A young lady was reported to have been attacked by a rape suspect in the Gatlin street area of East Central Orange County, this week.
Last week, we learned that more than eight dozen rapes were committed by one man in the Malibu residential area of South Central Orange County in recent years.
Orange County citizens need more neighborhood action to stop these type of attacks!
The area described in this article has had a long history of being unsafe. The fact is, crooks do not observe lessons of history, nor the laws of respect for humanity and this means that we the citizens of Orange County must do a better job of protecting ourselves by working together for safer neighborhoods.
I have been an advocate of W. E. E. D. And S. E. E. D. Programs that pay for WEEDING out Crime and SEEDING Economic Development into the disadvantaged and high crime areas of Orange County, for more than twenty years now! The Orange County Sheriff, the Federal Department of Drugs Firearms and Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the local department of Eatonville, where I served as a grants program specialist and the City of Orlando have been active in “WEED and SEED” programs that were controlled by the police and sheriff Offices. It is time to allow citizens who are the victims of these criminal areas, to control the WEED and SEED programs. After all, it is the Peoples’ money, not the police or sheriffs’ money!
The new system of adding surveillance cameras in county and municipal parks and surrounding areas, is an excellent deterrent to these activities, and the process of showing people that we all need to walk in pairs or larger groups is key. But, above all, let’s pay for and supervise our law enforcement workers better!
We cannot continue the practice of cutting our police and sheriff budgets to save money, as is happening, and then pretend we are serving and protecting our neighborhoods as effectively with less resources. The protection of property over the protection of people needs to be re-prioritized! No amount of property is worth a human life! That is a fraudulent practice that serves no good purpose and it should be stopped!
The sheriff and police budgets should be overseen by an oversight board just as planning and zoning, code enforcement and other specialized agencies are treated.
When we institute the WEED and SEED programs with total decision making by a group of Orange County Citizens working with the Sheriffs and Police Departments, this process will ensure citizen participation in the provision of adequate services for all neighborhoods and allow all of us to see exactly how our tax dollars are being spent.
We also need to rail against any law that makes it a lesser offense to kill a citizen than a law enforcement person! That law is similar to the laws that allow cocaine abuse to be punished at a lesser degree than crack cocaine abuse–a lower rate of incarceration and fines, or punishment.
All citizens of the United States should have their lives protected, and punishment equal for the abuse of our lives, no matter whether we are fortunate enough to become Law Enforcement Officers no not. Any man, woman, boy or girl who is beaten, assaulted, attacked or killed by any other person, no matter what their job is, should be allowed to be protected by a fill and thorough investigation. Any malicious intent shown, whether from a common criminal or Law Enforcement Officer, justice should be equally provided through our system of laws, the court system and the correction system, with stricter supervision and controls by the federal and state corrections systems!
