Community leaders, Fort Worth organizers and law enforcement gathered Tuesday at a Beyond the Badge community meeting, urging residents and local groups to act now on a surge of youth gun violence before further lives are lost.
Fort Worth Police Officer and Spokesperson Tracy Carter addressed an auditorium of organizations and community leaders.
“We’re going to have to do something,” Carter said. “If not, we’re going to be in trouble.”
Carter stressed that gun violence has a way of becoming personal without warning.
“It doesn’t affect us until it affects us,” he said.
A family forever changed
For Mercy Mungwa, a registered nurse and mother, that moment arrived without warning on Jan. 30. Her mother, 66-year-old Magdalene Mancho, was inside their South Fort Worth home when a stray bullet struck and killed her.
“We didn’t know it was a bullet. We don’t own a gun. I don’t even know how to use one,” she said.
Mungwa said her mother had been in the house playing with her daughter when the shot came from outside.
“Ever since then, our lives have been so sad,” she said.
Authorities later arrested a 14-year-old in connection with the shooting, according to Mungwa.
The deaths are part of a broader pattern Carter says he is seeing across the city.
“I’m seeing a lot of youth that are exposed to guns and don’t know how to handle guns and shouldn’t be handling guns,” he said.
Last week, 15-year-old Prince Washington was killed in a drive-by shooting. On Easter Sunday, 16-year-old Jaydon Jones died in what investigators believe was an accidental shooting by his best friend.
Community voices call for intervention
Teena James of Safe in the Six said the signs have long been there.
“The Bible says warning comes before destruction; our children are constantly warning us that these things are happening,” she said.
Carter said he believes part of the problem is the lack of support system, and positive role models to show up for kids who need it.
“Everyone is looking for family,” he said. “If you don’t find it at your house, you’re going to go somewhere else to find it.”
Patrick Brown, head of the Southside Hornets Athletic Association, said the normalization of gun violence among young people is itself a problem. He described a moment during one of his football practices in the Morningside area when someone fired six or seven rounds into the air nearby.
“The kids that are normally in that area, never moved, kept playing football. The ones not from that area completely stopped and some of them even ducked,” said Brown.
Other organization leaders said the goal is to reshape what the community represents to its young people.
“We don’t want to be known as the hood — we want to be known as a neighborhood where we’re caring, and we look out for each other and we’re community.”
Beyond the Badge is a Fort Worth Police Department community policing initiative designed to build relationships between officers and residents through regular meetings and collaborative problem-solving. Tuesday’s session drew organizations from across the city.
The meetings are the first Tuesday of every month and they focus of different topics.