Pitts: Fayetteville has consecutive violent weekends. Here are the proposed solutions.
Last weekend, the city experienced its second straight violent weekend — or more particularly, its second straight violent Saturday.
Six people were shot in three different incidents last Saturday, including a 12-year-old child. One man died.
Four people were shot in two incidents on the Saturday the prior weekend.
A Fayetteville Police Department news release on the third shooting last Saturday included comments from Kemberle Braden, the chief and a longtime Fayetteville officer.
He sounded frustrated: “This is not just a police department problem, this is our community, this (is) our problem and we must cooperate with one another and work together to prevent these senseless acts that are plaguing our city.”
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Combating violent crime here and elsewhere must seem like endlessly rolling a rock up a hill only to see it roll back down again — and roll over innocent people in its path.
The chief’s tone in the release echoes remarks he made in a City Council special meeting to address youth violence, held Aug. 16.
Then, he talked about another rough August weekend, when a shootout at Seabrook Park off Langdon Street interrupted a ceremony — for a man who was killed by gunfire the previous month. One man was shot and his car wound up in the pool.
“I had been out at Seabrook the prior week for our youth camp,” Braden told the council. “I’d been out there the previous Friday for our (Play Safe Space). I was out there the night before (the shooting), for National Night Out.
“It’s not that we weren’t present at Seabrook. It’s not that we haven’t passed our message to Seabrook. It’s that no one chose to call 911, but they chose to pull out guns," he said.
Fewer guns stolen
Braden’s message was not all doom and gloom.
Gun seizures are up 30% from the same point last year, he said. Gun thefts have dropped 10%.
He said a longstanding part of the police’s message is for people to secure their guns. They hand out gun locks at Operation Ceasefire Movie Night events.
“Those numbers are subject to fluctuate, but I am happy with the way they are trending thus far,” Braden said. “If we can get less guns stolen that means that there are less guns out there in the illicit population that would use them for violent means.”
The impact of stolen guns on youth violence is direct.
Braden said a “significant” number of unsecured guns are stolen and that “there is a portion of juveniles that are responsible for a lot of those door-handle pulls and motor vehicle B&E’s.”
Police limitations
So, where do we go from here?
I think there are rays of light if we look at the situation from a different angle.
After the chief spoke, Council Member Mario Benavente agreed the police had been doing outreach.
But he said: “We have exhausted what the police are capable of doing for the ones that are willing to listen and work with them in that way. We have a whole, other subsection of folks that are just never gonna hear it from a person with a badge — it’s just not gonna happen.”
His words were not easy for all to hear but are also very likely the current state of affairs.
Benavente highlighted two city initiatives, the Office of Community Safety, which is hiring for a director, and the PROOVE program, which tackles gun violence.
He said they were examples of “looking at getting different folks to get involved.”
Among those different folks: “community paramedics” dispatched by Cumberland County Emergency Medical Services and who respond with the police on certain mental health-related calls. That program is up and running, with two community paramedics involved, according to Braden.
Benavente said his goal was not to blame police for not doing enough.
“They’ve done everything they can,” he said.
Police surveillance rises
Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin said there has been a breach of trust between police and the community that has been longstanding, and which causes members of the community to refrain from taking matters to the police.
“The difference now — they all have access to some very dangerous weapons that are coming into play,” he said.
The Police Department is going increasingly high-tech in trying to intercept those weapons.
Braden said that in April alone the department’s license plate readers (LPR’s) — with 60 cameras installed in parts of the city — assisted in 28 misdemeanor arrests and 57 felony arrests; helped recover five stolen vehicles; and led to arrests for drugs and firearms charges.
Meanwhile, there are 976 registered cameras in a new program where businesses submit their location to help police map out where properties have cameras. There are also 240 integrated cameras where owners give police limited access to cameras on their property to help in an investigation.
Braden also said installation of SoundThinking (formerly known as ShotSpotter) was more than 50% complete. The gun detection software is designed to alert police of gunfire and provide information that can help in an investigation. It has been controversial in some places.
While I can never fully celebrate the expansion of the surveillance state, I am willing to adopt a wait-and-see attitude on these approaches.
Councilman D.J. Haire said he was happy to hear the pace of installation for SoundThinking and said he had “heard positive success” of the program in Raleigh, Winston-Salem and Goldsboro.
No more silos
I couldn’t help but think that all these solutions are after the fact — after someone made the decision to commit a crime.
A local radio host asked me how we should handle the city’s gun violence.
I told him the truth: I don’t really know, but I do know it involves reaching kids while they are very young.
And it will involve all hands on deck.
I liked Councilmember Kathy Jensen’s suggestion that another special meeting convene two months after the mid-August meeting.
“ I would like do this same thing,” she said. "But I would like to have (Cumberland County) here. I want to hear about mental health. I want to hear what the county is doing. I want to hear what the hospital is doing. I want to hear what the schools are doing, and I want to hear what the court system’s are doing.
“We all need to have this conversation so we can all learn instead of being in silos. That is the only way we’re going to get out of this.”
Personal impact
During the discussion of what to do about youth violence, I paid particular attention to what Council Member Courtney Banks-McLaughlin had to say. The issue could not be more personal for her: She lost her 15-year-old daughter, Coryonna Young, in an accidental shooting that Banks-McLaughlin characterized in a WRAL interview as: "Senseless ... kids being reckless ... playing with guns."
Coryonna’s Girl Scout Troop #1804 created a memorial garden in her honor at Lewis Chapel Missionary Baptist Church that recognizes victims of youth violence.
At the meeting, Banks-McLaughlin wanted to know the time frame for a study of the economic and community impact of gun violence on the city.
“For us to be effective, we need that study,” she said. “Especially since we’re putting money towards initiatives.”
City Manager Doug Hewett said the city hit a snag in finding someone capable of doing the work, for which the city has tentatively set aside $30,000. He said he would look into Colvin’s suggestion to see if the Harvard-Bloomberg research group, with whom the city has worked before, could possibly do the study.
McLaughlin had an assignment for her fellow city residents, too. She encouraged them to enroll in the community camera program.
“That’s one solution we can help with as it relates to crime,” she said.
Safe and aware
No police officer or software can construct a time machine and travel back with each child in each neighborhood to when they were first sliding into their seat in kindergarten. For me, that’s at least as far back as you have to go, and really even farther.
Joe McGee this summer wanted to create a Safe Summer for children, including his own granddaughter. He scheduled several fun events for whole families to do, including a Little Mermaid red-carpet screening that my family attended and which made my daughter’s day, if not her summer.
More: Pitts: ‘Historical, chaotic ... worth it'; Fayetteville ‘Mermaid’ screening a hit
Now, summer’s about done, but McGee and his community partners are still at it with a Family Awareness Day called “Fire, Wellness & Neighborhood Safety” on Sept. 16 at Canvas Studio One at InSoul Fellowship Church. Officials with the police and fire departments will speak at the event that will also have food trucks, kids' activities, information booths and pop-up shops.
At the end of the month, McGee will host two balls on consecutive nights — a father-daughter event and a mother-son event.
He said the Family event would focus on safety, community watches and “the things that matter.”
He says addressing fire safety is related to the fire at the Summertime Apartments off Reilly Road, which caused injuries and left people without a home. A man has been charged with arson.
McGee noted that many apartments have just one door — something we don’t often think about.
“They had to jump out the windows — everybody,” because the fire was in the hallway, he said.
Safe spaces
“Safe spaces” is becoming the language that illustrates how some people are coping with a steady violence that engulfs too many youth. I recently wrote about Carl Pringle, who is working on a house that will be a safe space.
Other people are addressing gun violence in their own way.
They include those who mentor youth in programs such as Find-A-Friend or the Boys & Girls Clubs and those who stand in the gaps as caregivers — wherever they are needed.
I guess it will be a long haul regardless. It will take lots of work every day so we can have no more violent Saturdays.
Myron B. Pitts can be reached at mpitts@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3559.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Pitts: Fayetteville has 2 violent weekends after meeting on gun violence
