[Full-timer]

It is a shame that The Villages" cover up" all the crime and accidents going on.
So many people have no clue about what happens here.


This "gated community" is a joke. Any Tom, Dick, or Jane can walk right in anytime they want.

What would it take (and cost) to make it a real gated community, and would it help ?

6 years in, not the wonderful place it is claimed to be.

[golfing eagles]

Originally Posted by Full-timer

It is a shame that The Villages" cover up" all the crime and accidents going on.
So many people have no clue about what happens here.


This "gated community" is a joke. Any Tom, Dick, or Jane can walk right in anytime they want.

What would it take (and cost) to make it a real gated community, and would it help ?

6 years in, not the wonderful place it is claimed to be.

You have options........

[Michael 61]

From my perspective, The Villages has the least amount of crime of anyplace else I’ve ever lived, and the crime that is here appears to be infrequent and mostly petty. There is no place that is crime-free. I feel extremely safe here.

[Hardlyworking]

This isn’t a gated community, it is a community with gates.

[JoelJohnson]

It's NOT a gated community, it's a community with gates. The gates are there to help the golf cart from being run over.

[JD Tremor]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

You have options........

Very good way to put it! LOL

[Marathon Man]

I would never continue to live in a place that I was unhappy with. Especially if I was so unhappy that I felt the need to put it in writing.

[Get real]

Originally Posted by Full-timer

It is a shame that The Villages" cover up" all the crime and accidents going on.
So many people have no clue about what happens here.

So if the Villages "cover up" all this crime, how do you know about it?

[thelegges]

Would this be a person who bought blindly, had zero ideas of where they were going to invest their money?

OP joined in 2021, and didn’t do diligence on searches of this “isn’t a gated community,” but a traffic flow across each entrance and exit, to allow golf carts to cross as safely as possible. Sometimes one needs HELP in making major decisions, this may be the case.

As far as OP worried about crime, how many of us have left their garage door open, and nothing was removed. How many has left their front door, or garages open and come home thinking well I forgot to lock, or close the door.

Maybe the OP has been targeted, or is relying on internet info and is now afraid they have made a grave mistake, believing hearsay.

Have to say we were in the process of moving from one home to the next, took a load of stuff dropped it at the new house around midnight. Community Watch called at 3:30am, garage door open lights on, I drove down, everything still in the places I left it. Now if we had a crime wave as the OP suggested, someone would have walked into the unlocked house, and taken whatever they could walk off with. Didn’t happen, all crap still there

[djlnc]

Makes me wonder though...the bad guys might figure out that things are easy picking at The Villages because everyone is so trusting.

[ThirdOfFive]

You can get a pretty good idea of the "crime" in and around TV by reading that online newspaper (AKA AsteriskAsteriskAsteriskAsteriskAsteriskAsteriskAs teriskAsterisk). It does an exhaustive job of covering crime in the area, mainly as clickbait for the trolls, but the content of what is reported is important. Story after story after story of petty shoplifting, DUI, inebriated Villagers getting lost on their way home from the squares, minor spats between neighbors, possession of a controlled substance, arrests for failure to pay traffic tickets, things like that. Now and again a real story about real crime sneaks in, but overwhelmingly the "crime" reported usually in glaring headlines in the aforementioned online newspaper is petty stuff. Usually very petty stuff. Stuff that, in places many of us hail from, would rate only a belly laugh from police if we even tried to report it.

The LEOs serving TV and surrounding area, in my opinion, do an outstanding job. They know who the troublemakers are and they keep the lid on tight. How many stories have we seen of this-or-that vehicle stopped by law enforcement, usually in the wee hours, for things like a broken taillight, improper turn, or (my particular favorite) stopping at a stop sign with the front tires ON instead of in back of the solid white line? The K-9 unit is called, the dog "alerts" to the possible presence of drugs, which is resonable suspicion--and sure enough, drugs are found and the perpetrator(s) arrested. I've seen that K-9 unit parked in back of Kilwin's at Spanish Springs a couple of times, both times when the square has been extremely busy. Nothing like being ready.

I've had a Florida permit to carry since shortly after we moved here but haven't felt the need to carry even once. Back home, particularly during the last five years or so before coming here, I carried routinely. We're extremely lucky here in TV with the law enforcement that we have.

[Blueblaze]

I know a guy in the neighborhood watch, and it's interesting to hear him talk about the petty crimes that go on all the time because residents stupidly believe they've discovered the only crime-free town on the planet. They'll leave their garage door open all day with their golf clubs sitting next to the door, and then they're surprised to discover they're missing one day. Recently, he was telling me about a rash of car break-ins on a single street down south. What kind of idiot leaves a loaded pistol in the glovebox of his unlocked car in his driveway over night? Apparently, there is a whole street full of such idiots somewhere in The Villages.

I would be interested to hear the OP tell us what prompted his own outrage at all the crime here, so I can tell him about all that crime on the rural street in Texas where I moved from, where I twice had my locked mailbox broken into, and where my neighbor in the nice little Cape Cod, three houses down, was shot in his own front yard over an argument with one of his meth customers.

[JGibson]

Statistics would disagree with you as TV is one of the lowest crime areas in the country. Even if you lived in a truly gated community you would still have to leave the gates to get to shopping, doctors, etc.

Of all the things to complain about in TV crime is not one of them.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

My parents live in a "truly gated community." They still have to lock their car doors and their house doors and keep the garage doors closed during the day. All those contractors - landscapers, roofers, HVAC people, housekeepers, aides - they are all given access to the community because they're working either for the HOA on communal property (like the pool/clubhouse area) or for individual residents.

The bigger companies sometimes hire people who have no morals - and they don't know this until someone complains their car was broken into.

And this happens in a GATED community. Because being gated doesn't mean being isolated from the rest of the world. No place is immune to crime, when you live in a community. Even if your neighbors are 100% legit perfect angels - the guy who replaces their carpet might not be.

The likelihood of you being the victim of a crime committed by someone who does /not/ live in the Villages, is very low. The risk increases the closer you are to one of the gates. But if you lock your doors when you're not home or at night, keep your garage door closed when you're not planning on being in it, lock your car doors when you're not in them - your risk is possibly only .05%. So doing all that while living near a gate might increase that risk to .08%.

As they say - trust in the Lord, but tie up your camel.

[Two Bills]

My wife and I have been very fortunate to travel widely in the world during our retirement years.
The only place we felt totally secure to roam freely and not even have to consider our personal safety was in The Villages.
Don't agree with the OP at all.