TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The City of Tucson is trying to do more to prevent violence. There’s a recognition that a lot of it comes from young men in their 20s or even younger. Now they’re trying to work on a more coordinated effort to help pull together programs that work to prevent violent behavior by that group.
Isaac Durgen is a City of Tucson employee who works to cool down angry young men now. But he remembers when he was 17. He saw swarms of police at a friend's house and heard his friend Lalo was dead.
“I remember the first thought in my mind was ‘Oh, I got a gun’, and I went home. I got the gun. I met up with these other teenagers. We all had guns. We had beef with other neighborhoods, and we were all in that car with our guns, and we're going to go over there. We're going to go because we knew it was them, right?”
He says they stopped short of shooting when they learned it wasn’t a gun that killed their friend, it was drugs.
The City of Tucson says young guys with guns are behind a large share of the shootings.
Tucson Police say last year 46 percent of homicide suspects were 25 or younger.
Most were 18 or 19.
A new effort called Scaling Safety from the Alliance for Safety and Justice and the Community Based Public Safety Collective bring national support to help coordinate and pay for a wide range of organizations working to steer young people off the road to violence.
Boys to Men has mentor programs in 24 local schools. Counselors like Jah Hopkins give young people a place to talk out their issues so they don’t act them out with violence.
He says, “They have the opportunity to express their emotions, what's going on, to talk about things that are maybe triggers. This is a way we kind of get them before the violence intercedes.”
Flowers and Bullets teaches young people to care for a small farm—and care for themselves in the process.
Jacob Robles with the group says, “I've noticed that when you introduce these concepts of like, caring for caring for something, caring for the land, kind of trickles into caring for those around you, right?”
The organization behind Scaling Safety says the strength of Tucson’s violence avoidance programs made it one of five cities chosen for more help.
Mayor Regina Romero says she wants to build towards a safer city with systems that reach far into the future.
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
