Five juveniles shot during party, Gainesville police report gainesville.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gainesville.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Easter event prompted calls to police
It always draws many more people on Easter so two years ago it was moved to the Martin Luther King Jr. Multipurpose Center off Northeast Eighth Avenue and Waldo Road with the city s blessing, said John Alexander of GPD s Youth and Community Services Division.
It was not held last year because of COVID-19. This year the organizers moved it to MLK on their own. At some point, teens and young adults left to start a spinoff at McPherson. You saw an uprising of a younger generation that did not necessarily want to participate in the (MLK) one, Alexander said. It was very organized the promoters did an awesome job. When you traveled down to (McPherson) it was a much younger crowd initially . but ultimately all ages were down there.
Gainesville Black nightlife discussed by crime task force gainesville.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gainesville.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The solutions will be harder to come by.
Lounge owners and promoters who stage events in the clubs say the 2 a.m. bar closing floods the streets with people who are still amped up but have few other venues in which to wind down.
Meanwhile, the closing time makes it difficult to operate a nightspot from a business perspective, especially considering that many people don’t hit clubs until 11 p.m. or later.
Rather than pay to get into a club for an hour or two, people are instead hanging around outside, said lounge owner Thomas Sims at Wednesday’s Black on Black Crime Task Force meeting. The task force is a decades-old advisory board for GPD on issues related to African-Americans.