'Blood is on our hands': Pittsburgh leaders call on community response to violent crime

Combating a surge in violent crime in Pittsburgh that mirrors the problems faced across the nation requires everyone to become involved and work to put a stop to it, city officials and community members said Monday.

They took to the podium outside a building in the city’s California-Kirkbride neighborhood and called for love instead of hate, cooperation instead of division, and activism from everyone to change the tide. Earlier Monday, Pittsburgh Public Safety leaders released numbers that showed homicides year-to-date were up 80% compared to the same time last year, and non-fatal shootings were up 90% over the same time-frame.

RELATED: Homicides, violent crimes are surging in Pittsburgh in 2021

While Pittsburgh isn’t alone in facing this violence, the response to it needs to be different here, Assistant Public Safety Director Shatara Murphy said.

She promised increased community outreach, staffing and resources that have been authorized by her boss, Public Safety Director Wendell Hissrich.

She also called on everyone to step up and do their part. The event was billed as a press conference, but it was more “a call to action,” Murphy said.

“We all have to play our part if we want our communities to be safer,” she said.

If nothing else, people can pray or send positive thoughts into the ether, Murphy said.

“No one owns the table of change, but everybody has a seat at it,” she said.

People are hurting because of the coronavirus pandemic, loss of a job and the harsh economic and racial disparities that are present in today’s world, said Cornell Jones, the city’s Group Violence Intervention coordinator.

Because of those realities, it’s easy for “hurt people” to “hurt people,” he said.

“It’s going to take the community to say ‘We’re not going to have it on our watch,’ ” Jones said. “The blood is on our hands if we don’t do what we’ve been called to do. I’m calling on the community to step up.”

Community response is long overdue, the Rev. Michael Day said.

As pastor of Legacy International Worship Center on the North Side, Day has watched as his father and grandfather ministered to grieving families during spates of violence decades ago.

Day is also related to two of the young men who were killed recently.

Seeing the cycle repeat is tough. “Obviously, we didn’t do a good job of fixing it before,” Day said.

He called the current times being “in a pandemic within a pandemic” and said the epidemic of violence is as bad as the coronavirus.

“We just can’t accept it in Pittsburgh,” Mayor Bill Peduto said.

The mayor called on people to love and to do so as more than an emotion, but through actions.

These actions include taking ownership of everyone’s place in the community, Peduto said.

“It’s not somebody else’s world and it’s not somebody else’s neighborhood. It’s yours and you own it,” Peduto said.

He called on corporate leaders and others who do business in the city to join the fight.

“If you want to take a gun out of a kid’s hand, give them a summer job,” Peduto said. “Invest back in the neighborhoods.

“We are not going to solve this by putting more police officers on the streets,” he said. “Give people opportunities.”