County Commission Chairman Matt Brooks advocates for stronger laws to address large gatherings at the Sept. 8 board meeting.
By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Levy County Commission Chairman Matt Brooks last week said local laws are needed to address large gatherings like the recent Labor Day event in East Williston that led to the shooting of six people.
Brooks, responding to request by Sheriff Bobby McCallum for laws that would give his agency more enforcement power when responding to such events, said event organizers should be held liable for their actions.
Speaking at the Sept. 8 county commission meeting, Brooks said organizers and profiteers who put on these types of events may think it’s all a game, but he said local people in the line of fire don’t feel the same way.
“The people’s homes that are catching stray bullets do not think it’s a game,” Brooks said. “We are here to represent people who do not have a voice, who may not want to speak out for whatever reason, but I can assure you people are going to speak out after what happened this weekend. I can tell you it is coming.”
The Labor Day weekend shooting occurred on County Road 318 in East Williston. One person was critically injured by gunfire. Five others had lesser injuries. The shootings were a reminder of what happened at Crab Fest in 2013 when a gunman shot five people, killing one in East Williston.
Brooks said it was his understanding Crab Fest has been cancelled this year.
McCallum said the Labor Day weekend shootings were preceded eight days earlier by a shooting on private property. The shooting victim survived.
The Labor Day weekend victims included one person from Lake City, one from Gainesville, and four from Ocala. McCallum said all five victims in the 2013 Crab Fest shootings were from out of town
He said the Labor Day weekend investigation is complex.
“We’re having a hard time getting much cooperation. We thought we had done the right thing with that because it was advertised as a protest. We had people working the area and patrolling and the rest (of the officers) were ready to respond when we had the shooting. We had a large amount of presence.”
McCallum said he doesn’t have a crystal ball to tell him when people are carrying guns into an event but he said the sheriff’s office knows there is a potential for violence when large crowds gather and many of the people are from out of town.
“It’s largely not east Levy County folks, but you’re going to have some of them out here; but again it’s the same old story, they just pile in here based on an invite from an individual that has no legitimate interest in this county other than to feed his own ego and make a name for himself. That’s what happened,” McCallum said. “Also, for five straight weekends, we have dealt with either the potential or actual block parties before this shooting.”
Two of the block parties didn’t materialize, but two did.
“We got ahead of it and flushed them out and dispersed them. They would move to another location in Levy County and eventually into the City of Williston and we flushed and dispersed them out for these two weeks – very successful doing that,” McCallum said.
The sheriff said he walks a fine line when people ask him to put a stop to what’s going on.
“No one wants to stop it more than me, but there’s a fine line upholding the constitutional rights of a protest to do these things,” McCallum said.
McCallum asked commissioners to consider how they could tighten or amend the county’s laws and ordinances to address these types of large gatherings.
“We’re having more and more of these events pop up on private lands that won’t even allow us in to see what’s going on,” he said. “We are having more and more of these issues that are bypassing code enforcement and I believe zoning in some cases.”
McCallum said the issue of large gatherings dates back 40 years to the start of Crab Fest. He said it dates back that far and remembers when it started. He said he can speak to the history of large gatherings.
“We really need to look at some way that we can tighten up our ordinances and give us more teeth to be able to take a little more action,” he said. “If people want to get together and have parties at their house, that’s their business; if you want to rent a piece of land and have security that’s your business. My job is public safety for everyone. When these crowds get that large, it’s impossible for them not to impede traffic, not to park on the right of way.”
“It’s a dangerous situation and I would ask that we look at it together moving forward; what we can look at, what we can do for some improvement in our ordinances,” McCallum added.
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Board of County Commission Regular Meeting September 8, 2020; Posted September 14, 2020
