JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jacksonville's 2020 homicide rate has broken 2019's rate, which was the highest the city saw in almost two decades.
According to the Jacksonville Sherriff's Office's transparency website and First Coast News' homicide tracker, there have been at least 160 homicide in 2020, passing 158 in 2019.
The there have been at least five shootings since early Sunday morning. Jacksonville has seen more than 420 total in 2020, 134 of them deadly. The city's homicide count stands at 160 with shootings, stabbings, beatings and undetermined deaths factored in.
Malik Brown was the first victim of a deadly shooting in 2020. His former coach is now reminding people Brown, and the others killed, are not just statistics.
"It's heartbreaking because we talk about it, we see the numbers and it shouldn't be until a young person dies that we start hitting the streets hard and say 'stop the violence.' We need to be hitting the streets every day when something doesn't happen," Omar Simmons said.
Simmons coached Brown in football.
"A lot of times people from afar who do not know a young person, they see it on the news or they see it in the media, they just assume the worst and that's not always the case," he said.
Brown was the third former player he has lost to violence in Jacksonville, he said.
"Each one I lost I would've thought something would've changed," Simmons said.
"We don't show up until something bad happens, or in a community from a community standpoint 'until it happens to my child or my loved one it's not my concern,' but it should be," he said.
The 18-year-old Brown was shot and killed during a robbery at an apartment complex in Grand Park in January, according to police, and left behind a young daughter.
Ten months after his death, 159 other families are now a part of a club no one asked to join.
Simmons said community and government leaders need to work together to mentor young people and give them a different outlet.
"I grew up in Jacksonville and 50 deaths when I was growing up was a record number, and now because the mentality of our young people is so different, we're not addressing that. We're addressing how bad they are, or they're a part of this gang or that gang, but it's the mentality and we have to give them something that is different," he said.
Something different, Simmons says, so lives like Brown's are not lost.
Mayor Lenny Curry, Sheriff Mike Williams and State Attorney Melissa Nelson announced a gun bounty program in October as part of long-term investments to reduce violence in the city.
If you turn in someone who is carrying a gun illegally, and that anonymous tip leads to an arrest and the gun is off the streets, you’ll get $1,000.
We reached out to JSO for a comment on this latest grim milestone and they referred us to the gun bounty program. We also reached out to the mayor’s office and haven’t heard back.