In the early morning hours of July 1, gunfire broke out at the Power Ultra Lounge nightclub, in downtown Little Rock. When the shooting ended, twenty-five men and women had been wounded and taken to local hospitals. All survived.
The shooter was Kentral Gwynn, bodyguard of rapper Ricky Hampton (aka Finesse2Times) who was on stage at the time. Gwynn, who has been charged with 10 counts of aggravated assault, is in jail on Federal charges related to the Little Rock shooting and also a shooting on June 25 outside a club in Forest City, Arkansas.
The night club shooting was yet another disturbing development in a year that is breaking records in Little Rock for shooting deaths and reaffirms that gangs and drugs are back.
This is not the first time Little Rock has had to contend with serious gang problems. In 1993, nearly 25 years ago, Little Rock was ranked fifth on the list of most dangerous cities in the United States. Many of its inner city neighborhoods, afflicted by drug abuse and gang violence had become almost uninhabitable.
Newspaper columnist Rex Nelson remembers it well and fears a serious resurgence of gang activity. In an op ed piece in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, shortly after the shooting, Nelson wrote, “Everything changed about 2:30 a.m July 1. Everything. Nobody at Little Rock city hall seems to understand that.
“The city sustained a body blow as the new month dawned. Will the wound prove fatal? That largely depends on the city’s response and at present there’s a lack of urgency.
“My fear,” Nelson concluded, “is that this was a tipping point for Little Rock, the place I’ve called home since moving back to Arkansas from Washington DC. The problem with tipping points is that once you realize one has occurred it’s often to late to do anything about it.”
After the shooting, Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson announced the appointment of Benton police chief, Kirk Lane as the new drug director chairman of the Arkansas Alcohol and Drug Abuse Coordinating Council, responsible for coordinating alcohol and drug abuse prevention initiatives.
“The looming cloud of violence harms us all,” Hutchinson said, not just Little Rock but the entire state.
Hutchinson went on to emphasize that Little Rock “ as our seat of government and as a center of tourism, medical services and economic development we have to bring people here. If Little Rock is not safe then we cannot succeed at our goals as a state.”
In the aftermath of the shooting, solutions have tended to focus more on clamping down on the supply side of dealing with drug problem, which requires more law enforcement, rather than on the demand side which focuses more on prevention, treatment and rehabilitation.
That’s where the emphasis was in the Fighting Back initiative, sponsored by the multi million dollar Robert Wood Johnson Foundation nearly 25 years ago. It focused on 16 communities, including Little Rock, and it subsidized the development of their programs amounting to several million dollars per community.
Of all the neighborhood central programs initiated by the Fighting Back cities perhaps none inspired as much imitation as the Neighborhood Alert Centers in Little Rock.
Each center in Little Rock was home to a Neighborhood Alert Center (NAC) team working in collaboration with residents to improve the safety and community life of their neighborhood.
Members of the team included:
- A neighbor hood facilitator who lived in the neighborhood and helped residents identity and solve their own problems, including those related to substance abuse. The facilitator also acted as an advocate for the neighborhood.
- Code enforcement officers who worked with community residents to improve the physical appearance and safety of the neighborhood. The officers, among other things, helped residents control litter at vacant lots, tow away abandoned cars and close down crack houses.
- Community Oriented Police who worked with residents to reduce crime and drug related activity. Many officers operated on bicycles or horseback.
A perception of change
Together with residents, NAC teams were able to create a physical change in their neighborhoods. When people think they are safer, they come out of their houses and go for a walk or sit on the porch or help with a neighborhood cleanup.
Surveys confirmed what residents could already see: in 1994 the Little Rock Police Department reported that communities with Neighborhood Alert Centers had a 37 per cent larger decrease in violent crimes and property offenses than neighborhoods without alert centers.
In 2014, Little Rock joined with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Institute of Government in studying the evolution of the alert centers and their current role.
Other communities had also developed neighborhood teams, some with a substance abuse component. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, centers provided a home base for community police, public and private service providers and substance abuse professionals.
In New Haven, fighting back established six Community Substation Management Teams to create a close relationship between law enforcement officers and residents.
The Management teams, which included 20 or more neighborhood residents and representatives from schools, the clergy and business, worked with community police to clean up their communities. These efforts included closing down bars and package stores, creating Block Watches and serving as advocates and strategic planners with federal, state and local agencies to insure their neighbors received a fair share of funding and other resources.
Prior to the establishment of the community management teams, most people in these neighborhoods were frustrated, discouraged, and generally felt powerless to deal to deal with the extensive problems they faced. Now they were equipped to provide active leadership in expressing their needs and working with others.
As Little Rock confronts the re-emergence of gangs and rising crime rates the city should once again develop a response that helps local neighborhoods defend themselves.
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