By David Cruz
Correspondent
On a frigid December day Richard Morman prepared for another press conference today. Just days after his 15-year-old son, Kasson, was gunned down by random gunfire, Morman still finds it hard to make sense of it all.
“We just lost two babies on a special day, on Christmas Day,” he said. “They’ll never get to graduate; they’ll never get to go to their high school prom; they’ll never get to be what they wanted to be, the dancer, a good lawyer, a doctor. These things that we lost, we’ll never get back.”
Across the city today, residents and mayoral candidates were calling for action, some at rallies like this one in front of city hall, others at press conferences near the latest murder, outlining what they say are their plans to stop the violence.
“We have children that are being shot and killed right now,” said mayoral candidate Shavar Jeffries, who held a press conference near the site of the Christmas shootings. “These parents lost their son on Christmas Day, senselessly. We have to do some things right now.”
Mayoral Candidate Ras Baraka was at the city hall rally. He said there are no easy solutions to the crisis. “The mayor can’t go out here and make a press statement and the crime is disappeared. He can’t hire 2 million police officers and put them on every corner,” he said. “We don’t even have the revenue to do such. We have to raise the revenue to even hire the police, so even in an election campaign where people start yelling ‘I’m going to hire all these police officers and put them out on the street’ no one’s even asking them how they’re going to pay for it.
With two days left in the year, the city’s homicide rate is at 104. Five in the last week.
“I haven’t seen it worse. This has been the worst,” said Kecia Alexander, a mother of two who organized this “Stop the Violence” rally in front of city hall because she says she fears for the lives of her children. “It kills something in my soul because it’s very heart-breaking that you can’t walk outside to take the trash out doing chores for your parents. There’s so many, there’s murders every day here, but when it hits right in your neighborhood it makes you feel like you have you get up and do something and that’s what this is about.”
While the majority of Newark’s murders are drug or gang related – what police call, targeted killings – the children killed on Christmas Day were innocent bystanders, children with bright futures, claimed by streets that are becoming more dangerous every day. Kids not much different than Adorian Murray-Thomas, a freshman at Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, lucky for her opportunities but still hopeful for her city.
“It’s about having that family or that school community that sees your worth and affirms it, that tells you that you can make it, that tells you that you don’t have to have your life and choices limited to one area or one thing,” she said. “I think I was an exception – if you say – because I had people who told me that I was different and that everybody has something about them that’s different.”