Nine years ago, Larry Barnes lost a friend to gun violence in Camden. Barnes never got a chance to recover from the event, he said, and did not know how to talk to anybody about it.
“I just thought everything was retaliation, and it’s not,” said Barnes, 42, who was raised in the city and has lost multiple friends, brothers and sisters to shootings.
Now, Barnes uses his experiences to inform the work he does with Cure4Camden, a community-based violence intervention program that aims to stop shootings and killings in the city by changing the underlying conditions that give rise to these incidents. The program, part of the nonprofit Center for Family Services, also aims to heighten community awareness about gun violence and encourages residents and community, business and faith leaders to work together to stop violence in the city.
Barnes was among many advocates, community members, police officers and faith leaders who attended a recent gun violence awareness event and community prayer walk the group hosted at Pyne Poynt Park in the city earlier this month.
A hard task
The goal was to bring the community together, to stop the violence in the city and to represent loved ones taken by gun violence, said Maria Hernandez, the program supervisor for Cure4Camden.
“We try to be (an) intervention … to curb the violence, but it’s hard,” said Barnes of Cure4Camden’s work. “One step at a time. We have to be here for people.”
Credit: (Bobby Brier/NJ Spotlight News)As of Tuesday, Camden has had 13 homicides from shootings this year, compared to 14 at this time last year, according to Dan Keashen, the director of communications for Camden County and the public information officer for the Camden County Police Department. The city has also had 29 non-fatal shooting incidents so far this year, compared to 50 by this time last year, according to Keashen. Across the country this year, there have been over 360 mass shootings and well over 21,000 people injured due to gun violence as of late August, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
Similar efforts elsewhere
Cure4Camden’s recent event is among the efforts this summer by violence intervention programs throughout the state to address gun violence in cities and the mental health impacts brought by that violence. In early June, the Paterson Healing Collective began its 90-day “Summer Peace Challenge” to encourage every neighborhood in that city to participate in a competition for a summer free from shootings and homicides.
Salvation and Social Justice, a Trenton-based nonprofit, hosted its third annual boxing program earlier this summer that aimed to teach kids between the ages of seven and 17 about the sport while instilling confidence, self-discipline and techniques for emotional regulation and self-protection. The program also aimed to give kids an alternative to settling disputes through gun violence.
‘Most of the people in this city are going through bereavement, but nobody teaches us how to grieve properly. So how do you escape constantly having a reminder of my son being lost to guns, or my daughter or my father.’ — Dwight Hassan Pulliam, who led the Cure4Camden prayer walk
These and other such efforts come just months after U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued an advisory declaring gun violence a public health crisis across the country. Since 2020, firearm-related injury has been the leading cause of death for children and adolescents nationwide, surpassing car crashes, cancer, drug overdoses and poisoning, according to studies cited in the advisory.
The recent event in Camden included informational resources offered by representatives from Mastery Schools, charter schools in Camden and Philadelphia, the South Jersey chapter of Moms Demand Action, the Promise Neighborhood Family Success Center, the Camden County Prosecutor’s Office and Be Smart, a campaign to raise awareness about secure gun storage and children’s safety. The event also included food, music and family activities.
Speaking from tragic experience
Dwight Hassan Pulliam, who led the prayer walk, said events like the one hosted at Pyne Poynt Park bring together people who have been broken but who are in the process of healing. When people want to heal, they should be around other people who motivate them and inspire them to be better, Pulliam said.
Credit: (Bobby Brier/NJ Spotlight News)“Most of the people in this city are going through bereavement, but nobody teaches us how to grieve properly,” said Pulliam. “So how do you escape constantly having a reminder of my son being lost to guns, or my daughter or my father.
“You never learn to get over it, so people don’t come out as they should because they don’t know that they can get help here,” Pulliam said.
Events like the one in Camden, held specifically during summer when kids are out of school, are critically important because this is the most vulnerable time of the year for gun violence and other forms of youth violence to take place, according to Michael B. Mitchell, an assistant professor in the departments of African American studies and criminology at The College of New Jersey.
“To not only see people who live there, but businesses and faith leaders and law enforcement coming together and showing unity, it brings about a positive image for the city,” said Mitchell. “It shows that other people care.”
Now in his work as a mediator for Cure4Camden, Barnes visits young people in Camden who have lost a friend, acquaintance or loved one to violence and do not know how to recover from the experience. He considers Cure4Camden a blessing, he said, because many times he didn’t have a way out of the circumstances he was facing.
“I feel so much better. I feel like a burden has been lifted off of me because I have people around me every day that I could share with,” said Barnes.
