Opa-locka's mayor says she won't let violent crime turn back what she calls a "renaissance" in the South Florida city.
Mayor Myra Taylor gathered with other leaders under rainy skies Monday morning and urged residents to keep looking ahead.
She spoke just steps from the spot where two men were gunned down on Ali Baba Avenue the night of July 21st, in an area some call the 'Triangle,' a place marred by crime and blighted with boarded up buildings and overgrown lots. Police say the deaths are the first killings of their kind since 2009.
"Since the shooting, we've stepped up police security," said Taylor. "We're not going back to the way it was."
Vickie Howard came out to hear the mayor speak. She says her son knows one of the victims. Howard said she doesn't let her eleven and eight-year-old granddaughters go anywhere on their own, not even to the park.
"They gotta get rid of the dope," she said.
Taylor says the city plans to add surveillance cameras, plus transform vacant homes and lots into affordable housing and parks. Leaders said an artwork display would be coming to the dead end of Ali Baba Avenue near Northwest 151st Street in eight months.
County Commissioner Barbara Jordan spoke of making Opa-locka a "community of choice" in attracting homeowners to the area.
"Just watch our smoke," said Taylor.
