On 'Day 1 of Peace' in Jackson, Mississippi

Associated Press

28-02-2025

The first 24 hours of '100 Days of Peace,' an initiative announced by Jackson leadership Wednesday, were marked by a solemn energy and a renewed dedication to making Jackson safer.
In the course of the day, the mayor presented a large ceremonial check to local credible messengers – formerly incarcerated people who work with youth in the juvenile system to interrupt violence – on the steps of City Hall. Separately, kin to gun violence victims from across the state traveled to the capital city to mourn their loved ones outside the state Capitol building and call for gun control policies. Local police patrolled and responded to 911 calls as normal.
And just as it seemed the day would end without wounds, a man was shot in the knee during a domestic disturbance at a Belhaven apartment complex around 8pm.
100 Days of Peace, also called 100 Days of Action, is a city-wide initiative which aims to find community solutions for crime reduction. The initiative is a partnership with credible messenger programs and will include community listening sessions and town halls, as well as trainings leading up to a Sneaker Ball – a formal gala with informal footwear – to celebrate the work in June.
Benny Ivey, co-founder of Strong Arms of Mississippi Credible Messenger Program, said that he hopes to use his past as an incarcerated person and a former gang leader to mentor younger people who cycle in and out of juvenile detention. Strong Arms of Mississippi received one of three $50,000 grants Wednesday to build up the program's capacity.
The organization's motto is 'rebuilding communities we once helped to destroy.' Credible messengers are people who have lived experience in the communities that they're trying to reach.
'Our mentorship program is about building those relationships so that they will listen to what you have to say, because you're listening to what they have to say,' said Ivey. 'We've learned that these young men will open up to us about things that they won't tell anybody, and that's the first step in changing the mindset.'
Fredrick Womack, Executive Director of Operation Good, which also received one of the grants, said that unity within the community takes a village. He points to helping mothers in the community and getting people who are willing to work into job development courses at Hinds Community College to learn a trade.
'We're here to do what's necessary to heal the problem,' he said. 'Not just be a band-aid.'
With the funds provided by the city, Womack hopes to host more community events and block parties to engage at-risk youth. He also said that crime prevention alleviates the strain on city resources used to investigate and prosecute crimes after they happen.
'I'm glad the city took on this effort in the reduction of crime on the community level,' Womack said. 'Each murder that we prevent in Jackson, it prevents the cost of upwards of a million dollars to the city.'
The third organization awarded a grant is Living with Purpose, established in Byram last year by longtime peer counselor John Knight.
The funds come from the city's Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery, launched in 2022 with a $700,000 grant from the National League of Cities and Wells Fargo Bank. The office is staffed by director Keisha Coleman and community outreach specialist Kuwasi Omari and operates largely as an umbrella, coordinating support for the three grantees who have been conducting youth mentorship and violence intervention on the ground for years.
'We want to be very clear, this 100 Days of Action and 100 Days of Peace is not geared toward what we call the 'bubble kids', the kids who are out here that are straddling the fence. It's geared towards those youth and those communities that are at the highest risk,' Coleman said. 'So yes, we are engaging gang members, we are engaging cliques, we are engaging affiliates, we are engaging anyone who's at high risk of shooting a gun or being shot.'
At the press conference, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba said he has witnessed the credible messengers passing out food in under-resourced communities. When the water crisis peaked in 2022, the mayor said those men were some of the first who entered the frontlines to deliver drinking water to Jacksonians. Research has shown that hunger can be associated with increased risk of experiencing or perpetrating violence.
'I've seen statistics in a limited block radius where they've had nearly half of a year with no gun violence within one of the areas that had some of the most pronounced gun violence prior to their work,' Lumumba said at the press conference.
The Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery did not supply reports or data on the success of the programs when asked, but Coleman directed Mississippi Today to the individual organizations' websites. Operation Good's website claims that while using its own crime intervention model, the organization saw a decrease in violent crimes, from 87 percent to 14 percent over a 3-year period, in the area it had a presence. But 'due to the majority of our members being ex-con they started to fade away,' the website states, and in their absence, Jackson's murder rate began consistently rising, peaking in 2021.
Starting in 2021 under a new national model called the Cure Violence approach, Operation Good reports that it ushered in a 286-day period without gun-related deaths in its first year.
In other cities that have declared periods of nonviolence, leaders have made specific calls to action. For many years in Birmingham, the city council has asked high schoolers to take a 100-day pledge to avoid violent situations, according to local reports. In Memphis, the mayor has successfully asked opposing gang leaders for a 7-day ceasefire in the city, CNN reported. In exchange, the gangs asked for access to well-paying jobs and training to secure those jobs.
'They need money in their pockets. That's the way you can change it,' Memphis Mayor Paul Young said in 2024, the local news station reported.
During the 100 Days of Action, the city of Jackson said it will partner with the crime-invention groups to host job fairs.
'The reality is while they (JPD) are solving crime, crime is still taking place. You can't arrest yourself out of the problem. If you arrest somebody at 5 o'clock and you have done nothing to affect the conditions that led them out there in the first place, then they will be there at 6 o'clock,' Lumumba said standing outside of City Hall Wednesday morning.
Later in the afternoon, half a mile away on the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol, dozens gathered from across the state for a day of mourning as part of the National Victims of Gun Violence Day, demonstrating that gun violence is a widespread problem for Mississippi, not just Jackson.
Data shows that Mississippi has the highest rate of annual gun deaths at nearly 30 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Jacqueline Alexander of Woodville, Mississippi, said she lost her nephew in a shooting nine months ago. For her, the wound is still fresh.
'I was bitter. I was angry. I was more hurt than anything,' she said through tears. 'My nephew was a vital part of my life, and there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about him. People don't understand, during the funeral times, you have all the love shown, but what do you do after the funeral is over?'
Alexander criticized her local government, saying that there should have been a call to action to solve his murder, and four other unsolved murders in their small town.
'Nobody deserves to be gunned down. A 15 year old child – there should have been a call to order,' she said. 'The town should have been on fire.'
Angenel Washington of Natchez, whose daughter was killed in 2020, said she hopes that city and state leaders will use their platforms to push for more policing.
'I'm hoping that leaders will see that this is something that is out of control, and they understand that if they don't do anything or don't talk about it, they give consent that they're OK with it,' Washington said. '… My daughter was willing to fight to help others, so they need to take their job seriously and get to the problem at hand.'
Mississippi Impact Coalition, along with partners The People's Advocacy Institute, the Mississippi Poor People's Campaign, One Voice and The Sweet Spot of Jackson, came together to demand the Mississippi Legislature pass universal background checks. They also want to repeal open carry, and add restrictions to assault weapons and mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases. No such measures have been advanced by state leaders this session.
'This isn't just about laws. It's about lives. It's about justice. It's about breaking cycles of trauma and building a future where our communities thrive instead of mourn,' said Danyelle Holmes of the Mississippi Poor People's Campaign.
Mississippi ranks 49th in the country for gun law strength, with no foundational laws in place such as one requiring a concealed carry permit or no carry laws after a violent offense.
Mayor Lumumba said that the 100 Days initiative primarily focuses on interrupting violence before JPD is ever called. JPD employees, the mayor said, have unreasonably been expected to play a dual role of detective and psychiatrist.
'By the time the police have arrived, it has already gone wrong,' Lumumba said in his announcement.
Reached hours after the city's press conference, Jackson Police Department Chief Joseph Wade said he was not aware of the '100 Days' initiative, though he later met with city leaders to discuss the community-led efforts.
'I'm for this initiative. I fully support it. I am about saving lives in the city of Jackson. I talk about it. I'm transparent to the community,' Wade said, adding that he and his commanders are hosting a public event at Christ United church in north Jackson Thursday afternoon to discuss patterns and strategies in addressing crime. 'I just need to know, like, what do the components look like?'
After meeting with city officials Wednesday, Wade explained that the initiative is community-led – JPD does not play a formal role – but that the department will offer whatever educational support is requested.
Day 1 of Peace was an otherwise typical day for the city's police force, JPD public information officer Tommie Brown said – squad cars patrolling, officers responding to calls and detectives working investigations. By 5pm, Wade said there had not been a homicide in the city and he was unaware of any shooting reports.
The state-run Capitol Police force did not receive any violent crime reports by late Wednesday afternoon, Mississippi Department of Safety spokesperson Bailey Martin told Mississippi Today, but in the evening it responded to a gunshot victim at Pagoda Village Apartments on Jefferson Street in Belhaven. Martin said the shooting was the result of a domestic disturbance and officers arrested a 30-year-old at the scene for aggravated assault.
Just after midnight, JPD responded to the shooting death of a 22-year-old Memphis woman at Studio 6 hotel in north Jackson. And Thursday morning, a 15-year-old boy who had been reported as a runaway was found deceased in south Jackson from a gunshot wound to the head, according to a briefing by Wade. Officers are searching for suspects in both cases.
So far in 2025, JPD has investigated 11 homicides. This includes two shooting deaths in south Jackson over the past weekend, a woman accused of killing her husband and a teenager charged with killing his grandmother.
'Every single one were about people that knew each other – interpersonal conflicts, domestic violence situations. And we have a 100% solvability rate,' Wade said Wednesday, before the next two homicides occurred. 'Domestic violence situations that happen inside homes, or conflicts dealing with individuals who do not know how to mitigate conflict. So we really need help inside homes, inside residences.'
Capitol Police, which responds to incidents in a central area of the city spanning from south of downtown to north of the Fondren neighborhood, have worked 3 homicides this year for a total of 14 killings in the capital city. This is down from 15 homicides this time last year and 21 in 2021, the year with the highest recorded homicides, according to WLBT.
'Data shows us that even though crime and gun violence is high in Jackson, it's a small percentage of people that's committing the violence, and so we are going to target that small population of people who are actually toting the guns and being on the other side of the gun and try to get them into these mentorship programs,' Coleman said.
Coleman told Mississippi Today that the data she referenced was provided by JPD's data analyst, but the information doesn't exist in a formal, sharable report because the office 'is still developing a dashboard to synthesize the variables to support the raw data.' Later in the spring, though, the office plans to publish a community landscape assessment. Mississippi Today submitted a public records request for the office's data and expenditures.
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