Thomas Breen photo
The brick path that curves through the Valley St. gun violence memorial.
Park co-founders Celeste Fulcher and Pamela Jaynez: Preparing to put down 10 more bricks.
A day before a group of moms plans to lay 10 more bricks in honor of recent homicide victims, city officials and community partners gathered at a Valley Street memorial to detail plans for a new city office dedicated to violence prevention.
That press conference took place Friday morning at the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence, which sits in the shadow of West Rock at 105 Valley St.
The focus of the presser was the recent creation of a new city Office of Violence Prevention.
That new one-person office came into being when the alders voted last week to create a new city Department of Community Resilience, of which the Office of Violence Prevention will be a part.
City social services director Mehul Dalal at Friday’s presser.
Mayor Justin Elicker and city Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal announced Friday that the city has hired the advocacy group Connecticut Against Gun Violence (CAGV) to help get that office off the ground.
CAGV will spend the next few months conducting public listening sessions, studying the current network of local violence prevention programs, and researching similar initiatives already in place in municipalities across the country
The group will then hand a report of their findings to the city, which will use it as a “blueprint” for how best to coordinate existing violence prevention efforts, fund new programs, and care for those who have survived local gun violence.
“In order to actually implement a comprehensive set of evidence-based practices, you need a coordinating infrastructure,” Dalal said about the new Office of Violence Prevention. That will be the top responsibility of whoever winds up being hired to fill the full-time role of Office of Violence Prevention coordinator.
CAGV Executive Director Jeremy Stein.
As for CAGV’s work in the coming months, “we’re going to look at the [violence] hotspots of New Haven, look at identifying where the gun violence is, where the resources of New Haven are, and do an overlay to see whether those match up,” said CAGV Executive Director Jeremy Stein.
The metal sculpture at the center of the Valley St. memorial garden.
All of this took place Friday at the end of the curving brick path that cuts through the placid park-side greenspace.
Hundreds of red bricks bearing the names of homicide victims from decades past already line that walkway.
On Saturday morning, the moms who spent years working to make the memorial garden a reality plan to lay 10 more named bricks — in a cruel race to catch up with the ever-growing list of people who have been shot and killed in New Haven so far this year.
The park officially opened on June 12. The 10 new bricks will commemorate the names and lives of homicide victims who have been killed since late May of this year. So far in 2021, New Haven has seen 22 homicides.
The 2021 section of the brick memorial walkway.
“Every time we lay a brick, my heart … my heart drops for that family,” said Celeste Fulcher, one of three moms who helped found the memorial garden. Fulcher lost her daughter Erika Renee “Hoppy” Robinson to gun violence in 2013.
“It doesn’t feel good laying more bricks, but it does feel good getting the word out that [the park] does exist and trying to reach those who need help to not cause any more deaths,” added Pamela Jaynez, another one of the park’s co-founders. Jaynez lost her son Marquese Tyrell Janez to gun violence in 1997.
Fulcher and Jaynez said that Friday’s city press conference at the park is exactly the type of event that should take place at this memorial garden: A public declaration that the violence needs to stop, and the charting of a path forward to make that vision a reality.
“I’ve been to quite a few meetings, and have heard a lot of talk,” Fulcher said. “But we don’t see action.” She said she hopes the launch of this new city office and this new research effort by CAGV will spur “something being done” to stop the violence and care for survivors.
“We need our city to heal,” Jaynez said. “We don’t want any more moms to through the hurt we’ve experienced. Generations cease to exist when our children lose their lives.”
Thomas Daniels.
Thomas Daniels also joined Friday’s press conference to talk about the importance of prioritizing gun violence prevention citywide.
Daniels is the founder of a support group called Fathers Cry Too. He lost his son Thomas Daniels Jr., nicknamed “Tank,” to gun violence in 2009.
“When I walked down that path this morning, it’s a sad trip for me down memory lane,” he said, gesturing to the brick walkway before him.
Starting in 1989, he said, “I lost a lot of good friends” to violence. That violence poured over into the 1990s. All the while, “I had no idea what the parents of my friends were going through when I was young.” Until the 2009, when he lost his son to a shooting, and “I found myself to be one of those parents.”
Len Jahad.
Connecticut Violence Intervention Program (VIP) founder Leonard Jahad said he walked down the brick path Friday morning and asked himself, “Where’s this path gonna end?”
He also repeated to himself a line that he said motivates him in his daily street outreach work, and that he’ll be keeping in mind as the city kicks off this new dedicated violence prevention office.
“Not another brick,” Jahad said. “Not another brick.”