CRIST ON CRIME: 'HELP IS ON THE WAY'

The governor announced state anti-crime spending plans during a
Northside visit.

When he ran for governor, Charlie Crist went door-to-door in a
crime-racked neighborhood off Myrtle Avenue in Jacksonville, promising to help.

He came back Monday to say he hadn't forgotten.

"Help is on the way, and that's why we're here," Crist said as he
walked with a crowd of supportive politicians, stopping again and
again to visit with residents in streets police had shut down.

Crist was in town to promote anti-crime elements in his
administration's first state budget, primarily a new drive for
legislation punishing probation violators with violent histories.

But walking nearly an hour in the blocks of small houses below
Golfair Boulevard also gave state leaders face time with people who
know firsthand whether crime-fighting plans are working.

"I think y'all are doing a great thing," Clifton Nesmith, a
49-year-old restaurant worker, told the governor and Mayor John
Peyton as they passed his house. Florida Attorney General Bill
McCollum and a cluster of state legislators followed close behind.

The neighborhood, one of two where Peyton launched a renewal program
called Seeds of Change, is also an area where police patrols
increased last year in response to surging homicide rates. Again and
again, Peyton asked whether people were seeing improvements because
of the patrols. Sometimes, the answer was no.

"I see them at the RaceTrac [gas station]. They don't come into the
neighborhoods," answered Cassandra Spencer, a 46-year-old Florida
Rock employee who said her block was struggling with drugs and gun
crime. "It's terrible," she said.

The patrols were launched as an emergency measure with temporary
funding, but Sheriff John Rutherford said last week he'll ask Peyton
and the City Council for money to hire 40 more officers in the next
budget year.

Eddie Black, 29, who operates a bail bond business across from a fire
station that Crist visited, said the neighborhood seems somewhat
safer these days, and he was glad for that.

He also agreed with Lonnie Johnson, a 51-year-old truck driver
standing with him outside the business, who said police would
probably have a bigger impact if they spent more time outside of
their patrol cars, developing some rapport with residents.

Crist's budget announcement focused on passage of the Anti-Murder
Act, which he pushed unsuccessfully as attorney general. The bill
guarantees violent felons who violate their probation will be sent to
prison unless a judge vouches that they pose no risk to the public.

"Florida has already lost too many people, too early in their lives,"
Crist said, pointing out cases where violent felons have been charged
with high-profile murders.

Supporters of the bill estimate that more than 1,300 extra felons
would be imprisoned over three years. Crist budgeted about $22
million for the first year of the plan, but said it would cost $161
million over three years.

He also said that state should budget $3.7 million this year to add
50 new investigators to a state unit that tracks sexual predators who
pursue children online.