Trauma of violence reverberates among youth

Sam Pollard Sr. talks Dec. 26, 2021, about losing his son to gun violence while reflecting on life in west Jackson. Charles A. Smith/MCIR

By Candace Mckenzie
Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting

Fun-loving Sam Pollard Jr. won friends in his Jackson community but he had serious dreams of owning his own home.

Those dreams ended abruptly Feb. 25, 2021, when a close friend shot the 32-year-old dead on North Prentiss Street in west Jackson, leaving Pollard’s three children – two girls and a boy – to bear the trauma of violence that has scarred so many youth in Mississippi’s capital city.

Pollard Sr. said his son floated in and out of “the wrong path”.

“He got into some of the wrong people out on the street,” explained Pollard. “It kind of creeped up on him because he had family members I didn’t like him hanging out with, and I said ‘that’s one you really don’t need to be hanging out with because he’s up to no good.’ ”

Traumatic events, like community violence, produce the same effects on those who are not directly impacted as on those who are, said Mallory Malkin, chief clinical officer for Behavioral Health Services at the Department of Mental Health.

Neurobiological or neurochemical changes “cause the brain to develop differently,” she said. Traumalike symptoms like hypervigilance and difficulty with attachment in relationships become a part of everyday behavior, especially in early exposure during childhood.

Now, nearly a year after his son was killed, Pollard and his family are still grieving their loss and dealing with the cycle of gun violence and death that continues to plague many Jackson communities.

From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Austin, Texas, an explosion of violence is ripping across America’s major cities with at least nine major cities surpassing their annual homicides last year, according to a CNN article on gun violence and major American cities. Jackson is another major city being rattled with violence. Homicides claimed a record 155 lives in 2021, and the toll is continuing into the new year, with teenagers and an expectant mother numbered among the dead. Fear, discontentment with city leadership, and overall desensitization often drown out ways to battle Jackson’s gun violence, leaving one perspective lost in the midst of the noise – the children and teens left to deal with the trauma and violence.

Pollard said he believes the solution lies in affirming the city’s youth.

“Most people have a grandma or people in the neighborhood they can go to or talk to. Seek those people, and they will steer them in the right direction. When you see that young person struggling, give them an encouraging word,” said Pollard.

A Teacher’s Experience With Gun Violence

Former teacher Olivia Cote knows the pain of losing students to gun violence. She lost several during her time at Murrah High School.

“Those first two I actually wound up speaking at both of their funerals as a former teacher of theirs, and their parents asked me to come and speak,” Cote said.

“And, you become at a loss for words when you lose an 18-year-old or 19-year-old who are just beginning their life.”

As painful as her own experience has been, Cote knows it runs deeper for victims’ families and students.

“I’ve never experienced loss to gun violence, so I can only imagine the pain that they go through,” she said.

Cote also says gun violence is a systemic issue in Jackson, not limited to the city’s children and teens.

"All kids have good things in them, and I think it’s our job as a community and as an educational system and all of that to recognize that and to help them as much as we can in the system that they’re in to bring that out of them,” Cote said.

Olivia Cote, Mississippi program director at IDEA, a nonprofit that works with students, educators, families and communities, talks Feb. 5, 2022, about educational opportunity as a way of reducing crime in Jackson, Miss. Charles A. Smith/MCIR

Ripple effects of violence on children and teens

Community violence is listed as an “Adverse Childhood Experience” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which notes it can lead to short-term or chronic physical health, mental conditions, and behavioral difficulties.

What this means for children and teens constantly exposed to gun violence is their brain development and behavior is altered, which could produce mental health or behavioral difficulties well into their adulthood.

“If you haven’t directly experienced the traumatic event, but you’re viewing it. You’re a receiver of it. That’s just gonna have a serious effect neurobiologically as well as neurochemically as actually experiencing a trauma if it’s over extended periods of time,” Malkin, the chief clinical officer for Behavorial Health Service, said.

Still, she said, trauma affects everyone differently.

“So, when looking at the individual, there are protective factors and risk factors. The more protective factors an individual has, the less likely it will negatively impact them. If you have a higher degree of resiliency, which is defined in a variety of different ways, you might be less likely to experience that more severe end of the negative impact,” Malkin explains.

While advocacy for mental health care has increased over the last few years, the stigma of mental illness still pervades most communities, especially communities of color and other marginalized communities. Jackson’s population is over 82% Black, which would make that disparity more glaring and the need even greater amid the growing violence.

Working to dispel this stigma in the state, Malkin encourages people affected by the violence in Jackson to “reach out to their community resources” and know that “it is OK to seek help for your own mental health and well-being.”

“There are so many evidence-based approaches to trauma. We’ve learned so much in the several decades as a field. There’s a variety of evidence-based approaches that can be tailored to the individual, so it’s not a death sentence,” Malkin says.

‘We don't want our young people to wait for hope. We want to create an environment that will give them hope’

The Rev. Eddie Charles Spencer's life revolves around uplifting his community as he divides his time between preaching at Alta Woods United Methodist Church in south Jackson and Mount Salem United Methodist Church in Terry.

Rev. Eddie Charles Spencer Courtesy of Empower Mississippi

His life looked drastically different when he was 19 and headed to prison for armed robbery and attempted murder.

Spencer said his family’s battle with poverty in Hollandale, his experiences with bullying, and his anger towards his father eventually pulled him into violence as a youth.

“I was a drug addict. I couldn’t even read on a second-grade level. I was angry. I had already been in and out of training school,” Spencer said.

During his time in prison, Spencer decided to kill two inmates to build up his reputation. He credits his reconnection to faith for stopping him and setting him on a better path.

Now, the Hollandale native is working with Carol O’Connor, the president of Rhyme-N-Reason Foundation to establish a legal literacy program in Jackson, a volunteer program that aims to teach children about the importance of law and government. Rhyme-N-Reason, a Jackson-based nonprofit, publishes writing and art from young people in different countries in a book called Telling Our Stories, according to its website.

Spencer wants former teens and children to reflect on their experiences to create a safer environment for the next generation to come.

“We don't want our young people to wait for hope. We want to create an environment that will give them hope,” Spencer shares.

Othor Cain, a youth ministry leader at his church and director of Strategic Programs and Community Operations at the Boys and Girls Club in Jackson, is another community leader working to give young people hope.

“I’ve seen how Jackson has changed. How it has become progressively violent. And, I’ve seen how youth are looked upon differently because of that,” Cain said.

The afterschool program brings in community members like artists and football players and engages students in workforce development and career readiness programs. It hosts a “Team Night”, where children and teens can stay until 8 p.m. to play basketball, have rap sessions and learn entrepreneurial skills.

Even with programs available in the day and night, Cain knows violence is a constant factor in the lives of students with whom he works.

“There are problems that plague our community, right? We have to be real. We have to deal with those problems,” Cain says.

Cain and other Boys & Girls Club’s workers work with the Hinds County Youth Court to provide students real-life experiences into how the court system works. But, he said he believes community members should pool their resources to lessen youth crime.

“The Boys & Girls Club doesn’t have all the answers. But, if the Boys & Girls Club could partner with other organizations that are doing similar work, then we could take from what’s working for them and what’s working for us. And we put that together, then imagine how successful we could be,” Cain said.

‘The pandemic just kind of put the icing on the cake’ 

Although community leaders are stepping up to protect children and teens, the questions of what is causing the spike in violence and how it can be stopped remain unanswered.

Juan Cloy, who worked in law enforcement for over 26 years, provides his perspective.

“We've had a serious rise in crime prior to the pandemic. But, the pandemic just kind of put the icing on the cake. Obviously, everybody’s stressed out. Not a whole lot to do. Not many places to go. We already had pretty much not many well-known places to go for kids. So, it is our failure as a community and our leaders to provide places and things for our kids to do other than create problems for themselves,” Cloy said.

Cloy also said personal troubles in the lives of Jackson youth and a school environment compromised by infrastructure problems, budget cuts, and ongoing violence can correlate to higher rates of youth crime.

However, he acknowledges a problem that not only affects Jackson but other cities nationwide is a shortage in police departments, where 86% of departments reported a staffing shortage in 2020 according to ABC 7’s Police Officer Shortage part of 8 Year Nationwide Trend. Jackson is down 69 officers from its approved levels.

“I’m not saying that the police can stop crime, right? What I am saying is that there is an attitude of lawlessness because we are extremely short on police,” Cloy said.

In addition to increasing more police in the city, Cloy said he believes Jackson teens and children “should be taught the level of criminal justice” to know their rights.

Cloy said ShotSpotter, a policing platform that alerts local, state and federal law enforcement to the source of a gunshot, once existed in Jackson and should be re-implemented to reduce the number of gunshot sounds in the city.

“You think about the trauma and the PTSD that our young kids have when they hear gunshots. You know, I have a god child that, when he hears gunshots and he’s outside playing, he just takes off running and runs in the house. And, these gunshots can be five, 10, 15 blocks away,” Cloy said.

Leading the city now in his second term, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said he does not have the same experiences as some Jackson teens and children who are constantly bombarded with violence in their communities nor does he have unlimited power and resources to combat gun violence.

With increasing violence and trust faltering both publicly and privately amid this crisis, the mayor said he is focusing on what he, city leaders, and organizations can and are doing to alleviate the city’s ongoing battle with violence: relationship building with youth that aims at creating a different, nonviolent approach to conflict resolution.

“We’re trying to be a bridge to make those relationships and have the intel of what conflicts are taking place, and they become the credible messengers to say, ‘Listen, the way that you’re going about this. There’s no win in it for you. Let’s talk about what your conflict is. Let’s talk about how we resolve this,’” Lumumba said.

Although violence interruption is listed as a prevention to community violence on the CDC and Community Violence, the popular proposed solutions are more arrests and more police officers.

Those solutions are not always feasible or productive, Lumumba said.

“We have young people that are firing weapons. They didn’t say who they were and who they were firing at or who they might have been shooting at. They’re not telling. So, it’s a misdemeanor that our police officers have to do a field release on. Now, all of the available common sense to them surrounding the circumstances lets them know there’s a major or different issue afoot. (But) they can only operate within the confines of the law in which they enforce. … they can’t just simply take those misdemeanors and put them in jail or lock them up,” Lumumba says.

Lumumba brings it back to the community and encourages Jackson residents to pitch in to help combat violence and protect youth.

“We’re so deeply entrenched in these problems. And, really, whatever your gift or ability is, use it. If you’re a pastor, use the word and use your ability to organize community. If you cook, cook for some people and use that as a means of engagement to talk to them,” Lumumba said.

Lumumba said his older brother was shot in the head when he was a child so he understands the desire to seek revenge, a mentality rooted in much of the violence taking hold in Jackson.

“What I’ve come to understand after the feelings of wanting justice and wanting vengeance is that ultimately what we all want and need most of all is for the harm to stop” Lumumba said. “So, we have to be bold enough to employ any and every measure that allows the harm to stop.”

This story was produced by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization that is exposing wrongdoing, educating and empowering Mississippians, and raising up the next generation of investigative reporters. Sign up for our newsletter.