Little Rock residents, neighborhood activists, police and city leaders have varying ideas about how to address violence in the community.
But one connecting factor they all agreed on Thursday at a Victory Over Violence town-hall meeting was that lack of effective communication prevents many of the issues that lead to violence from being resolved.
Nearly 100 people gathered in a Little Rock Central High School library Thursday night at the event put together by KARK, KLRT and the Clinton School for Public Service.
Attendees shared their concerns and insight, as well as offered solutions that could help lower violence among youths. Through the start of this week, 56 people have been shot in Little Rock this year. There have already been 17 homicides.
While there are many programs that offer different services to people at risk of committing a crime -- mentorship, help with homework, family support -- the service providers often don't work together, and people don't know about them, several audience members said.
Robert Holt, founder of Let Our Violence End, and Little Rock Police Sgt. Willie Davis, who leads the Police Department's Our Kids Program for young black boys, said they had issues with finding the right volunteers.
Holt said that in the four weeks he has been soliciting mentors for the Arkansas Victory Over Violence network, 87 people have signed up. Only five of them were men.
Audience member William Graves said too many programs rule out people who have made mistakes in their past, but who could help youths. Graves said he spent 33 years in prison, and he's been out for 2½ years trying to make a difference.
"Y'all don't realize it, but there's ex-convicts coming back to the street with the power to reach out to these youngsters -- who can get the respect to reach out to them. [The kids] are not going to listen to these people with big offices and in these suits. They going to listen to us. I've been out 29 months and been trying to get someone to utilize me," Graves said to applause from the crowd. "Until y'all come off y'all's high horses ... You got to start utilizing people like myself."
Holt and Davis said their programs do accept felons as mentors, adding that background checks are completed on all volunteers.
Other audience members argued that there needs to be more programs that offer skills youths can convert into jobs, not just teach them how to play basketball.
Then Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola pointed out that there's the Metropolitan Career-Technical Center, an Adult Education Center and a Goodwill training and high school education program for adults in the city that do offer job skills.
"So, really it's a question of making sure this information is out in the public," the mayor said. "The challenge we have here, and it's pretty evident, is the issue of communication."
Audience member Ruthie Childs also wondered how the word could get out.
"All these resources I've been hearing about in these last 30 minutes, I had no idea about them. It's like they are hidden resources," she said.
Stodola said the city has been working to create a uniform list of all available services in the city by category, so that there could be more unity among groups.
The goal of Arkansas Victory Over Violence is to form a collaboration between law enforcement, media outlets, schools, service organizations, medical groups, faith-based nonprofits, community and city leaders, businesses and others.
Shanika Nickelberry, whose 16-year-old son was shot earlier this year in Little Rock, said programs can't just ask parents to send their kids. Rather, people have to knock on doors and let parents know who they are and that they can be trusted with the youths, she said.
Leifel Jackson, a former gang member and director of Reaching Our Children and Neighborhoods, said people have to stop looking to others to do the work and take the initiative to make a change themselves, walk communities and talk to people.
He told the story of how years ago a boy stopped going to Jackson's program and so Jackson called the boy's mother and asked what was going on. Jackson got in his vehicle and found the boy with gang members.
He drove the boy home and got him back involved in the program. Eventually the boy entered the military, and now he's a Little Rock police officer.
Thursday's panel discussion coincided with National Crime Victims' Rights Week -- an effort led by the Office For Victims of Crime within the U.S. Office of Justice Programs.
Violent crime has actually decreased in Little Rock over the past decade, according to Police Department data.
In 2006, Little Rock police reported 3,324 violent crimes -- which are homicides, robberies, rapes and aggravated assaults. There were 59 murders that year.
That decreased to 2,770 reported violent crimes in 2016, during which 42 homicides were recorded. Still, 2016 totals were higher than violent crime totals in 2008, 2009, 2013 and 2014.
Total property crime has also been decreasing over time. Property crime includes burglary, larceny, vehicle theft and arson.
In 2006, there were nearly 16,000 property crimes reported. Police recorded a little more than 13,500 last year -- which was a slight uptick from the 12,700 reported the year before.
Stodola said the rate at which criminals re-offend has stayed steady in Little Rock and that issue needs to be addressed.
He has an idea for a program that would involve children from birth.
"I'm convinced if we could focus on every child born in a hospital and immediately do an intense assessment of weaknesses in the home system ... we could really track them and pick them up when they fall," Stodola said.
No plans to implement any of the solutions discussed at Thursday's town-hall meeting were made, but event sponsors indicated that they wanted to connect attendees who want to make a difference and figure out a way to lessen violence in the city.
Metro on 04/07/2017