JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — State Attorney Melissa Nelson said Monday that she will run for a third term because she loves her job.
It was one of several things talked about during and after a speech about “the state of the State Attorney’s Office” on Monday at lunchtime. Her wide-ranging speech talked about things like the murder of Jared Bridegan, gang violence, and the opioid epidemic, which she said kills four times as many people on the First Coast as homicides.
Nelson also showed off the Shot Spotter technology from her office, which alerts police to gunfire exchanges that don’t get reported. She said that in Jacksonville, only one out of every five shootings is reported to 911.
Nelson also showed off the Shot Spotter technology from her office, which alerts police to gunfire exchanges that don’t get reported. She said that in Jacksonville, only one out of every five shootings is reported to 911.
After the speech, she said, “That still sounds like a shocking audio.” “There were three different guns, and I think more than 40 shots were fired.” She went on, “I use that (audio clip) because it’s shocking, but it’s real. It’s true. I wanted people to know why we were fighting.
Nelson also showed surveillance video of a child standing on his grandmother’s porch before he was hit by gunfire. Even though no one was hurt in the drive-by, Nelson said that gun violence between gang members continues to be a focus of prosecutors and a major cause of the city’s high murder rate.
Nelson also talked about the rise in deaths from opioids, which she said were over 500 last year, compared to 132 deaths from homicides. Many of these deaths are caused by the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is deadly in small doses and is often mixed with other drugs to make them stronger and more addictive.
She told the Meninak Club members gathered at the Doubletree Hotel in downtown Jacksonville, “I’ll tell you what’s pretty scary.” “I hope it doesn’t happen, but I’m waiting for a college or high school party where kids use drugs for fun and a bunch of people die because the drugs were cut with fentanyl.”
“I’m getting chills,” she said. “It’s scary.”
Nelson said that the office is in good shape, but he also said that it has trouble recruiting people because its starting salaries for prosecutors are the 47th lowest in the country.
“It doesn’t help to catch dangerous criminals if there’s no one to take the case forward,” she said. “The police are half of the equation, and we, the prosecutors, are the other half, just like “Law and Order” says.
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