PINE BLUFF -- A longtime Pine Bluff activist and community organizer is working to form a first-of-its-kind partnership between two national organizations in an effort to reduce violent crime within the city.
The Rev. Jesse Turner, pastor of Elm Grove Baptist Church, is asking local clergy members and volunteers to assist in the establishment of the Pine Bluff National TenPoint Coalition/Pen or Pencil Expansion Hub. The group will be the first to combine the intervention efforts of the National TenPoint Coalition with the mentoring efforts of the National Alliance of Faith and Justice's Pen or Pencil program.
"The people from the TenPoint Coalition wanted to add a youth mentoring component to what they do, and they saw the Pen or Pencil organization as a perfect partnership," Turner said. "The national leaders from TenPoint and the National Alliance of Faith and Justice got together and decided that Pine Bluff would be where that partnership would be worked out."
There have been 12 homicides reported in Pine Bluff so far in 2019. Police have yet to make an arrest in seven of those cases, and city leaders are searching for creative ways to address violent crime within the city.
Turner believes a new partnership between the national organizations can help reduce violent crime in Pine Bluff through mentoring efforts targeting at-risk children and engagement with older youths in high-crime areas.
City Council members also have endorsed a resolution of support for the partnership. Win Trafford, an alderman and chairman of the City Council's public safety committee, said city leaders are in favor of Turner's efforts, but the resolution stopped short of placing any financial obligation on the city.
"Rev. Turner said this would give them the ability to go out and do their own fundraising, knowing the city is behind the effort," Trafford said. "I would hope, however, that once they put the plan in place and it is working and showing benefits, if at some point they need matching funds from the city to qualify for grant funding, that we might be able to find a way to do that."
Alderman Ivan Whitfield agreed.
"Anything that is successful at reducing the homicide rate is worth investing in," he said. "It may take a minute to prove its worth. But in the long-run, when I vote for something, I do so with the consideration that we may want to make an investment at some point."
The Pen or Pencil program is an academic and mentoring curriculum created by the National Alliance of Faith and Justice in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit group of criminal justice professionals and community leaders who include faith in their efforts to combat crime.
The mentoring program focuses on children in the third-through-fifth grades to get them started on successful academic paths and to cut down on delinquency.
The origins of the National TenPoint Coalition began in Boston in the mid-1990s after youth violence began to spread throughout the city, Turner said. The violence caught the attention of clergy and lay leaders, who formed a conflict resolution team based upon 10 initiatives to combat violence.
In 1998, Pastor Charles Harrison took those strategies, often called "Cease Fire" or "Safe Streets," to Indianapolis and eventually established the city as a national training ground for new TenPoint Coalition chapters.
Harrison said the techniques the organization uses are simple.
"What TenPoint does is engage directly with people on the street and teach them nonviolent ways of dealing with conflicts," he said.
People are sent out in teams of five or six at the times of day or night when young people are most likely to congregate on the streets, Harrison said. Using relationships formed with the business and the education communities, TenPoint members try to intervene and redirect young people who are at risk of being involved in violent crime to a more productive lifestyle.
"The number one issue on the streets with our most at-risk youth is that they have dropped out of school, and because they have been in the criminal justice system, they find it difficult to find employment," Harrison said. "Many have no skills or training, so they have no path into the workforce. We try to provide them with that training."
Harrison said the Indianapolis TenPoint Coalition provides training for groups around the country.
"We've got about 30 other cities that we're working with," he said.
The two-day training sessions involve classroom lessons in conflict resolution and a nighttime "peace walk" that provides trainees with real-world experience in using those techniques. Training is done at no cost, but each group must cover its own expenses.
It's hard to measure the effect TenPoint Coalition efforts have had on crime because efforts are typically concentrated in neighborhood "hot spots" where data regarding specific types of crimes are hard to obtain.
In Indianapolis, a city of about 850,000 people, violent crime incidents rose from 1,100 per 100,000 to 1,333 per 100,000, murders increased from 11.5 per 100,000 to 17.9 per 100,000 and rapes increased from 52.2 per 100,000 to 76.7 per 100,000 from 2011-17. But Chris Bailey, deputy chief of police for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, said the numbers don't tell the whole story.
Bailey said one of those hot spots, a neighborhood known as Butler-Tarkington, has been a problem for years, but, through a combination of efforts by police, the FBI, neighborhood organizations and the TenPoint Coalition, criminal activity in the area has reduced dramatically.
Bailey also said fears that these efforts have simply pushed criminal activity out of one neighborhood and into others is unfounded.
"We didn't push it anywhere, because the players we locked up were the players who were involved," he said. "We got them off the street."
Turner said once the Pine Bluff chapter is up and running, sometime later this year or in early 2020, he will integrate the intervention aspects of the TenPoint Coalition with the mentoring activities of Pen or Pencil in a bid prevent crime before it happens and to steer younger children away from illegal activities and into more productive pursuits.
"We know for a fact that if a child is not reading by third or fourth grade, he is more likely to end up in prison," Turner said. "As Frederick Douglass once said, 'It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.'"
State Desk on 05/19/2019