Groups aim to end homicides in Richmond in three years

By Karl Fischer

The year when police investigate no homicides in Richmond will be the year the Rev. Andre Shumake finds a new topic for his considerable civic and religious organizing efforts.

That year should be 2008, in his estimation. "Richmond is a city that is sick with homicides. We need to begin the healing process," Shumake said last week. "We need to ask the question, 'Why are we doing what we do to each other?'"

Shumake speaks frequently during times of crisis on city streets. Over the years, as one shocking act of violence after another numbed flatland residents, he has watched elected officials wring their hands, police chiefs promise fixes and ministers preside over public "pity fests."

No more, says Shumake, the president of the Iron Triangle Neighborhood Council and founder of the faith-based Richmond Improvement Association. Next month, he expects the community to develop a three-year strategic plan to reduce the city's homicide rate to zero.

No year in modern memory has passed in Richmond without homicides on city streets. But a large coalition of community groups apparently believes the goal is realistic enough to put their names and reputations together next month at the Richmond Black on Black Crime Summit.

"We want the children to live. That is why it is important. We are attempting to reverse the cycle of violence that has plagued our community," said the Rev. Charles Newsome, president of Richmond's chapter of the NAACP. "This is a call for unity and peace in the African-American community."

As its name suggests, the summit will include frank, specific discussion of ethnicity. Homicide is the third-leading cause of death among black men in Contra Costa County, according to a 2004 study by Kaiser Permanente, and a large majority of Richmond's homicide victims and suspects in recent years have been black.

Organizers plan to offer issue-specific small-group sessions at the summit and presentations from families of homicide victims and reformed street criminals. An important part of the conversation will focus on reviving commerce on Macdonald Avenue, once the city's commercial powerhouse.

Flight of business in the 1970s and 1980s precipitated an economic free fall in central Richmond, followed by the rise of street-level drug-dealing, addiction, poverty and attendant social ills.

Poverty has plagued neighborhoods such as the Iron Triangle now for generations, Shumake said. It creates an unstable, dangerous environment for children and pervasive hopelessness among teens and young adults, who see little reason to expect that jobs, money or safety are in their futures, or even that they have futures.

"We have talked to many of these young people" involved in criminal enterprise, said Walter Ross, a developer who works with Bay Area community organizations to improve economically repressed neighborhoods through development.

"Almost to an individual, they tell us, 'If you want me to put down the gun, give me a job.'"

The summit grew out of the "Blessed are the Peacemakers" anti-violence campaign, a collaboration between the Richmond Improvement Association, the NAACP and the Richmond Mosque of the Nation of Islam following the high-profile killing of high school football star Terrance Kelly last summer.

Groups participating in the summit include the Richmond Police Department, the National Brotherhood Alliance, the T.K. Foundation, Mothers Against Senseless Killings, the Richmond Main Street Initiative and many neighborhood councils and city churches.

"It's easier for many young people to lay their hands on an assault weapon than it is for them to lay their hands on a book. That has to change," Shumake said. "People here are living in a constant state of fear. We can't move forward because of it. ... It's time to do something different."

Reach Karl Fischer at 510-262-2728 or kfischer@cctimes.com.

If you go:

The Richmond Black on Black Crime Summit begins at 9 a.m. Saturday, June 4, and ends at 5 p.m. The free event will be held at Lovonya DeJean Middle School, 3400 Macdonald Ave., Richmond. For more information, call the Richmond Improvement Association at 510-860-3681.