St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman and a team of volunteers help clean up the 49th Street area.
About 100 volunteers collected 671 pounds of trash along the intersection of 49th Street S and the Tangerine Gateway, the shared border between St. Petersburg and Gulfport.
As a way for the two cities to collaborate on solving issues such as crime and littering, the organization Gulfport Neighbors hosted an event called “One Street, Two Cities, One Goal: Collaboration.”
The area is known for crimes such as drug trafficking, property damage and burglaries. But in recent years, Gulfport and St. Petersburg police have worked together to reduce crimes by increasing surveillance and working with local businesses.
“Heroin has climbed ten times what we’ve recovered last year,” said St. Petersburg police Chief Anthony Holloway. “In St. Petersburg, that’s our biggest issue now.”
Both Holloway and Gulfport police Chief Rob Vincent agreed that community involvement is key in reducing crime.
Along with drug paraphernalia, a variety of trash such as cigarette butts, condoms, baby diapers, snack wrappers and beer cans have been collected during cleanups, according Margarte Tober, president of Gulfport Neighbors.
St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman and Gulfport Mayor Sam Henderson helped collect trash to support the two communities.
“The area has been taken as a crime area, but it is mostly perceptive crimes,” Henderson said. “We want to take that stigma out of those perceptions through events like this.”
According to Tober, the collaboration would not have been possible four years ago.
“We’ve got two incredible cities here and there is no reason for us not to work together to better our communities,” Kriseman said. “This street should be a bond for us.”
Gulfport’s community resource officer Zachary Mills has patrolled the street and encouraged businesses in the area to maintain their property.
“We went to every business to pick up their trash and told them to keep their property clean,” Mills said.
City officials, along with Tober, said they plan to make it a priority to do more collaborative projects in the near future.
“We wanted the cities to work together as a group,” Tober said. “Our matter of focus for this area is cleaning the trash around the properties and make awareness of the level of perceptive crimes.”
