JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – News4JAX is digging deeper into a neighborhood crime alert on a section of Jacksonville’s Woodstock neighborhood.
Neighbors reached out to us, saying that they’re fed up with prostitution and illegal drug activity and that a body was discovered over the weekend inside a children’s playground at Terrace Park on Edgewood Avenue.
“Our kids should be able to come out here and play freely and not have to worry about what we’re going to see or step on and get hurt or killed,” said neighbor Brandy Benfield.
Neighbors say a family discovered the body in a children’s play area on Saturday and called the police. Witnesses say, at one point, they saw a tarp placed over a bench next to the children’s playground as police investigated on Saturday night.
Benfield says she walked to the park to see why police were gathered there when a man pulled and asked her a question.
“He said, ‘Are the police still there?’ and I said, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I called hours ago because I found a dead body when I was walking,’” Benfield recounted.
Neighbors are upset with what they’ve seen at the park and are hoping for change.
“I don’t know what it was, but something bad happened and we knew it was going to happen,” neighbor Kim Barus said.
Neighbors we spoke with both on and off camera say the park has been plagued by drug and sexual activity.
“We’ve found needles, needle caps. We have found condoms,” Benfield said.
Evidence of such items was still on the ground inside the park and on the dirt road near the entrance when News4JAX showed up. In addition to the condoms and drug paraphernalia in plain view, neighbors say that naked prostitutes and their customers are often seen having sex on playground equipment designated for children ages 5 through 12.
“I don’t want to see it, let alone let my kids come out here and play and they find naked people out here,” Benfield said. “We come first and check the surroundings and the playground to make sure our kids don’t step on anything, clean up trash that we can and run off anybody that needs to be run off.”
“We always come first and check the area out before we allow kids back here,” Barus said, echoing Benfield. “We’ve complained. We’ve called the city. We’ve called the police. We don’t know what else to do.”
There are screenshots of online complaints and service requests to the city to clean up the park and crack down on people performing sex acts in public. Neighbors say they were told by police that officers can’t do anything unless they catch people in the act. Neighbors also say that when they do call the police to report lewd activity or people doing drugs, the people are gone by the time patrol officers show up.
News4JAX reached out to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to inquire about the cause of the death and to ask about what police are doing to keep drug activity and prostitution out of the park. But because Monday is Labor Day, which is a federal holiday, no one was available to respond.