RICHMOND, Va. -- Just weeks after Richmond Police claimed to have stopped an allegedly planned mass shooting on the Fourth of July, more efforts are now underway to prevent crime in the community.
Richmond faith leaders are now at the center of the effort, wanting to step up to help stop the increase in violence that the city is seeing.
Their plan is now focused on being proactive instead of reactive to fight violence.
Jo White helps to lead Richmond's Guardian Angels organization. The group is known as the Richmond Faith Leaders and is made up of church leaders, RPD outreach and different resource groups.
It's a newly revived group that lost steam at the beginning of the pandemic and due to administration changes within the department, White said.
"We come up with things together but we can't let ourselves be dictated," White said.
The group took time to restructure, get feedback and come up with a new plan.
White feels that they now have more tangible plans to create change. Their goal is now to stop violence by building relationships.
They believe that they can do so by getting out in the community to listen to people, hear how their relationships are with their families, pray for them and help them target resources.
"As things go wrong, we can catch them before they happen and give them the resources they need before they happen instead of after," White said.
The group will have segmented teams and will go to neighborhoods to get people on a list.
The relationship builders team will then use their trained skills to form relationships with the communities.
They will then recognize what is needed and bring in resources to help with anything from homelessness, pregnancy, marriage, mental health issues and more. also give people the chance to get involved with a church.
White would like to see the group's reorganization to have all five teams with at least 20 people. She said the decades-old group used to be that size and she wants to grow it back and supersede that number.
"Knocking on the door, being the 911 for those people, that's very important," White said.
The group plans to host monthly prayer walks and other resource opportunities in neighborhoods in the coming months.
The group is still actively looking for more people to join them. Anyone who is interested can reach out to Officer Kim Cheatham at Kimberly.Cheatham@rva.gov.
