Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office sponsored a soccer tournament hoping to create good relations and trust in the community.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Palm Beach, Florida, United States of America (Free-Press-Release.com) October 6, 2011 --

As the name suggests, its a unity tournament about bringing people together from of the diversity of our community and now providing them an outlet to play together and to learn to work together sponsored by the sheriff's office. This is a great attempt on the part of Sheriff’s Office to create good working relationships with the community. The purpose behind the tournament is the show and to create a trust between the Latino community and sheriff's office. One of things you can do is to have tournaments or events that not only does the Sheriff’s Office participates in, but also the community so they feel that they're part of the community.

Lieutenant David Moss says “In 2009 we obtain a grant from the bureau of justice administration. It’s a SMART policing initiative group. What we decided to do was trying to reduce the number of violent crimes, specifically robberies, to the migrant community here in the Lake Worth area. The grant was a two-year grant for $500,000. We’ve since had it extended because the program's been working so well. There has been a reduction in robberies and violent crimes in the migrant community.”

The problem is that these individuals or Latinos here do not feel comfortable of reporting these incidents to the sheriff's office and even when they do they don't feel that they can feel comfortable enough to stay with us throughout the whole prosecution. The net result of that is that these individuals, these suspects, end up getting away with some real violent crimes and some real serious crimes. We have this burden to somehow figure out a way to try to build that trust and that network with the Latinos so that they'll help us in those prosecutions. so that's something that's one the biggest components of this SMART grant and that’s what we are working towards even with this unity soccer tournaments.

One other thing that the people at Sheriff Ric Bradshaw’s Office are doing is having a resource fair where a lot of resources or agencies offer services to the community. We give them a platform to speak to the community and tell them about the services they offer. The Blood Bank of south Florida, the Palm Beach County Library system and first family which will be providing HIV exams. So we have a lot of agencies right here that provide services to the Latino community. Many instances, these agencies can’t reach the community due to lack of not being able to meet with them. This is a good opportunity for these agencies to come here and meet them at their territory.

palm beach county     PBSO     sheriff Ric Bradshaw