HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Wednesday night, the East Tampa community sat down to discuss violence in the city and how to stop it. And more specifically—they spoke about solutions that would help East Tampa's kids escape violence.
To get a better idea of what the fix should be, kids were included in that discussion—many of whom were joined by family members with shirts that honored loved ones killed in the city.
Those kids spoke about the need for community programs and more of these community conversations. We also heard from parents, anti-violence leaders, and State Representative Dianne Hart—who's from the area and who was critical of recent reports on the state of crime in the city.
"They told me today in a meeting that I was in, 'oh you know that, um crime is down in Tampa,' but not in my neighborhood, so I'm not sure whose neighborhood it's down in. Definitely not down in East Tampa," she said.
Her comments come almost a week after the Tampa Police Department (TPD) released a graphic showing that in 2022, the city of Tampa was ranked amongst the lowest for overall violent crime—when compared to 16 other cities of a similar size like Buffalo, Cleveland, Miami, and Orlando.
It's a statistic that Tampa Police's Interim Chief Lee Bercaw celebrated when we spoke to him last week.
"So, we always say that Tampa's one of the safest places to live for a city its size, and that just reaffirms that. And that's new 2022 information that reaffirms that" he said.
But Interim Chief Bercaw also acknowledged that some crime is up in the city. The numbers from that Tampa Police Department graphic were pulled from a violent crime survey compiled by the Major Cities Chiefs Association. The report compiled and compared crime statistics from 70 law enforcement agencies nationwide for robberies, aggravated assaults, homicides, and rapes in 2021 and 2022.
That report shows that between 2021 and 2022, homicides in the city went up from 43 to 48 and robberies climbed from 318 to 353—and those aren't the only rising crimes on TPD's radar.
"Auto burglaries, I spoke about that this morning. Auto burglaries are up and we're seeing firearms that are taken out of cars," said Bercaw.
Crime maps of the city show also show that between those two years, many of those same crimes are trending to the North and East side of the city.
It's a trend that is gut-wrenching for those, like Johnny Johnson, who are familiar with that loss.
"It's disheartening because it's something that can be controlled," he said.
Johnson's 17-year-old son, Jayquon, and several other family members were killed in 2017.
"Each day it seems like you're revisiting it with someone else losing their kid or loved one to gun violence. So, it never gets the chance to fade away," he said.
Johnson has since channeled his grief into action by co-founding Rise up for Peace, a nonprofit working to reduce violence.
And one of their key areas of focus is providing programs and events for kids to keep them away from that violence.
"So why not nourish our kids and show them the right way? They have enough examples of negativity. They need more examples of positivity," he said.
It's work that the Tampa Police Department praised at its own crime forum Thursday.
"Last year we had a decrease in violent crime by 3 percent and violent crime involving a firearm decreased by nearly 6 percent," said TPD's interim chief Lee Bercaw.
Despite reporting an overall drop—Interim Chief Bercaw also acknowledged that it's a decrease not felt evenly across the city.
"Just because it's one of the safest cities its size doesn't mean that it's free of crime. Our job is to work with the community to prevent crime," he said.
He says to help close that gap TPD is continuing to push its youth programs, working to curb gun thefts and changing one important assignment for all officers.
"Before it was just a squad, but now we've assigned it to every officer to have community policing," he said.
For Johnson, that last change is one he hopes will spread beyond the Tampa Police Department.
"For me, I feel that it's going to take a collaborative effort from each and every individual that calls themselves a citizen," he said.
In an effort to continue their commitment to providing programs for the community—and most especially for kids—Rise up for Peace will be holding a community bike ride and bench dedication. It will be held on March 18th at Ragan Park, 1200 E Lake Ave, Tampa, FL 33605, from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m.
The group will also be partnering with the "Reach 1 Teach 1 Save 1 Taylor Foundation" to host a community pop-up shop featuring kids who will sell items as part of an initiative to teach them about small businesses. Bridget Taylor is the founder of that organization and says the point of the pop-up shop is to redirect the kids' attention to more productive things.
"If the kids see that opportunity some of the kids will turn around and we won't have that much violence in the city if they see what these kids are doing that'll inspire them to want to become a business owner in whatever merchandise they're putting out to be sold."
The hope is that by redirecting attention and providing programming, they can save lives.
"My foundation is 'Reach 1 Teach 1 Save 1' and I feel like if we can reach one, teach one, we save one—you save one from the system and you save one from the cemetery."
It's a mission that Taylor tells ABC Action News is personal to her.
"I lost my parents at the age of six years old. And I'd like to give kids a life that I didn't get."
