By Renata Di Gregorio, First Coast News
People have called Jacksonville the “murder capital of Florida,” but could the city be turning a new page?
According to data from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, the city’s murder rate has dropped by more than 50 percent this year compared to last year. JSO’s transparency portal shows 50 people have been murdered so far in 2024.
The portal shows 122 murders were committed in all of last year and 101 murders between January 1 and October 28 last year.
An organization made up of faith leaders in Jacksonville who have focused on stopping the violence met to discuss the drop in murders Monday. Ceci Rodriguez, who’s involved with the Interfaith Coalition for Action, Reconciliation and Empowerment, known as ICARE, said Monday stopping the violence is something they’ve been working toward.
“When I first moved here, I had a friend warn me like, ‘Hey, you need to be careful out there, it’s really dangerous,’” Rodriguez said. “Because you look up Jacksonville, that’s the first thing you find.”
ICARE leaders credited the lower number of murders to a strategy called group violence intervention, or GVI. JSO said the decreased murder rate can “largely be attributed” to the GVI, which they describe as a focus on prevention and partnerships with community resources. ICARE Executive Board member Pastor Adam Gray described the GVI.
“You find the people who are most likely to pull the trigger and you go to them with a collection of community resources and a collection of law enforcement resources,” Gray said. “A carrot and a stick as it were.”
A GVI strategy has been in place since 2016, JSO said. They said Monday that they were not able to answer First Coast News’s question about why they believe it’s having an impact now. Gray and Co-President of ICARE Father Keith Oglesby believe it’s because they and JSO put a greater emphasis on GVI in recent years.
“Sheriff Waters and the JSO deserves the credit because they’ve done the work,” said Oglesby. “What we wanted to do was focus on the need and whatever our part was in helping that focus to get more clear, we’re glad we had a part.”
Rodriguez said it feels good to help save lives.
“Fantastic,” she said. “The real, tangible evidence of the work we’ve been doing.”
There are still five homicides pending classification on JSO’s transparency portal. View the portal here.
View the original story here.
