TAMPA, Fla. — The community center at Kings Forest Park isn’t your typical classroom, and Brian Humphrey isn’t your typical teacher.
“You know, I done been through a whole lot,” he told the classroom of young men. “I went to prison with a life sentence.”
Turns out, Humphrey is the perfect person to teach the students about direction.
“Which way did I go? I went way left,” he told them. “I went so far left — that I picked up a gun and I killed somebody.”
Humphrey served 28 years and 3 months for a Pinellas County murder. He picked a new direction after getting sent to solitary confinement for using drugs behind bars.
“I had been preaching to my kids, ‘Don’t do drugs. Listen to your mother. Stay out of the streets.’ And here I am, going into confinement for doing drugs,” he said.
Now, on parole, his new direction includes helping others find theirs. The vast majority of his students during the Thursday night lecture at the park are charged with gun crimes in Hillsborough County.
“Which direction do you want to go?” he asked them. “You’re at a critical point in your life. You’ve got to make a decision — whether you're going to keep dragging dead weight or you’re going to cut that ball and chain off of you.”
Safe & Sound Hillsborough makes the lesson possible.
“We have to stay committed to this work,” said Freddy Barton, the executive director of the initiative, which was formally known as the Hillsborough County Community Violence Prevention Collaborative. “It’s only when we work together as a collective unit when we actually see change happen.”
Barton says the importance of the work is underscored after several recent shootings. Even though he would like to see a day when the collaborative is no longer needed, right now it is, and Safe & Sound Hillsborough needs more volunteers, more community partners, more funding, more mentorship from people like Humphrey.
“I made the decision to change directions,” Humphrey told the class. “Which direction do you want to go?”
Learn more about Safe & Sound Hillsborough at this link.
