Pushing for a Positive Palatka | Palatka Daily News, Palatka, Florida

Community leaders host event to bring unity to the city

Palatka Fire Department officials face off against the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office in a game of cornhole Friday during Palatka’s Victory in the Village.
Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Assistant Chief Deloris O’Neal tells the people gathered at Victory in the Village stories about her childhood in Palatka.
Community leader La’Farrah Davis looks at a booklet with Mary Garcia during the event.
Positively Putnam FL

Local organizations and guest speakers spent their Friday in the scorching heat working toward unifying the Palatka community.

Leaders such as the Rev. Karl Flagg, the senior pastor of Mt. Tabor First Baptist Church, Palatka Police Chief Jason Shaw, Palatka Housing Authority President and CEO Anthony Woods and the housing authority’s director of resident services, Aaron Robinson, hosted Friday’s Victory in the Village. But they agreed there is still work to be done.

“Our goal was to bring the community together and show that, once again, like we’ve always said, it takes a village,” Shaw said. “(We wanted) just to share stories of success … to unite, show a sense of unity. … That’s what it takes for the community to prosper.”

Members of agencies like the Palatka Police Department, Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, Take Stock in Children, Boy Scouts of America and the city’s Community Affairs Department attended the event on Palatka’s north side. Deputies played cornhole while employees from the police department handed out snow cones and other treats.

About 14 agencies had members at the event, and organizers or guest speakers filled the majority of the seats. Still, there were a few children in attendance who grabbed a snow cone with a family member.

Palatka native and Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office Assistant Chief Deloris O’Neal stopped by for a visit to tell stories of growing up on the city’s north side and being a next-door neighbor to Flagg.

O’Neal said she eventually moved to Jacksonville and attended the University of North Florida and that after doing a job she didn’t like, she became a police officer.

“One thing you have to know that when you are a police officer, especially, is that you have to care about people. You have to care about people,” O’Neal told the crowd. “And if you care about people and you’re willing to meet their needs, then everything that you do, people know that you’re doing it out of love … which I have that sense of that’s what’s happening here in Palatka.”

She encouraged attendees to get their children and their grandchildren involved in the community and urged residents to work with their local law enforcement officers.

“I can tell that (local officers) care about this community,” O’Neal said. “With police, that’s (what) our whole job is about – caring. So work with them. When you work with them and they work with you, that only can give you success.”

Shaw said he appreciated organization leaders telling people some of the positive things going on in Palatka, but those are not the only things people need to hear.

“We also need to find ways where we can come together and make, in any way and every way, the community and the city of Palatka a positive (place) and (bring) better growth,” Shaw said. “Those are the things that we are pushing forward. That was our dream.”