving weekend.

“This is a Sarasota problem,” he said. “This is not a District 1 problem.”

The city has had seven homicides this year, Capt. Paul Sutton of said, but one additional homicide is not included because it was ruled as self-defense.

None of the cases is closed, he said, as some of the cases are awaiting trial. The city had six murders in 2010 and seven murders in 2009, Sutton said.

“One homicide is one too many,” Sutton said.

Those numbers are troubling to Snyder. 

“We’re going to have to answer for these numbers, and I think at some point we’re going to have to take some hard action to get the results we’re going to need,” Snyder said.

Additionally, the has six homicides of its own that it has investigated through Oct. 31, according to the Sheriff’s Office’s crime statistics. Those numbers do not include the city’s statistics. The county had three homicides in 2010 and eight in 2009.

Shaw admitted he does not have a solution. But he feels certain that the county, state and federal agencies need to be involved. He said that perhaps an expert needs to be brought in to help strategize.

“It’s going to take not only those of us at this table, (it's) going to take more than law enforcement, going to staff working with codes,” Shaw said. “We realize the problem. I don’t want to just react, I want solutions that are life saving.”

The city needs “an integrated approach with code, law enforcement, social service agencies, schools,” Bartolotta said.

The numbers could be analyzed to see the causes behind the murders, but “the solutions are a little bit tougher,” he said.

City police already work with federal agencies, the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as state and county operations, too.

“I agree with everything Commissioner Shaw is saying,” Sutton told Patch. “We need to look at all available assets to reduce crime in all categories, but I want to point out is that we are doing that.”

Shaw wondered if landlords could be pressured to deal with problem tenants or better screen tenants, if the city focused harder on code enforcement or nuisance abatement.

He said the same landlord who owned apartments involving the Clyburn murder also owns other apartments along Leon where a homicide occurred in a previous year and a fire bombing in another year. 

The city does have a nuisance abatement program, where a residence or business involved in prostitution, gang or drugs can be declared a nuisance, Sutton said, and then shut down. 

“As strange as it sounds, a murder doesn’t qualify as a nuisance abatement,” he said.

If the murder was drug-related, prostitution-related or gang-related, then the nuisance abatement would kick in, he added.

If the city wishes to have that code changed, it would have to ask state lawmakers to get involved, because the city ordinance reflects Florida law, Sutton said.

The county has a program where landlords can sign up to allow deputies to ask people if they are residents, guests or are trespassing on posted property and make arrests on property, said Wendy Rose, Community Affairs Manager in the Sheriff’s Office.

Overall violent crime has decreased in the city this year, Sutton said, including aggravated batteries. In the county, violent crime has increased by 12 percent through Oct. 31 compared to 2010. The increase was about a half-percent from 2009 to 2010 in the county, too. 

Regardless of what the numbers are, Shaw doesn’t want to see it increase.

“I just want something to stop the violence,” he said.

Sarasota Homicides

Number of homicides that have occurred in Sarasota city and county.

Sources: Sarasota Police Department and Sarasota County Sheriff's Office