TAMPA, Fla — A push to end gun violence in Tampa continues as local leaders and activists joined together to plan for a safer community.
The souls lost were the center of their fight for change and conversations held at Tuesday night's forum to end gun violence.
"We just got to get up. We got to get up and do something – stop making excuses. We're tired of being victims of crimes. Let's do something about it," Elliot Saunders who lost his son to gun violence said.
Neighbors urged each other to do something as police look for ways to curb gun violence in the city. Tampa Police's Interim Police Chief Ruben Delgado said they started redeploying officers Sunday to areas hit hard with violence.
"Crime reduction, violent crime, that's our priority," Delgado said. "From the chief of police to the rookie officer we hire, that's everybody's job."
Tampa has seen 9 homicides so far this year, but despite that Delgado said the number of shootings the city saw in January is actually down. Fifteen fewer shootings than that of 2021 when the city saw a record number of homicides. Forty-eight lives were taken by guns last year.
"It's a lot of grieving families out there," Paulette Walker said.
Her family is one of them after her nephew Elijah Polite was killed last October.
"The truth of the matter is, it hurts that we have so many guns on the streets and how we plan to get them off I'm not quite sure," Walker said.
But action and being at the forum is a start. The crowd asked for deliberate and intentional communication and more surveillance of social media and the city.
"Stop allowing murders, stop allowing thieves, stop allowing other people that are committing crimes to overtake our neighborhoods," Saunders said.
This is the second community forum the Tampa Police Department has held. Police hope it will encourage the community to join the discussion on ways to slow down crime, specifically gun violence, in the area.