Two members of the Fort Worth City Council are raising alarms less than a week after a woman died in her home after being struck by a stray bullet.<\/p>\n
“Whether someone is hurt or not or property damage occurs or not, it is hard to feel safe in your home when you hear gunshots outside,” said Elizabeth Beck, city council member for Fort Worth’s District 9. “And it’s our job to make sure our residents feel safe.” <\/p>\n
It’s why Beck said she’s called for education campaigns several times in the past– including backing up colleague Mia Hall’s call at Wednesday’s Public Safety Committee Meeting. <\/p>\n
“I’m actually calling on our PD to launch a comprehensive campaign to educate residents on the dangers of illegal gunfire,” said Hall, who oversees District 6. <\/p>\n
On Friday, one of Hall’s constituents died after a stray bullet pierced through her home.<\/a> Fort Worth Police said the fatal shot came from a field across the street <\/a>from the house, and they are looking for three teens. <\/p>\n “I feel like this is a senseless, avoidable death,” Hall said on Wednesday. \u201cI want to encourage neighbors to get involved, organizing citizens on patrol groups and partnering with the city’s police department to prevent these incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n Fort Worth Police said they are pulling together a plan now, based on Hall’s call. <\/p>\n “I’d like to see this done yesterday,” Beck told NBC 5. <\/p>\n Beck said stray bullets are a problem citywide, including near her own home. <\/p>\n “I hear them in my neighborhood, so it’s not something that I’m immune to, you know, that your council members are immune to,” she said.<\/p>\n Like Hall, Beck thinks a lack of gun education is a big part of the problem. <\/p>\n “It’s really what goes up must come down campaign and making people understand that there are real consequences associated with firing firearms into the air,” Beck said. <\/p>\n And she said city staff need to step up, too. <\/p>\n “So, working with our neighborhood associations or media outlets to make sure that we are really… reaching beyond just those that might follow us on social media or subscribe to a city news alert,” she explained. “We have to start getting creative about how we’re addressing this issue because… we can’t just police our way out of this.”<\/p>\n Community leader Bob Ray Sanders agreed that there needs to be buy-in from everyone.<\/p>\n “It has to be a collaboration. It can’t be an edict coming from the city council. It can’t be a proclamation coming from the police chief. It has to be true communication. It has to be true cooperation. That’s how it happens,” he said. <\/p>\n As a lifelong Fort Worth resident and leader for decades, Sanders has seen crime ebb and flow.<\/p>\n “I experienced the era when we had Fort Worth as one of the highest rated cities in the country of gun deaths back in the 80s and 90s,” Sanders said. <\/p>\n He said what’s worked in the past includes good community policing. <\/p>\n “What has worked before is when you had a policeman who was able to talk to young people. And they were able to trust each other,” Sanders said. <\/p>\n Beck said she believes this time, the call to action will come to fruition. <\/p>\n “I think sometimes things just have to reach a critical mass before actions are taken,” she said. “I think things are different because you have multiple council members bringing up the issue.”<\/p>\n Aldrin Tejada lives about a block away from where his neighbor died and agrees there needs to be more education– starting at home. <\/p>\n \u201cI think the root cause is starting from the home; what are they doing with guns in the first place? How are they getting access to it, and what are they doing with it?\u201d he said. “Things like that in the household should not be unaccounted for, where it’s at, how it’s being used, who’s using it, where you’re going with it, you know.” <\/p>\n He thinks the campaign would work, but doesn’t know to what extent. <\/p>\n One thing is for sure, though, he said: “Something definitely needs to be done.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two members of the Fort Worth City Council are raising alarms less than a week after a woman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153399,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":{"0":"post-153398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-fort-worth","9":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","10":"tag-fort-worth-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}