MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Some Raleigh/Frayser residents stood up and took to the streets Tuesday.
Lifeline to Success leader, Pastor DeAndre Brown, led a march through Frayser to stop the killing.
A man was shot and killed at the Pleasant View apartments Monday.
Police said three men drove off in a maroon SUV.
“When I heard the shots, I just hit the floor, and I laid on the floor and told my baby, I said, ‘Well, we’re just going to lay here until I hear the paramedics,'” said neighbor Sandra Pluitt.
Pluitt said her 6-year-old daughter knows what gunfire sounds like and what to do when she hears it.
“And the kids around here seem to be used to it,” she said.
“This is not normal behavior, and it cannot continue this way,” Brown said at the march.
He said he is working to prevent more kids from becoming used to the violence.
Standing in the street at Dellwood and Steele, Brown said neighbors are not just responding to an act of violence, as they sometimes do.
“This is different. This is not just a rally. This is the catalyst for the movement,” Brown said.
Brown plans to assign people in the community to neighborhoods and complexes to monitor and improve them.
Elected officials stood alongside him as he briefly explained the idea to the marchers.
“We’re discrediting our own self every time a black on black crime is committed, every time a life is taken away, and everyone sees something but nobody sees anything,” said SCS School Board member Stephanie Love.
“I don’t believe that we can police our way out of the problem. We have to have community involvement, we have to start getting parents involved, and we have to figure out how to get our schools and our principals and our church leadership involved in this problem,” said District Seven City Councilman Berlin Boyd.
As for Pluitt, she said she and her daughter are leaving Memphis.
“This is like the norm for them. I’m 43 years old. This will never be normal for me, ever,” Pluitt said.
Brown said organizers will discuss dividing up into different neighborhoods at the next Frayser Crime Committee meeting on February 9 at 6 p.m. at the Lifeline to Success building in Frayser.
Lifeline to Success is an organization that helps ex-offenders with reentry.
