ORLANDO, Fla. – When the Orlando Police Department made a recent change in how it protects the Parramore community, the change ended up, unintentionally, leaving residents feeling abandoned and vulnerable.

But Orlando Police Chief Eric Smith had no idea of the consequences until people told him at one of the many community meetings he goes to at night.

It was supposed to be an answer to a problem: Reinforce the OPD bike patrol in downtown Orlando on busy weekend nights by pulling the bike officers from Parramore.

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Two people were killed on Halloween during a mass shooting that injured seven.

Police and the city of Orlando have reacted by trying to control the crowds to stem the violence.

But bolstering the bike officers in downtown Orlando left Parramore vulnerable.

“So we had our District Five community meeting before we did our budget in October and one of the biggest concerns I heard from the community was every Friday and Saturday night, the bikes are off,” Smith said. “So we have a Parramore bike unit that works in Parramore but every Friday we pulled them to go downtown to assist the Downtown bike officers so there was no one here during that. There’s just patrol officers who handle the calls with no proactive enforcement going on. So once I heard that, I realized, well, that’s not good policing.”

Chief Smith said he moved his Tactical Unit to Parramore on weekend nights to cover for the bike officers.

“So our TAC unit is basically an anti-crime unit,” Smith said. “They’re officers that ride two-man and they ride in unmarked cars, but they’re in uniform and they fight violent crime. So as soon as those guys leave on their bikes to go Downtown, this [TAC] unit comes in and rides around here more and does all the proactive enforcement. So once the community said, hey, we know they leave, we can tell they leave, so can you do something about them? Of course I can. I want to keep everybody safe. Paramore is a very important community like the rest of our city, and so that’s what we did.”

Reshon Moore, who leads the McFall Neighborhood Association in Parramore, holds monthly community meetings and invites the Orlando Police Department.

Moore said Chief Smith regularly attends.

“I’ve shared suspicious activities,” Moore said. “I’ve shared when there’s people in the community that are doing things that they should not be doing. I have shared with him [Chief] the safety of our children in the community as well as our elders, making sure that we keep people that do not live in the community from hanging in the community.”

Chief Eric Smith made a promise when he was appointed in 2022: To get out of the office, meet people in their neighborhoods and listen to them.

Smith said he attends community meetings in all six city of Orlando districts every quarter.

“I believe in those meetings,” Smith said. “The reason I don’t sit there and talk to people for 20 minutes just to hear my voice is the community has a lot of input in how they’re policed and that’s very important to me. I want to know if you feel like you’re over-policed, under-policed, or you need more enforcement.”

Smith said replacing the Parramore bike officers with TAC officers on weekends is getting results.

“It’s getting big results,” Smith. “They seize a lot of firearms. They stop a lot of violent crimes. They’re in the Parramore community and you’re really seeing the crime in Parramore substantially drop.”

Moore said seeing the chief and other officers at her meetings brings her comfort and relief.

“I love it that he’s listening because, when we do say he loves to hear our voice, he loves to hear what it is that we have, a need, or even if it’s complaining or what can be sound like a complaint,” Moore said. “He wants to hear it and so do the other officers. They want to know what we’re thinking. They want to know what the needs are in our community so that they can at least address it and be aware of it.

Smith posts his calendar inside the new Orlando Police Department app, including which community meetings he will be attending, where and when.

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