The video of Jor’Dell Richardson’s dying moments is traumatic, and every person in Colorado should watch it immediately, shed tears at the tragedy, and pledge to do something to prevent even one more child from bleeding out in a back alley.
The 14-year-old who had just returned home from a family vacation died over a pellet gun, a replica intentionally made to look real and threatening. He died for maybe a couple of hundred dollars of products from a smoke shop that he had robbed. He died for a summer thrill.
Yes, he died at the hands of police, but the real culprits in his death are those who gave Jor’Dell the gun, told him to rob the store, and perhaps even dropped him off with a group of kids at the scene of the crime in a stolen Kia. They encouraged Jor’Dell to put his life in harm’s way … for nothing.
Jor’Dell’s dying words should haunt us: “They made me do it. I don’t know who they are but they made me do it.”
The Rev. Leon Kelly Jr.spoke at the press event where Aurora Chief of Police Art Acevedo made good on his promise to release the police video 72 hours after Richardson’s family members and attorneys had watched the teen die. Kelly, executive director of Open Door Youth Gang Alternatives, drove home exactly what every mother and father in this city must know leading into the summer months.
“Who put him up to doing this? It wasn’t the police. It wasn’t the library. It wasn’t the church people,” Kelly said. “Who is holding the hood accountable? Protest and march? We are dealing with shootings just about every day. As long as we shoot ourselves it ain’t no big issue.”
Kelly asked who is holding the neighborhood accountable.
I ask who is holding all of Denver and Aurora accountable.
Single working moms can’t lock their babies up in a house all summer.
Dads can’t police every waking moment of their child’s life.
Grandparents and foster parents and friends and family only have a limited reach in the lives of their charges. Where are the help and the resources that give kids hope, give them an alternative thrill, make them feel safe without a gun, and provide them with the resources they need to be successful?
John Bailey with the Colorado Black Round Table is asking these questions Monday at 5:30 p.m. at New Hope Baptist Church Family Life Center, 3701 Colorado Blvd. Bailey calls for the resources and attention needed to prevent another kid from dying from violence this summer.
We need to show up with our resources, our time, our love, our money and our commitment to the children of Denver that we will stop gun violence before it occurs. Bailey calls it a shift from reactionary policing where the city depends on a police response when a crime is being committed to investing in the human beings who need support.
“This is not a blame game. There is plenty of blame to go around for the predicament we find ourselves in. Parents in the metro area, we need to know where our kids are. We need to know what they are doing. We need to know they are safe,” said Bailey, who has spent decades working to establish diversion programs to keep kids out of trouble.
The city of Denver, the city of Aurora, our schools, our gang prevention units, all must be pulling in the same direction, and we all have a role to play in making sure the summer of 2023 doesn’t become known as the second summer of violence. That will look like high-quality, engaging programs being offered for free to teens across the Denver Metro Area. Our kids, still recovering from the trauma of COVID shutdowns and lost family members, will need access to mental health care. The metro area’s largest philanthropists would be wise to invest in nonprofits already working in this space, increasing program capacity and quality. And just as our governments invest in the region’s wonderful cultural facilities, so too must they invest in our children’s futures.
Terrance Roberts, who worked for years in gang prevention in Denver, spent his time on the mayoral campaign trail bemoaning the fact that funding for summer and afterschool programs for teens had evaporated over time. He knows first-hand what will keep kids out of trouble this summer.
The video of a police officer killing Richardson doesn’t show where the gun was in the crucial seconds before the officer pulled the trigger. The video does show an officer throwing the gun aside seconds after the shot is fired. Even Chief Acevedo admitted there is ambiguity there in terms of video evidence that investigators will have to parse through. Had the officer who shot Richardson waited 10 seconds or 30 seconds, Richardson would be alive, but the officer could not have known that Richardson clearly didn’t intend to hurt anyone with his pellet gun.
But if I thought more police training would have saved Richardson’s life, that would have been this column’s focus. The two things we know would have kept Richardson safe are for him not to have had a gun and for him not to have gone into that store.
For the next three months, I pledge to join Bailey and all those other dedicated public servants already working to combat the root causes of teen gun violence, to do all I can to keep kids safe.
Megan Schrader is the editor of The Denver Post opinion pages.
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