Deadly side of the Sunshine State
By HUGH HUNTER
As a destination long favoured by British tourists, Florida conjures up a wealth of enticing images: sun-drenched beaches, long-drives along coastal highways with breathtaking views, magnificent theme parks such as Disneyland, and wonderful food to suit every budget.
But there is another Florida, a world away from this travellers’ paradise. The peninsula state also has a far darker, seamier, more violent side, where only naive or criminal visitors dare to tread.
The dangers of this environment were graphically exposed by the fatal shooting of two Britons. What has so perplexed the Florida police about this double murder is that few tourists visit the deprived neighbourhood where they were killed, particularly because there are no nightclubs or restaurants.
This tragic case shows just how risky it can be to stray into the wrong neighbourhood in Florida. That is certainly what I discovered during my spell between 1998 and 2006 as the British Consul in Orlando, one of the most popular places for visiting Britons.
Away from the all the luxury and glamour of the attractions and hotels, a gun-toting, drug-fuelled menace awaits where people live in abject deprivation on a scale unimaginable in Britain, with our generous welfare state and infrastructure of public services.
This desperate poverty and squalor has served as the breeding ground for serious, often lethal crime from young men who feel they have nothing to lose, in a society which has given them nothing. And it is precisely this sense of desperation which makes these neighbourhoods so dangerous for those outsiders unfortunate or foolish enough to enter them.
The United States has always been a land of extremes. The richest country in the world also contains some of the most shameful poverty in the West. The land of liberty also has the most draconian criminal justice regime of any developed country, reflected not only in the retention of the death penalty but also in the massive prison population.
And although a nation of immigrants which prides itself on being a melting pot, America is still riven by deep-seated ethnic divisions.
These extremes are carried to a heightened level in Florida. What always intrigued me about the state was that affluence and deprivation, crime and security could exist so closely beside each other. In Palm Beach, you can find properties worth around £30million, some belonging to celebrities such as Donald Trump and Tiger Woods.
The rich and famous here don’t just have one swimming pool attached to their mansions, they have two.
Yet within 20 miles you can find the most incredible poverty, either in squalid concrete jungles of housing estates or impoverished shanty towns.
The double murder of the two Britons is a case in point. They were, apparently, staying only 12 miles away from Sarasota in the attractive resort of Longboat Key, but the distance in safety and wealth was much greater. As I found, this disparity can occur even in a small area. Within one part of a Florida city, you could be walking down a street full of appealing shops and cafes.
Then suddenly, if you take a wrong turning, you find yourself on a bleak estate, filled with boarded-up properties and threatening graffiti.
Even in the most notorious areas of Latin America, such as inner-city Bogota in Colombia, you would struggle to find anything as bad. Similarly, you could be driving through the countryside and then come across a group of primitive huts, made of corrugated sheets or derelict caravans, resembling something that you might find in an African village. There would not even be running water, the inhabitants relying on a standpipe.
It is no surprise to find that Florida is therefore scarred by high rates of crime. In my experience, the state has fewer petty offences than urban Britain – binge drinking is much more rare, for instance. But the incidence of serious crime is much higher. It is telling that Britain has by far the largest prison population in Europe in proportion to its size, at a total of 85,000 inmates.
Yet 100,000 prisoners are held in the jails of Florida, even though the state’s 15million population is only a quarter of Britain’s. Murder, drugs, rape, and firearm offences are all much more common in Florida. Tourists are an obvious target for gangsters and opportunistic criminals. One of the most sinister crime waves I had to deal with as a diplomat involved British hotel guests attacked in their rooms by gunmen.
Not only did the thugs steal cash and personal possessions such as jewellery and passports, but they also sometimes locked the husband in the bathroom while they raped the wife.
I will never forget one case where two British pensioners in their seventies were attacked as they walked into their hotel room. The husband refused to go into the bathroom when ordered at gunpoint. Instead, he leapt at his assailant and, in a life-or-death-struggle, managed to disarm him, though he suffered a severe blow which cracked his skull.
It was a remarkable act of heroism and devotion to his wife, though the would-be rapist managed to escape. The pensioner told me afterwards at the consulate that he did not mind about the valuables, but when the robber threatened his spouse, he knew he had no alternative but to swing into action.
Hugh Hunter is the former British Vice-Consul in Florida, and author of Our Man In Orlando.
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