Fort Worth Leaders Launch Community Reform Initiative to Reduce Violent Crime

Fort Worth leaders are launching a new initiative focused on community reform as an effort to reduce violent crime in the city’s south side.

About two dozen community members gathered at the New Mount Rose Baptist Church on Thursday in a meeting called by Pastor Kyev Tatum.

The meeting comes nearly a week after four young people were shot in a car along Jessamine Street in Fort Worth’s Morningside neighborhood. Fort Worth police said the shooting was related to a possible robbery involving drugs.

“No one would debate that what happened to them, was the consequence of what they were engaged in. No one would debate that,” Tatum said. “Here’s our debate. Our concern is, those young boys still belonged to somebody’s baby. To somebody’s baby.”

Tatum is launching a new initiative he has named the Promise Zone, consisting of community members and leaders who want to address issues facing the city’s south side. Issues range from reading and writing to lower life expectancy rates, Tatum said. The idea is to identify what the community still needs to thrive and inspire people to not get involved with crime.

“So, we find strategies, programs and initiatives that we know are successful and implement them with the right funding and the right people. People from the community,” he said. “It’s not a difficult strategy, but we have to move beyond the politics of violence and get down to the core of reform in our community.”

The four people who died were identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office as 17-year-old Marc Boyd Jr., 19-year-old Ricky Craddock, 17-year-old Amari'yon Cravin and 17-year-old Jaizson Nash.

“We have four young men who died in a drug-related incident, and no one seems to care,” Tatum said Thursday. “It became compelling to me that no one is going to come in and care for us until we care for us.”

Felton Jenkins of Fort Worth said one of the four young men who were killed was his younger cousin.

“I was hurt deeply because the change we need to put in our community is, 'how can we grab them and love them?'” Jenkins said, referring to his cousin’s death.

Jenkins, a former gang member, has spent the past 11 years trying to inspire youth in Fort Worth to not become involved in gang activity. He said he will be a part of the new initiative launched this week.

“I go into the drug houses. I go to the car washes. I walk anywhere. There could be guns anywhere, and I walk in the midst of guns and love on these kids, but I can’t do it by myself. We all need each other,” he said. “Now I want to be a real leader. I want to show these kids no matter who you are or what you’ve been through, how many times you’ve been to prison, how many felonies you got on your background, how many kids you got, it [doesn’t] matter. You can make that change. Look at me.”

The next meeting on the initiative will be on Thursday, Oct. 27.