COVINGTON, Ga. — Two Tuesdays ago, safety in the park nestled inside the Fairview Estates subdivision was one of the top topics of discussion during the Newton County Board of Commissioners public meeting.
So much so that Chairman Marcello Banes promised to call in some reinforcement in the personage of Newton County Sheriff Ezell Brown to discuss ways to assuage safety concerns in the subdivision’s park.
Brown showed up to Tuesday’s meeting armed with statistics that corroborated those concerns that have come from citizens in and around the subdivision and District 3 Commissioner Alana Sanders. He also brought some potential solutions.
The sheriff called the park “a holding area for criminal activity,” citing last month’s triple shooting incident in the area that reignited the concerns. But that burst of violence is just one of at least 45 catalogued criminal incidents that have happened in the area since 2018, according to data compiled by the Sheriff’s office.
Of those 45 documented incidents, one was a murder case, 12 were aggravated assaults, along with 10 burglaries, a total of 17 incidents involving entering an automobile or motor vehicle thefts and five incidents that included the discharge of a firearm.
Brown also pointed out that it’s possible that incidents of violence and other unscrupulous activity has occurred more frequently than what the numbers show.
“What we have realized over the years is that there are a number of leading factors and incidents where the origin of them is in the park, but then it leaves and goes elsewhere in the community,” Brown said. “The shooting incident that happened a couple of weeks ago, the origin of the incident started at the park, but then it ended up in Rockdale County.”
Some of Brown’s recommendations to improve the park’s safety include adding “motion lights or smart lights” in the park and adjusting the height of the light poles to make it more difficult to be vandalized, removing or thinning out trees, bushes and brush from the area to eliminate places people can hide, adding a live footage camera system in the park that can be controlled by law enforcement, as well as fencing the area.
“Fencing the entire park can give the appearance that residents’ houses are separate from the park and homeowners yard,” Brown said. “I think I would feel safe if there was a fence on the left side of me as well as a fence on the right side of me that a person could not walk from one side to the other, commit a crime and then go back. I think that would give homeowners a sense of security that people can’t just walk freely into their yards.”
He also talked of placing signage in and around the park to let people know that the area was under 24-hour police surveillance via video cameras. Additionally, he charged residents to also help by taking ownership of promoting safety in the area, while also acknowledging that the placement of the park isn’t ideal.
“I’m not sure when the park was put in, but I know we had reservations about it,” Brown said. Hindsight is always 2020. Any time there’s something of this nature brought into the community, we all should be stakeholders and have buy-in as to who’s going to benefit and who’s going to be harmed by this. We want to do what’s best for the citizens and what’s best for Newton County.”
Sanders stated that many of Brown’s recommendations are similar to “the things the state park director told us in 2021.” Next steps, according to Newton County Recreation Director Dwayne Mask, include collaboration between himself and the Sheriff in order to present an executable plan back to the board.
“The Sheriff and I spoke for just a moment [Tuesday night] after the meeting, and we are going to get together and talk about his recommendations,” Mask said. “After that, we will work on a plan of action.”
