Philadelphia Soliciting Community Feedback With Public Meetings On How To Battle 'Tragedy Of Violence' In City
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- As of Tuesday, the City of Philadelphia sits at 110 homicides in 2022. It's a tough number to say and face, and the community is being invited to show up at a series of meetings across the city over the next several weeks to give their ideas on how to stop the violence and turn things around.
Some solutions include jobs to cleaning up neighborhoods. Every option was on the table Tuesday night in hopes to stop the violence plaguing the city.
Tackling violence one idea at a time.
"Our meetings are different because we're not talking at people, we're talking with people," said Erica Atwood, senior director for the Office of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Criminal Justice and Public Safety. "We're holding a conversation."
Conversations in hopes to curb crime in the city.
The Office of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Criminal Justice and Public Safety is hosting listening sessions for the Roadmap to Safer Communities, a plan created by Mayor Jim Kenney to reduce violence and offer resources in the city.
"Folks are coming with their own answers and own solutions and we're here to partner with them and make them come to life," Atwood said.
"Our communities and our babies are dying," said Donnell Drinks, co-founder of Gaining Respect Over Our Worst Night, or GROWN.
Drinks hopes to empower people.
"Not only those reentering society, but victims or whatever your worst night was," he said.
He says fixing the issue isn't an easy one.
"It's not just one solution," Drinks said. "I think there are a lot of them. The problem is, I think we're looking for one solution to solve everything. We have to go to the root."
"We are better together than we are separated," said Bonita Cummings.
Cummings is the director of Strawberry Mansion Community Concern. She too attended in hopes to help families impacted in her area.
"The more ideas, even the more collective we are, that energy heals," Cummings said.
And most of all, everyone had hope and optimism for a better, brighter future.
"A lot of positivity and that's one of the things I don't want to get overshadowed in this tragedy of violence in our community because of optimism. There's optimism because that's why we're out here doing the work," Drinks said.
For a list of gun violence resources in Philadelphia, click here.
