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The Savannah Police Department arrested 30-year-old Lashawa Doyle in connection with a sexual assault at Daffin Park on Thursday. According to SPD, Doyle is charged with attempted rape, aggravated sexual battery, and false imprisonment. Police say the incident occurred near a bathroom in Daffin Park. A bystander notified a nearby police officer, and the suspect was captured after a short chase. The adult woman victim was treated at the scene for minor injuries.
Doyle’s criminal history is extensive. He was released from jail just 17 days prior to Thursday’s incident. According to records, this is his 8th arrest in 2026 alone — and his 22nd arrest since 2020. His rap sheet includes prior charges of aggravated sexual battery, false imprisonment, criminal trespass, and disorderly conduct.
Thursday’s attack did not happen in a vacuum. It is the predictable result of years of deliberate policy choices by Savannah Mayor Van Johnson, who has repeatedly and publicly refused to address the city’s growing homeless crisis — even as violent incidents multiply in the tourist corridors that drive Savannah’s economy.
When the Georgia Legislature passed House Bill 295 earlier this year — a law allowing property owners to sue local governments for repeated public nuisances including illegal camping, loitering, and panhandling — Johnson’s response was contemptuous. “B.S.... B.S.,” he told reporters. “They don’t want to see them. That’s what it is.”
Johnson has been adamant that he will not enforce measures designed to remove homeless individuals from Savannah’s iconic public squares — even if it means the city faces lawsuits under the new state law. “If we get sued, then let’s get sued for it,” he said. “Public squares are public assets, homeless people are part of the public, they should have access like everyone else.”
The mayor has held this position for years. Since at least 2022, Johnson has refused to criminalize homelessness or enforce policies that would move unhoused individuals away from the squares, parks, and tourist zones that visitors come to Savannah to experience — insisting instead on addressing root causes “on a case-by-case basis.” The result: a serial offender with 22 arrests since 2020 was walking free in Daffin Park, a family destination, 17 days after his last release from jail.
The homeless crisis is only part of the picture. Savannah has long struggled with rising gang violence that city leadership has been reluctant to acknowledge publicly — in part because Savannah’s economy is heavily dependent on tourism. An investigation by WTOC found that Metro Police brass historically suppressed gang crime data precisely because, as the investigation noted, “Savannah was not about to tell the world this growing tourism Mecca had a gang problem, despite the overwhelming evidence.”
The pattern is clear: when public safety conflicts with the image of Savannah as a charming, safe destination for tourists and conventions, image wins. Residents and visitors pay the price. With 1-in-282 odds of being a victim of violent crime in Savannah — well above state and national averages — the gap between the city’s curated brand and its street-level reality is growing.
Thursday’s assault at Daffin Park — a beloved neighborhood landmark — is a stark reminder of what happens when a city prioritizes political ideology over the safety of the people who actually live and visit there. The question for Savannah voters is whether Mayor Johnson’s approach is incompetence, indifference, or something more deliberate: a systematic erosion of the public order that sustains the tourism economy, and with it, the political leverage that comes from a city in crisis.
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