Many city officials have heard the stories: Individuals telling of uncomfortable situations they faced when visiting downtown. Recently, Dover City Council President Roy Sudler Jr. got to experience one of them firsthand after leaving a Downtown Dover Partnership safety meeting at the CenDel Foundation Community Building on Loockerman Street. The experience was enough for him to support 2nd District City Councilman Ralph Taylor’s proposal to bring a bricks-and-mortar Dover police substation to the area, an idea that will be heard during the Council Committee of the Whole’s Safety Advisory and Transportation meeting April 26.
- Enforce the loitering and vagrancy laws already on the books. Dover has become very unsafe. — Ronnie Ponde
- What I found most interesting with this is that it appears that it took a councilman to be approached before he thought something needs to be done about the panhandling downtown. It’s been at least 20 years that this has been going on in this same location. What bubble has this person been living in? There simply is no excuse for not knowing what is going on in downtown Dover unless you didn’t want to know. Wasting money on a building is not going to fix the problem. Cops walking a beat and making arrests might help. Here’s an idea: Have the mayor and council members each pick one night during the week/weekend from the hours of, say, 7-10 p.m. and walk up and down Loockerman Street. Also, walk down each side street, say, one block north and one block south. After a month, get together and report what each has found. You don’t need a committee. You can do this yourself. — Kevin McCarthy
