Boynton police beef up Sara Sims Park security with ‘ambassadors’ and cameras
BOYNTON BEACH Florida March 27 2021 — A Christmas night shooting that left one person dead and three others injured has prompted Boynton Beach police to ramp up security at a neighborhood park.
Unarmed security guards will patrol Sara Sims Park on weekends and a camera-monitoring specialist will be tasked with watching surveillance video from inside the park, located in the Heart of Boynton.
The plan, presented to the city commission on Tuesday by Police Chief Michael Gregory, is in response to what happened on Christmas night, when hundreds of people gathered at the park and four people were shot nearby.
One person was shot in the face and pronounced dead at the scene. Three others, including a juvenile, were also struck by gunfire and taken to Delray Medical Center.
The outcome, authorities said, could have been far worse because the shooter fired into a crowd of approximately 400 to 500 people before fleeing with others in a rental car.
Juan Harris, 22, was arrested two weeks after the shooting and faces one count of first-degree murder with a firearm and four counts of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm. He is being held in the Palm Beach County Jail without bail and has entered not guilty pleas.
No one else has been arrested in the case.
“What happened this past Christmas isn’t new,” Vice Mayor Ty Penserga told Gregory in February. “This is not the first time it’s happened at Sara Sims.”
Gregory appeared before the board again this week and detailed a plan that will cost the city $30,000 through September and partners with West Palm Beach-based Professional Security Consultants, which will supply the security guards that patrol the park and the camera monitors who will keep an eye out from police headquarters.
The guards, referred to by Gregory as “ambassadors”, are expected to interact with the public and serve as an early-warning system. They are not authorized to enforce laws or make arrests and won’t carry anything more lethal than a copy of park rules.
“Having their presence there will hopefully discourage the folks who would want to gather, even in small crowds, for illicit purposes… bringing drugs, open containers and the like,” Gregory said.
The camera monitors, working out of the police department’s “real-time’ crime center, will provide another set of eyes for police and can alert patrol officers when crowd size starts to become an issue.
