What it will take to make tipsters come forward?
A deep-rooted culture against sharing information with police could be hurting efforts to catch the man accused of killing an Orlando police officer, officials and some high-crime area residents and leaders say.
“They’ve got $100,000 out for one man and nobody has said nothing, so it can’t be about the money,” said Kenny Hampton, 50, of Apopka. “Once these folks find out you told on someone, you’re on the bottom of the totem pole.”
Officials continue to plead with the public to report tips on the location of Markeith Loyd, 41, as the search for the man accused of killing Sade Dixon, 24, and Orlando Police Master Sgt. Debra Clayton, 42, enters its seventh day.
Today, area pastors plan to embolden parishioners from their pulpits to share tips that could lead to Loyd’s arrest, said Bishop Kelvin L. Cobaris of The Impact Church
of Orlando, who also serves as president of Central Florida’s African American Council of Christian Clergy.
“While we’re praying for the community, we’re also challenging them to speak up,” he said. “We will be sharing things about bringing [Loyd] to justice, but also about changing the game and turning things around from the way they are to the way they should be.”
It’s a problem law enforcement faces daily, said Capt. Angelo Nieves of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. Forging bonds with residents while keeping up with the job’s many other demands is challenging.
“Balancing calls for service, traffic, community needs; there are a lot of things law enforcement has responsibility for,” he said. “Community policing is [also] extremely important.”
The Sheriff’s Office also lost an officer in the hunt for Loyd, when Orange County Deputy First Class Norman Lewis, 35, was killed in a crash Monday while helping search for the wanted man.
Hampton, who created the grassroots organization “Communities Helping Other People” after his son’s shooting death in 2008, said people in high-crime areas have learned to live by selfpreservation rather than trust law enforcement.
Retaliation is a threat, and police can’t devote the resources needed to individually protect informants, he added.
“You can’t judge a man by what he’s does to other people, I judge him by what he does to me, regardless of the situation,” Hampton said. “It’s street code.”
Even with the option to report tips anonymously, some don’t believe they will be safe from retaliation, Cobaris said. Others will give tips, but won’t testify in court.
“They feel that information still gets back to the community,” he said. “I’ll tell on him, but I’m not going to court because even if he goes to jail, he’s got friends and family who might get back at me.”
The bitter irony is that it was Clayton’s mission to build better community relationships.
She grew up poor in the same Orlando neighborhood as Loyd and dedicated her life to mentoring at-risk youth, helping with Stop the Violence rallies in Parramore and working to improve police relations with the public.
“This community is heartbroken. People respected her as a human being,” Cobaris said. “That’s why for Markeith Loyd to stand over her and make sure she was dead, people can’t fathom why he would do what he did.”
After Loyd’s boss, niece and an ex-girlfriend were arrested last week and accused of helping Loyd after Dixon’s December death, there is proof some in the community rocked by violence are wary to come forward, he said.
“[Loyd] is at large, it’s obvious he’s been supported because his friends and family have been supportive to him,” Cobaris said.
But it’s not just the residents who should to work on their trust issues with law enforcement, some community leaders say. The relationship works both ways.
“[Police] need to be more present. You can’t just ride through a community and wave,” Hampton said. “If the only time they see you is if they’re going to jail, it’s not going to work.”
Nieves said it’s difficult to devote the resources necessary while juggling the responsibilities of law enforcement. “We have a fiscal responsibility to the county. We would like to have more police officers [in the streets], but that entails more money,” he said. “We must have people to answer and respond to calls for service.”
In December, the Sheriff’s Office and Orlando Police Department announced a new task force dubbed R.I.S.E — Restoring Inclusiveness Safety and Empowerment to the Pine Hills neighborhood and northwest Orange County community — after eight people died and at least 10 others were wounded in 12 shootings in the area.
Since then, law enforcement say they’ve boosted patrols and increased intelligence on crime.
In just the first six days of RISE’s start, officers arrested 49 people and seized drugs, 10 guns and nearly $20,000 in cash in the Pine Hills region, according to the Sheriff's Office.
At the same time, Orlando and Orange County commissioners and the State Attorney’s Office announced plans to open a community outreach center and offered details of a new project that will target teens arrested for nonviolent offenses.
Cobaris said that area faith communities also are getting involved in programming.
“Community policing is extremely important,” Nieves said. “We want to make sure people are sure law enforcement is there to help them because we can’t do it by ourselves.”
Hampton emphasized the problem is not going to fade away as soon as Loyd is caught.
He said that community members must be willing to work with officers if they want to see some positive changes — and that could mean fighting a code of silence developed long before the “if you see something, say something” catchphrase came to be.
“They want a nice place to live without violence, but at what cost?” Hampton said. “They’re not willing to get rid of folks to make their neighborhoods safe.”