‘It’s about hope.’ How one nonprofit is trying to stem the tide of shootings in Columbia

It’s five minutes to seven on a Thursday evening in September, and Perry Bradley is trying to get the microphones working. Gospel music plays from a laptop inside of the Stavros Lecture Hall at the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, just off of North Main Street in Columbia, South Carolina, where Bradley is setting up alone.

Bradley, who for the last 12 years has run the nonprofit Building Better Communities, is putting together a prayer vigil for three teenagers who were shot and killed on Sunday, Sept. 24, in Lincolnshire, just north of Columbia. Two 17-year-olds and a 14-year-old have since been charged in the murders.

“It’s short notice, but I put out the word to some good people so I’m expecting a good turnout,” Bradley said, as he laid out flyers about upcoming events, how to build healthy communities and practice firearm safety.

Building Better Communities is one of the small nonprofits that have emerged over the past decade to offer grassroots, community based solutions to the gun violence that plagues the Midlands. The group’s goal is to combat gun violence by providing holistic solutions to the needs of communities in Columbia and Richland County that have been most affected by the epidemic of gun violence.

This year, 38 people have been killed with a gun in Richland County, according to the county coroner’s office. From 2015 to 2022, an average of 81 people were wounded or killed by gunfire each year just in the city of Columbia, according to the police department.

Despite these numbers, organizations and lawmakers continue to highlight a lack of funding for small organizations, coordination or even awareness as a roadblock to curbing the violence.

Earlier this year, Bradley was recognized by the FBI with the Director’s Community Leadership Award, which cited BBC’s “thousands of service hours annually in disadvantaged communities collaborating with local law enforcement agencies to build safer communities.”

It was a vindication for an organization that began over a decade ago as a small group of guys who just wanted to improve their community, Bradley said. Over the years, even as others fell away from the group, Bradley has persevered with optimism and resourcefulness.

“They’re doing good work,” said state Rep. Kambrell Garvin, D-Richland, who described Building Better Communities as one of the groups “concerned about the well-being of our young people.”

Bradley, 50, is not an obvious candidate to run one of the most visible anti-violence nonprofits in the Midlands. He has a bachelor’s degree in business from Clemson University and is the security supervisor for Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Columbia campus, which includes the Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary.

But he credits coming from a long line of educators and a brief stint as the community liaison for his college fraternity with inspiring him to find ways to address the challenges facing his community.

While Bradley says that Building Better Communities’ singular focus is on gun violence, his commitment to understanding gun violence as a symptom of marginalization and violence has led the group into all manner of community building and charitable works.

Bradley coordinates resources for families affected by shootings and says he regularly gets calls from people saying they need food assistance or they’re in danger of being evicted. His organization does everything from teaching classes for parents and developing peer mentorships through an ambassador program to beautification programs in north Columbia, providing toys for kids and maintaining a museum of African American history inside of Dutch Square Mall.

At September’s prayer vigil, Bradley is not only trying to offer comfort to the victims’ families, he’s also rolling out a new initiative he calls “M.A.D.,” short for “Making A Difference.

Addressing the dozen people in attendance, including the mother of one of the boys who was killed and three uniformed Richland County sheriff’s deputies, Bradley urged the audience to pass around the microphone and share their thoughts on gun violence in Columbia.

Asked how he reconciled BBC’s specific mission of combating gun violence with what can appear to be a haphazard approach, Bradley maintained: “It’s about providing hope.”

Over time, Bradley said he has had to find creative ways to get his group’s message out.

At the BBC’s offices, Bradley maintains the group’s “Resource Center.” While he originally envisioned it as a place where the group could run classes, he found that people weren’t responsive.

“It wasn’t what the people wanted, it wasn’t what the people said they needed,” Bradley explained. “They needed resources. They weren’t listening to us when we told them, ‘Hey, you need to come here and do an after-school program.’ Everyone has an after school-program.”

Now the resource center is stocked with piles of donated clothes, diapers, non-perishable food and furniture. Laid out among these items, which are free for anyone to take, are voter registration forms, sample shopping lists and resources on gun safety.

The group’s offices and resource center are located at the Colony Apartments, 3545 West Beltline Blvd., a troubled complex that had to be evacuated in late December 2022 after residents spent days without heat and running water.

Since the start of BBC, Bradley has run his organization on a shoestring budget, supported with the occasional grant from the city.

“Who has time to wait on resources when our kids are being shot now?” Bradley asked.

Bradley does much of the work himself. His organization has two other full time volunteers and usually has an intern from the University of South Carolina.

Instead of paying rent on the museum at the Dutch Square Mall, Bradley says that his organization performs light janitorial work, often with the help of teens who have been sentenced to performing community service after convictions.

““He’s (Bradley’s) very active... he believes that if you can save one life, you can save a lot of lives,” said state Rep. Chris Hart, a Democrat who represents Richland County. “He’s not going to stop until this stops.”

Gun violence has been woven into Bradley’s life. When he was 9 years old, he was accidentally shot when he and a cousin were playing with a relative’s loaded gun.

He recovered, shaped by the trauma and the good fortune of surviving his brush with gun violence.

“My mom and everyone would tell me how blessed I was,” Bradley said. At 50, he believes the blessings have continued. “A young African American man was not expected to live past his 17th or 18th birthday.”

In 2012 Bradley’s cousin, Devin Taylor, was shot twice and killed by a South Carolina Highway Patrol trooper shortly after leaving a family barbecue.

“That sparked a fire in us,” Bradley said. But the direction of his activism changed forever when he made an unexpected ally: Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.

Lott helped Bradley find out what happened to his cousin, including getting access to the trooper’s dashcam video footage. As Building Better Communities has grown, Lott has remained a staunch supporter, and Bradley said the sheriff has sought to develop closer ties between Columbia’s Black community and law enforcement agencies.

“He’s bridging the gap where there’s maybe some mistrust and some questions about whether we care, but they go through him and hopefully they see that we do care,” Lott said.

When speaking to reporters, sheriff often often cites Bradley’s work in communities that Lott described as “very challenged, not just with crime issues, but challenged overall.”

Their relationship is also personal. Lott described Bradly as a friend, and when Bradley was recognized with the FBI award, Lott traveled to Washington, D.C., with him.

One of his organization’s early initiatives was filming public service announcements on how to act during traffic stops. He has referred young people to the Sheriff’s Department’s “Explorer” program, which gives teens experience in law enforcement, and he regularly has sheriff’s deputies at his events.

This closeness to law enforcement has not always been well-received.

“We were called sellouts, we were called Uncle Toms. I’ve been called Lott’s boy,” Bradley said.

But working with law enforcement has given Bradley access to visibility and resources that many organizations in the Midlands lack.

Following the killing of the three Eau Claire teens, Richland County Councilwoman Gretchen Barron said that a major stumbling block in the fight against gun violence was that policymakers weren’t sufficiently connected to, or in many cases even aware of, the organizations in the community.

In a conversation with The State, Barron pledged “we have to help these organization do what they do at a new level of excellence.”

In 2023, BBC received a $200,000 grant from the state to help expand its program. Bradley says he anticipates using the money to increase visibility for this organization.

For Bradley, that means doing what he’s been doing for the last ten years: Anything he can to try and stop gun violence in Columbia.

“When we can help a family get through something, get the resources they need when there is a shooting... When I can go into an apartment that has no furniture and we give a family furniture and the child now has a desk they can do their work on or a table they can now eat their food on, those are the small wins,” Bradley said. “It’s not anything we brag about, but is something that helps me keep pushing forward, to keep saying, ‘I make a difference.’”