Police officials in Seaford want to spend the city’s opioid settlement money on a prevention hub in a beleaguered city park.
Police Chief Marshall Craft and Deputy Chief Tyler Justice made the pitch to city council on Wednesday. Justice said that the new project would be led by the police department in partnership with Outloud DE and the Sussex County Health Coalition. The project would upgrade Nutter Park and turn it into a community space focused on substance abuse and violence prevention. The total cost in the first year would add up to some $270,000, covered by Seaford’s yearly allotment from the Prescription Opioid Settlement Distribution Commission.
Under the plan, the police department would take responsibility for a package of infrastructure at the park, including upgraded lighting, surveillance cameras, and a resurfaced basketball court..
“These types of improvements will improve the capability of the neighborhood and the community to access the programming and the education and the prevention components provided by the partners,” he said.
That programming will be handled by Outloud DE, a youth-focused nonprofit.
“They will hold monthly community sessions, quarterly community events, quarterly community listening sessions, so that they can adjust their programming based off of how the community responds and what they want to see, what they feel is effective,” Justice added.
While most of the activities would center around Nutter Park, Police Chief Marshall Craft explained that the program’s prevention component would stretch across Seaford.
“This prevention piece is going to take place in the schools,” he explained. “In the high school right now with the opportunity maybe to go to the middle school, also over to the Boys and Girls Club, also at Chandler [Heights Apartments] in the community room. So it's going to be a community program citywide.”
He noted that the choice of Nutter Park as the central hub is intentional, and the department is in for the long haul.
“I think that the city is going to really benefit over the next decade, and in particular in a community that's had two-thirds of all shootings in the city for years, and an overwhelming amount of ACEs, as they call it - adverse childhood experiences - from the trauma of everything that's happened,” Craft said. “So you can't just go in there for a month or even a year. It's got to be constant and ongoing, and that's what this program is going to do.”
Seaford Vice-Mayor Dan Henderson said the POSDC money has been a long time coming.
“It's high time that we start seeing the benefits of some of this settlement money to go back to restoring the cost - the raw cost plus the social cost - of this epidemic,” he said.
Council voted unanimously to approve the proposal, but that isn’t the final step. Now Seaford’s plan goes to the POSDC for evaluation. If approved, things could happen quickly, Craft said.
“I'm hoping to hear something by the end of March, and I think the funds are going to be cut loose very quickly based on our conversation with them,” he said. “So realistically, I think we could be rolling before summer, before school's out.”
