JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A pilot program in next year's state budget will use $3 million for helping the part of Jacksonville where a white Clay County resident carrying a swastika-marked rifle killed three Black people at a Dollar General store.
The racist rampage brought condemnations by President Joe Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a hate crime investigation by the U.S. Attorney's Office and emergency state funding for Edward Waters University to strengthen security at the historically Black college where the gunman stopped before going to the nearby Dollar General.
The shooting also put renewed attention on the predominantly Black neighborhoods whose racial makeup made the store a target for the gunman.
The 2024-25 budget signed Wednesday by DeSantis contains what Jacksonville area lawmakers hope will be the first installment for improving access to jobs, affordable housing and healthy food in the poorest part of Jacksonville. DeSantis, who had faced boos from the crowd when he spoke at a prayer vigil after the shooting, worked with state Rep. Wyman Duggan, R-Jacksonville, on starting the program.
Duggan said the $3 million is a follow-up to the $1 million that DeSantis announced for beefed-up security at Edward Waters University in the days after the Aug. 26 shooting.
Duggan said the security for the college "was a great response and well-needed," but the state needs to do more than "make a one-off reaction spend and then move on."
DeSantis' office did not respond to emailed questions. But when Chris Spencer, who was director of the Office of Policy and Budget in the governor's office, presented DeSantis's proposed budget at a Dec. 12 meeting of the House Appropriations Committee, he said DeSantis "feels very strongly about standing with the community there, working with the Legislature to figure out how much needs to go into what types of programs in order to show that commitment."
"The $3 million is just a start," said state Sen. Tracie Davis, D-Jacksonville, who worked with Duggan and state Rep. Sam Garrison, R-Fleming Island, to support the funding in the budget. "Is it enough? Absolutely not. I think the goal for the three of us will be to go back and ask for additional dollars next session."
Dollar General shooting was in Jacksonville's deadliest ZIP code
The Dollar General store in the 2100 block of Kings Road is in the poorest ZIP code in Jacksonville and one of the poorest in the entire state. The store is in a stretch of Kings Road where the urban campus of Edward Waters University straddles the road with its red-brick buildings and landscaped lawns.
The rest of Kings Road in walking distance of the university is lined by mom-and-pop businesses in standalone cinderblock buildings and small strip shopping centers, along with a few national brand franchises: the Dollar General store, two Family Dollar stores, a Popeye's and a Checker's restaurant. One of the Family Dollar stores has a "store closing" sign in front of it near a recently shuttered Burger King.
About 36% of the roughly 35,000 people in the 32209 ZIP code live under the poverty line, and the childhood poverty rate hit even harder at 50%, according to data tracked by the Florida Prosperity Project that's overseen by the Florida Chamber of Commerce.
The median household income is $28,534, and residents struggle to pay their rent and mortgage because 58% of household are "housing burdened" by spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The 32209 ZIP code has only one branch for a bank and one branch for a credit union.
The area also has been the most violent for years in Jacksonville, most recently in 2023 with 30 homicides. Three of those killings happened when the gunman targeting Black people shot Angela Carr, 52, while she sat in a car in the Dollar General parking lot; Anolt Joseph "A.J." Laguerre Jr., 19, a store employee working his Saturday shift; and Jerrald Gallion, 29, a customer who happened to be walking into the store.
City Council member Rahman Johnson, who is an Edward Waters graduate and former professor at the school, said the grief he felt that day was comparable to the burial of his mother.
"It was just raw human emotion," he said. "I remember walking in the street and the first thing I did was start praying — we just held hands in a circle and prayed in the middle of Kings Road."
Two months after that shooting, Florida was back in the national spotlight when a mass shooting in Tampa's historic Ybor City neighborhood killed two people and wounded 16 others over the Halloween weekend. A dispute between two people escalated, and patrons leaving bars and nightclubs as they closed were caught in the crossfire.
The 2024-55 state budget sets aside $3 million for the State Attorney's Office to contract with law enforcement agencies and community organizations on crime prevention in the Ybor City area.
Plans for state help originated with tense prayer vigil
The $3 million for Jacksonville also has an overarching goal of crime prevention. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement will contract with local entities to make headway in the areas of economic development, affordable housing and food insecurity issues. Those programs can go beyond the 32209 ZIP code by reaching four others in 32206, 32208, 32219 and 32254.
The discussions of state assistance started after DeSantis came to Jacksonville for an Aug. 27 prayer vigil and some in the crowd jeered him as he spoke. The NAACP posted a national travel warning in May 2023 declaring his policies were "hostile to Black Americans" and he has had low job approval ratings among Black residents of Jacksonville and statewide.
City Council member Ju'Coby Pittman, who organized the vigil, stepped in and told everyone to set aside partisan differences because "a bullet don't know a party."
“Now if the governor wanted to come here, and he's bringing gifts to my community, you all know I’m taking the gifts because we’ve been through enough already, and I don’t want to go through no more," Pittman said.
DeSantis then said "you had a major league scumbag from Clay County come up here and what he did is totally unacceptable. And the state of Florida, we're not going to let people be targeted based on their race."
"Just know that the state of Florida stands with the community," DeSantis said. "Help is on the way."
DeSantis announced the next day the state was sending $1 million to Edward Waters University and another $100,000 to help families of the three people killed.
Pittman, who is one of six Black members of the 19-seat City Council, faced blistering criticism after the vigil. She released a statement putting distance between herself and DeSantis, saying she does not support "any policies that diminish our race and who we are as a people, nor do I support the governor's ideology of building political dynasties at our expense that hurts our Black and brown communities."
Meanwhile, Duggan had gone up to Pittman immediately after the prayer vigil and said he wanted to work with her about asking the governor's office to put money in the state budget in response to the Dollar General shooting. In contrast to those who booed DeSantis, Duggan was among those who gave him a standing ovation.
After Pittman put together some recommendations, Duggan met with the governor's senior staff.
"This was obviously a tragedy for the community, and this city councilwoman has, I think, a great vision for how resources should be directed to those critical care neighborhoods," Duggan said.
Rep. Sam Garrison from Clay County gave support across county line
Davis was among those attending the prayer vigil who left angry.
"At the end of the day, for me, that vigil did not do anything to wrap our arms around the [victims'] families," she said. "It felt more like we were there to receive dollars and cents and to give the governor a platform."
While Duggan and Davis split in their reactions at the vigil, they worked together on getting money into the budget in response to the shooting. That alliance across party lines also reached over the county line when Garrison put his support behind the funding.
Garrison said as a former prosecutor he empathized with what surviving family members were going through. "On top of that, the fact that murderer came from my district made it somewhat personal for me about what happened," Garrison said.
The gunman, 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmeter from Oakleaf in Clay County, fatally shot himself in the store as police closed in. He left behind a 27-page diatribe full of racist language that referenced the "N" word 183 times. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters called it "the diary of a madman" and said its message was "wholly inconsistent" with Jacksonville's beliefs.
Lawmakers vow multi-year response to Dollar General shooting
Going forward in the Legislature, Duggan, Davis and Garrison have leadership positions that would give them influence in securing more rounds of state support. Duggan will serve in House leadership roles through 2026 until term limits prevent him from running again. Senate Democrats unanimously elected Davis to lead their caucus starting in 2026. Garrison is in line to be House speaker in 2026.
Davis said at one point, she had hoped legislators could earmark $10 million for the first year, so she'd like to see bigger amounts in future years. Duggan said that over a five-year period, "the hope is that at the end of every year of those five years, and certainly after five years" residents will notice changes in "the feeling of living and working in those neighborhoods."
Davis said the city of Jacksonville also will need to put money into the distressed neighborhoods, which Mayor Donna Deegan has pledged to do.
The passage of time already has taken a toll on three memorials to the victims in front of the Dollar General store. The photos of them have almost completely faded. Davis said she's confident that support from state leaders won't dim.
She recently joined a group of Jacksonville City Council members who gathered on the same spot as the prayer vigil to announce a city bill that would strengthen local hate crime penalties. When she looked down Kings Road, she could see the Dollar General sign. That was enough to bring back the impact of the Aug. 26 shootings.
"All I could do was stare at the sign," she said, "and because we're still dealing with the families, we are still feeling that emotional tie to death."