TAMPA, Fla. — As the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County grapple with an uptick in youth gun crimes, the Tampa Police Department will begin implementing more than $1 million in federal grant money in an effort to reduce and prevent future incidents.
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"The safety of our community is our top priority," Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said. "This grant allows us to put a thorough plan into practice that addresses both crime reduction and prevention while fostering stronger relationships with our residents.”
In 2022, the city of Tampa was awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Department of Justice to develop and implement a community violence intervention and prevention initiative. Part of the grant process was a year-long planning phase and now they will begin distributing the funding to local organizations on the frontlines of working to stop the violence.
One of those is Safe & Sound Hillsborough, an organization that works with kids, sometimes as young as 12 years old who are facing gun charges.
“We're seeing an alarming uptake in youth gun violence; we're seeing more and more kids getting their hands on guns. And the worst part about it is we're seeing the ages of individuals getting their hands on guns and committing some of these offenses getting lower and lower,” Executive Director Freddy Barton said.
In April alone, they’ve added 6 more Hillsborough County teens to the program, where caseworkers work directly with kids for a year.
“It's all about experiential learning. It's given them wrap-around support, and it's trying to make sure that they understand that while they're still young, they have time to change their stars around and really don't commit these things again,” Barton explained.
The kids come from all over Hillsborough County. Some are from broken homes, others just hang in the wrong crowds, but they all work together with case managers like Pedro Rodriguez.
“When they are able to see that people care about them and love them and are willing to spend time with them, then their guard is down, they start to let us in, they start to trust us, we start to see change, we start to see a shift in their attitude,” says Rodriguez, who says he struggled as a teen but then turned his life around through education.
Rodriguez says the success stories are enough proof that the program works, changing the future of the kids that take part. “It’s really a game changer.”
With an injection from the new grant money, Safe & Sound Hillsborough will be able to expand its mission and reach.
“This will allow us to bring on some intensive case managers that are going to focus on providing individual therapy and wrap-around support to not just the youth, but their families as well.”
The Tampa Police Department says the proactive approach can help limit future tragedies.
“I think it's the missing link to a lot. What's going on with the family, what's going on with their friends,” TPD Dep. Chief Calvin Johnson said. “This grant is going to allow us to work with the nonprofits to find out what family issues are going on, along with community engagement and getting other nonprofits involved in trying to mentor youth.”
“The Tampa Police Department constantly looks for new approaches and resources to keep our community safe. This proactive approach has paid off with this grant to focus on tackling violent crime and the social issues that fuel it,” TPD Chief Lee Bercaw said in a statement. ”This grant is another opportunity to expand our community-oriented policing efforts and continue working with partners to make Tampa safer, together.”.
The University of South Florida is also part of the initiative and will collect and analyze data to track the progress of the violence reduction strategy.