Mayor Sherrell has also seen crime in Milton rise over the past few years.
“We’ve just seen this steady increase and it’s getting more brazen,” she said. “It started with mailboxes being broken into, I recently had a package stolen off my porch, but to see a young lady get attacked in the parking lot, going to the grocery store, it’s gone too far.”
Hernandez says that most the crime seen in Milton doesn’t come from residents, but criminals passing through the city.
He also expressed frustration at state laws that he says keep officers from being effective in catching them.
“We can’t be as proactive as we’d like to be because the pursuit rules have changed,” he stated. “It’s emboldened our criminals so that they know that if an officer gets behind them, the only thing they have to do is take off and we can’t chase them.”
Sherrell says she hopes that something will be done soon, because she feels how to rising crime has transformed her city.
“I no longer keep things in the driveway, I have six cameras on my home. I carry pepper spray, I’m thinking about learning how to shoot a gun. It’s changing us,” Sherrell said.