Press Release
Last year the Orange County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) conducted a set of raids on several barbershops in the Pine Hills community. Deputies and narcotic agents searched the barbershops without warrants and detained 35 people for barbering without a license.
The raids drew sporadic media attention and eventually faded into the background.
The state of Florida’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation decided to discontinue joint operations with local law enforcement after the Orlando Sentinel released a series of reports regarding the raids.
Last week the Orange County Sheriff’s Office (OCSO) released a report clearing the deputies of any wrong doing in the raids.
While the deputies were cleared and Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demmings has vowed to make changes so that events like this will never happen again, we still would like to see more done.
As Democrats we fight for the basic rights of Americans, such as civil rights. The 35 barbers who were detained last year had the most basic of their rights violated and that’s something we will not stand for.
Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the greatest Americans that we have ever produced and he once said that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Let’s not allow this moment to become one our city’s greatest threats.
The Pine Hills community is rich in culture and has a dynamic population who values security and protection.
Security is a basic need that is pledged to all Americans by law enforcement and that right was compromised last year.
Barbershops are social and scared institutions within the black community and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office violated those neighborhood cornerstones when they used narcotic agents and Sheriff’s deputies to raid them.
While OCYD is in no way supporting any illegal activity, we are instead suggesting that justice needs to be just. The Bill of right provides guidelines to be an unbiased determinant or measuring tool between law enforcers and citizens.
It is our hope that local Democratic leaders will stand with the Orange County Young Democrats and call on Sheriff Demmings and the Orange County Sheriff’s Office to properly address this issue of social injustice.
