'People just resort to guns so quickly': CPD and community leader reflect on gun violence in Chatt.

I wrote this article for a magazine writing class in the fall of 2021.

It was a cool, peaceful September night. Together, friends and families stood outside on Grove Street, Chattanooga, enjoying the pleasant breeze and their neighbors’ company. Suddenly, gunshots, panic, terror. Serenity grotesquely transformed into pandemonium. Seven individuals, all of whom unexpectedly found themselves amid a violent fight, were shot. Two died, one only 21 years old. Of the surviving victims, the youngest was 14.

“The fear and the anger and the frustration; it was palpable,” Jeremy Eames, police information officer for the Chattanooga Police Department, said concerning that night. Eames responded to the scene because he knew media would be involved. “I was really frustrated that night to see seven people go down, seven people who had nothing to do with the people who were involved in the violence. … It’s incredibly frustrating that individuals would have such disregard for other human beings.”

That was September 25 of this year, a day that yielded no mercy for the city of Chattanooga. Earlier that day, two other shootings occurred, one of which killed another 21-year-old, according to CPD press releases. A total of 9 people were shot.

FBI statistics released on September 27 revealed that the estimated number of violent crimes in the United States rose by 5.6% in 2020 when compared to 2019. In Chattanooga, violent crime rose by a staggering 25.25% in 2020 for a total of 2,381 violent crimes reported, according to crime statistics on the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s (TBI) CrimeInsight platform.

In the past two years, criminal gun violence alone has become a terrifying trend in Chattanooga — so terrifying, in fact, that in the last 22 months, there have been 1,821 violent crimes committed with a firearm, exceeding the 1,754 violent crimes committed with a firearm that occurred from 2017 to 2019, according to police records. More startling is the fact that as of November 2, there have been 915 violent crimes committed with a firearm in 2021, already surpassing 2020’s 906.

“Without a doubt, far and away, [gun violence] is driving the crime probably here in Chattanooga and nationwide,” Eames said. “… That’s what everybody’s focused on right now.”

Of these violent crimes involving a firearm, it is the number of shootings that has significantly increased and currently drives the media, according to Eames. He further explained that for an incident to be labeled a shooting, someone must be struck by gunfire.

Eames added that he has noticed a disturbing rise in “quick, violent reactions” using a gun within the past couple of years.

“You don’t see people hashing out differences, for lack of a better term. People just resort to guns so quickly,” Eames said. “To my knowledge, law enforcement has not been able to determine what is behind that, what’s driving that level of violence, why people just resort to gun violence right off the bat.”

Some have identified the COVID-19 pandemic as a major cause of the rise in gun violence in Chattanooga and across the nation. Eames said there is no way to identify the true cause until gun violence rates begin to drop, although he admitted that the pandemic is a likely factor.

“Because [the rise in gun violence] was so sharp and because it aligned with the pandemic, there’s no other thing right now that people can point to,” Eames said. “That’s just what makes the most sense based on what we saw and the timeframe for when it happened. There has to be some correlation.”

According to Eames, the CPD’s main priority in decreasing this trend is taking violent people off the streets. To do so, they have expanded their gun team, which uses National Integrated Ballistic Information Network technology to identify specific firearms based on data gleaned from shell casings. They also instituted a Real Time Intelligence Center (RTIC) a few years ago. This center allows CPD investigators to personally operate over 50 cameras placed in community-selected, high-crime locations and watch city-owned cameras.

“[RTIC] has been insanely good,” CPD Investigator Christopher Liberto said. “When it came to major violent crimes, I don’t think there’s one major event that we have not been a part of.”

On June 4, city leaders, including Mayor Tim Kelly, gathered on the steps of city hall to discuss recent gun violence and honor the lives of its victims. Senior Pastor of Mt. Canaan Baptist Church Ternae Jordan Sr., one of the event’s speakers, called gun violence a health crisis.

“I think it’s important that we look at violence from a health perspective,” Jordan later said in an interview. He explained that circumstances that cause one person to commit suicide often lead another person to commit violence and often murder; thus, these individuals should be cared for similarly. "… So, [gun violence] is a health issue. Poverty is a health issue. Environment is a health issue. Education can be a health issue. Health disparities is a health issue. Discrimination is a health issue.”

Jordan has been actively involved in the gun violence issue for a long time. In 1993, his 15-year-old son was shot in the head while innocently waiting for his mom to pick him and his 12-year-old sister up at a YMCA in Fort Wayne, Indiana. When Jordan arrived at the crime scene, he broke through the yellow tape and rushed to his son bleeding out on the floor.

“I thought I saw him take his last breath,” Jordan said.

By what Jordan described as a miracle, his son survived after three intense days in the hospital. The bullet remains lodged in his skull.

Inspired to act by his son’s brush with death and other violent crimes in Fort Wayne, Jordan founded the anti-violence “Stop the Madness” program for adolescents, which spread internationally and grew chapters in multiple cities, including Chattanooga. Jordan has also worked closely with the United States Justice Department and Kelly.

According to Jordan, the recent rise in gun violence in Chattanooga has deeply affected his community and church. He added that he recently funeralized a young man who was shot and killed in the city.

To help reverse this trend, Jordan said more social workers and mental health experts should be involved in criminal cases, a concept Kelly is currently exploring. He added that community members must learn to stop politicizing everything and instead love one another and take action.

“We’re on this ship together, right?” Jordan said. “We’re cruising … we’re in the middle of the ocean, and there’s a hole that comes on my side of the ship. Are you going to continue to sunbathe and enjoy? No, you’re going to grab a bucket, and you’re going to run to my side of the ship, and you’re going to try to throw water off that boat. Because if we go down, we go down together. That’s my message to the community. It affects us all.”