According to the Trauma Response team in the city of Syracuse, it's been a rough summer, with a continued uptick in juvenile violence. Officials believe one thing that would help is a place for people to take a break from the carnage on the streets.
Timothy Jennings-Bey has been the director of the team that responds to violence in Syracuse, offering support to victims of shootings and stabbings, as well as their families. He says continued violence takes its toll on a community and can ultimately feed into more violence.
“It affects the entire community, whether somebody shoots a gun in the air or hits an individual or murders somebody," Jennings-Bey said. "That traumatizing effect, it becomes like a dark cloud, a canopy over the community. People will eventually lose hope and try to take matters into their own hands. We don't need to have individuals get frustrated and start to participate in a revenge cycle."
Jennings-Bey said trauma is compounded when families return to the scene of violence.
"Unfortunately, families, whether it's mom, dad, uncle, aunt, little cousins, brothers and sisters, aren't afforded the opportunity to debrief about the things we witness and the things that we go through," Jennings-Bey said. "You get to a point and we're at that point now where in my humble opinion it's almost dehumanizing, not for people to have that opportunity to get that level of healing, to move forward.”
Common Councilor Helen Hudson, at a recent council meeting, agreed it’s a problem.
"Because when these young folks, they see all of this happening, they go right back into that same community where the blood is on the sidewalk," Hudson said. "How do we give respite?"
An answer could be a respite center. It’s something Jennings-Bey and city officials have discussed.
"Somewhere outside of the community so people have the opportunity to process the new information that they may receive,” Jennings-Bey said.
Ideally, mental health professionals would be on hand to help individuals deal with the violence and loss. It would also offer respite to the front-line workers who deal with victims of violence.
Council recently renewed the $200,000 the eight-member response team receives every year from the city. Hudson and other lawmakers promise to find more money in the budget going forward, to fund the program and a potential respite center.
