Blog, I

“Five teens held in torching of man sleeping in park“. They told people he was worth as much as a cat or dog,he was trash,it didn’t matter whether he was alive, and one yelled “Let’s clean up trash!”.

Still in the hosptal with 3rd degree burns, the man hasn’t been back to work since.

He was a cleaning worker.

Glad to see it’s not just some of our ignorant local bigots and snobs that do this.

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Feel free to eMail or visit my project Homeless In Jax.

West Palm Beach: The Story Here.

5/29/07 10:05 PM
Fox30 News just reported live that a homeless camper’s body was found in a ditch on Jammes Road, on Jacksonville’s Westside.

Back in October, I left employment just at the corner where that camp was at. Many local residents and businesses knew of the camp and it’s residents over time, and at times supported them by direct donations.

It’s not clear exactly what happened, other than the family member having gone out and looking for the deceased according to news release at the moment. Was it one of the people I gave food out to after work at nights there nearby…was it by the person who held a gun at my neck nearby there…not personalizing…just thinking.

Entry Update: May 31, 2007
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office arrested 29-year-old Joshua Jay Hilliard for the murder of Glenn Wilson

Hilliard told police the victim broke his CD player by stepping on it, after which he followed the victim into the woods, throwing bottles at him and kicking him.

This information is extrapolated from different local media sources.

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Feel free to eMail or visit my project Homeless In Jax.

Last November, my son was attacked by a homeless man in Hemming Plaza. That man now serves a state prison sentence. Today, a woman attacked another, in the same park but closer to City Hall. Click this link for local media before ‘reading more’ here.

Whatever spin you read, here’s the real deal:

Local businesses are there for one reason: money.

Local businesses come and go. The homeless leaving are replaced with more on the streets daily.

Local cops seem to show up or enforce the peace of the park at the requests of the people having an interest there: local businesses.

The homeless there have always been there. While they may be chased out, they return when police presence isn’t maintained. Security Guard contracts haven’t kept crime from happening. According to many accounts, criminal activity continues on their watches.

Unless Jacksonville law enforcement is consistent with dealing with security in a block area facing both a Federal Court House and City Hall, someone…eventually…will be killed there.

What no one mentioned publicly about my son’s attack last year was of an umbrella that was almost used to impale his face by his attacker. Now, we have a knife attack in the same park that you can throw a stone across from one side to another.

Food for thought, Jacksonville. Lately, I wouldn’t let anyone in my family near the plaza…with me present or not. If the criminals don’t kill you, the smell of urine in the air could make you wish you were dead.

But hey…I’m not the one having to leave work facing that. Ooops, my bad. City Hall has other exits.

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Feel free to eMail or visit my project Homeless In Jax.

The idea made real: Get homeless people to do what Downtown Ambassadors did with trash downtown. The problem: “dismantling downtown homeless camps”!

Doubt they have life insurance, since it’s part time work.

Doubt anyone will admit this could happen.

Doubt Joey Marchy knew what he was getting into on this. I like Joey, honestly.

This. Dang!

St. Petersburg had cops stripping and ripping homeless tents before. These workers will become targets once word gets out what they’ll be possibly doing…let alone if they touch the first homeless camp.

Again…that’s just my opinion…but, do you remember what happened a few years ago in a men’s dorm of a local homeless shelter?

One homeless man shot another in the head, over just words exchanged and feelings hurt…and the shooter tried to escape in a wheel chair.

Deal with it.

Man, this is phracked!

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Feel free to eMail. Chances are if you’ve got an issue, I’ve got your solution. If not, I’ll find it. If not then still, I promise I’ll be honest enough to smile when I try to bullshit you with it. Either way, you’ll be glad you did!

My older son’s gotten over the peak side of the flu/bug/cold that me and my wife had, while at the same time one of his wisdom teeth have started to come in. Not sure if he’ll be going to school tomorrow or not.

Got past the problem in the last post. Did some checking into some info I picked up from someone, and had to confirm it is all it amounted to. Can’t do anything until tomorrow morning after JSO and SAO office open for business. Too many things came up that were conincidental, so I ended up comparing things on different sources.

What it comes down to is I’ll have to do something I wasn’t planning on prior.

Alright. I’ll cut with the cloak and dagger. I was able to retain the address of the attacker of my son from last month. Turns out his home address is within the same immediate area that a JSO officer lost pursuit of the gunman who held me up in August. The area is residential houses.

Happens that I spotted the gunman later…at a gas station at the corner of San Juan and Jammes a while ago. Left a message with the detective handling it, but nothing came back contact wise from him. Wasn’t able to pursue it with the drama revolving around the murder at Nia Terrace, as well as my own younger son having found a shotgun four days later…WHICH…was turned into JSO…but sometimes I think I’m perceived as more of a bother to their dispatchers myself.

That’s…just the impression I get when I call them over definate problems…like my son finding a shotgun days after a murder with a shotgun…like calling in when people can be heard upstairs, but they’re gone when JSO gets there and it’s claimed to be wind.

Anyways…given the description of people my family knows of my son’s attacker, can’t say it’s a match to the gunman who attacked me or not…but based on who he was associated with that night…his egress path when he was spotted later at the gas station and headed north…it’s a fair chance if it’s not a match, then he’s had an association from being in the neighborhood over time with the person who attacked my son.

Rambling, yeah.

Just glad we’re moved out of that area. Our new home is quiet. Price is high…higher than anything we’ve had before, but it’s subsidized based on what we’ve got for income. Unlike Section 8 or other similiar programs, it DOES count Food Stamps as income…however it’s not a problem since we learned long ago how to budget our shopping on a weekly basis.

Wife got word however that there was a problem in calculations, which results in a change of rent being around $550.00 higher…found out on Friday the 15th. Again…it’ll be tight…that’s only giving me two weeks before it being due…meaning I have to come up with $275.00 a week the next two weeks to make up for it out of the budget.

Course the news came basically 10 days before Christmas as well. We’d put everything into the move and making sure we wouldn’t lose any of the furniture. With the abruptness of the news, none of the agencies were able to commit to helping with a truck. After we got everything in and over, as well as making sure the utilities were transferred and paid…we’d planned on the check before Christmas going towards the kids. Weekly check split between four children isn’t much, but it was more than we’d been able to do in years.

I had just wanted to be able to do something for my children on my own is all. Over the last few years, many people have graciously blessed our family through charitable giving. It’s not an ego thing, and I’ll be able to accept whatever my family receives in honest appreciation. It’s just regretful knowing there are other families out there, in the situation and position we were in when we first used Sulzbacher’s floor space before getting placed in a hotel by John Bowles and Jackie Brown from the HOPE Team.

Yes…it’s tough. Yes…it’s their problem. Yes…I and my family got through it.

And yes, I still sometimes I’m unable to hold back the tears…for reason of admitting what I feel after thinking what I went through and kept going, or for knowing what others may go through as I, or gratitude for conditions being as they were rather than worse…which they so very could have been.

I wish I could say for anyone wanting to give, to do so to one specific location. There are so many places I know of, yet so many I don’t as well. I look at the last year…recall so many of the publicity events, stories, reports, clients I know, and service providers…and it overwhelms me.

And I know full well it’s not enough. Maybe years from now, but not now.

When I had my interview with Jeff Butera last month; from Fox30 news…along with Joe…HEY JOE!!!…; I broke down and started weeping. Nearby was a woman who’s family is close to my famly’s heart who’s children grew into adulthood while the family was homeless, and she became a grandmother out of that.

They’re off the streets now. I spoke to her son a few days ago when I passed him downtown.

They were a family living unsheltered. They were the real reason I chose to allow myself to be interviewed by Jeff, and have no qualms with how he or Fox30 News chose to use or edit it the interview.

My son after the attack was safe from his attacker, being in jail. When he gets out…whenever that is…chances are my son’ll be pursuing his degree…he’s the one in the National Honor Society and in an early college program.

There are so many homeless women and children that are out there…that will be out there. When I wept in front of Jeff, Joe, and a woman who’s known me as a peer while experiencing homelessness (but been in her own place for months!)…my intention was to make change that the attacker be rehabilitated to not hurt someone I care about.

We can’t control what others do. We can make them account for their actions afterwards through due process, and we CAN ask that for the good of the community…local merchants, residents both sheltered and unsheltered…that consideration be made to address mental illness before releasing repetitive offenders of violence into society.

That…was what I was trying to accomplish, while in a mindswarm of thoughts of my son, thoughts of his attacker, thoughts of a infant grandchild and it’s grandmother sleeping in Hemming Plaza that night…rather than give in to violence.

That…would make me no better than Kenny Smith. And it wouldn’t help my son, friends we care and pray for, and those to come through the future paths of Hemming Plaza, regardless of where they came from or head after.

For those that have asked out of genuine concern over my son after the attack, he wasn’t hurt just by Kenny Smith. He was hurt because his boss told him one thing about a picture being taken for the police, and it ended up used by a group of people who used it for their own agenda.
Regardless of whatever is claimed, it was wrong for his employer to tell him it was okay for another restaraunt owner to take his picture. It was wrong that it was made common knowledge in an open message board forum. It was wrong that a candidate for mayor; at the time on file with the Office of Elections; openly posted to organize people to mass email it out, as well as recommend his image be placed on Youtube.com, all of which it has.

Just because there’s a legal ability to do something, doesn’t it mean it’s the right thing to do. Regardless of whatever has been told to me by anyone…I don’t take legal advice from outhouse lawyers.

That’s for a lawyer to decide if something has been done to be taken in front of a judge.

Shame on you all.

It’s bedtime. Hitting the hay, starting the week, letting this all lie. Not letting things affect me where it affects my choices in what’s got to be done to keep things go…and getting better.

With the progress made in the last six months; through MY and my family’s efforts; we’re out of homelessness. I have a good job, with good benefits. We have a clean and safe home. We have what’s necessary for us in the immediate vicinity. Through it all, we have something that many lose…sometimes just a month…a week…a day after first experiencing homelessness.

After exactly two years and eight months, we have each other…we have had each other…through homelessness. Even when I was jailed for a week, my cell faced the wall of Sulzbacher’s wall my family’s corner room was at…I was able to wave to my children when they went to school…after someone broke confidentiality of my location. Even when I was forced out of the shelter when standing up against people making allegations and slept in a van of friends, I slept within meters of where my family slept, and walked my children to school and was there for them.

Honestly…I don’t know of anyone who can say that. Nothing that happened was able to come between my family and I.

Deep.

Whatever.

Deal with it.

Night.

Rumor control has it that Monday’s killer’s mother was evicted month’s ago, and that the 14 year old was couching at different apartments since. Also, the apartment where police found evidence still has lights. Could this be why my light bill is 300 a month?