Our View

You can’t help but have sympathy and empathy for those peaceful law-abiding residents who find themselves in the cross-hairs of neighborhood crime.

Such is the case in Indian Beach/Sapphire Shores in Sarasota, where neighbors are sick and tired of the johns cruising their quiet streets in search of hookers.

Imagine yourself in the residents’ shoes. You’ve made one of the biggest investments of your life in your home, and it’s a place where, when you moved in, you expected it would be safe and a place to enjoy and peaceably go about your business.

Then, alas, the johns and hookers move in, taking over the streets.

One of the complexities of this is that these street people are not inflicting physical damage on anyone in the neighborhood. This is often the argument for legalizing prostitution — no one is physically harmed, except on those occasions when the john or pimp brutalizes the prostitute.

But there is harm to the neighborhood and property. The presence of these social low-lifes inflicts monetary losses on the values of people’s homes. Plain and simple, that is indeed damage to property.

And that calls for action, a response.

We like what Sarasota Police Chief Mikel Hollaway said recently:

“We need to draw a line in the sand. When you’re a victim or a witness, you must follow through and testify. If you don’t, we can’t prosecute.”

We would go further than that. It calls for an all-out, neighborhood counterattack.

We’re not arguing for violence. But the situation is serious enough that it calls for an organized, strategic effort to push the enemy back and out. It’s all hands on deck — neighbors and law enforcement alike.
Situations such as this are exactly one of the reasons we pay taxes for police protection. Indeed, this reminds us of the words of Leonard E. Read, one of the nation’s great promoters of freedom and laissez-faire entrepreneurism in the 1960s. Read wrote in his seminal book, “Anything That’s Peaceful”:

“Any one of us has a royal right to inhibit the destructive actions of another or others, and, by the same token, we have a right to organize (government) to accomplish this universal right to life, livelihood, liberty.”

In other words, we have the right to organize a police force to protect us.

And, indeed, the conditions in Indian Beach/Sapphire Shores are exactly those to which taxpayers expect the Sarasota police force to respond with force and vigor. Drive the scumbags out — once and for all!
Inflict pain.

Ask any psychologist. If there is one sure way to bring about behavioral change in any man or woman, it’s pain. Create enough pain — shooing and hassling the johns and prostitutes; arresting, convicting and jailing them; exposing the johns’ names to the public — and do it with overwhelming force.

We know no one will ever stop prostitution, often referred to as the oldest profession. But with the determined and coordinated efforts of neighbors and police and with the full commitment from Chief Hollaway, this destructive activity can and should be eliminated.

The taxpaying residents of Indian Beach/Sapphire Shores have the right to defend their property. They also have the right to live in peace.

+ Bad idea
The members of the Sarasota Charter Review Committee who support requiring city employees to live in the city limits should flip the question to themselves:

Would it be right, make sense or represent the American sense of fairness and freedom to require all employees of their businesses to live in a particular locale?

It sounds good — having the city employees, who are paid with city taxpayer money, recycle their incomes in the city economy and maintain a physical presence in the community. This is especially appealing when you see so many city employees who are paid more than $100,000 a year living outside the city limits. Indeed, if you expect anyone at City Hall to be domiciled in the city, it would be its top managers and, for sure, the city manager and police chief.

But such a requirement goes against so many American ideals — the rights to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness foremost among them.

And then there’s this: how such a restriction would adversely affect the city’s ability to attract and hire top candidates in the future. It would make little economic sense for the city to restrict its access to labor.
Altogether, this is a bad idea, and it should die a quick death.