JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jacksonville's violent weekend of shootings spilled into Monday afternoon with a woman shot in the thigh.
It's the latest of at least six non-deadly shootings since last Friday.
"There is a huge level of frustration," said Kim Varner.
He has a stake in making Jacksonville safer. He lost his son to a shooting in 2015.
Varner was part of Cure Violence when it started in 2019. It's a city program to reduce crime in Jacksonville, but he quit because he says it was ineffective.
"It's just got to be boots on the ground. You can't sit behind a desk and solve this problem," he said.
Earlier in August, Mayor Lenny Curry announced plans to add a third Cure Violence location after a 15-year-old was shot at a park.
One of Varner's allies, Brother Muhammad, who also left Cure Violence, believes the city isn't doing enough.
"There is no way that I can go to grieving families who have lost loved ones and tell them that this program is working when they just buried their father, buried their husbands, their brothers and sisters," Brother Mohammad told First Coast News.
According to our own records, there's been a total of 313 shootings in 2020, which resulted in 97 deaths. A total of 20 kids have also been shot with 13 of them killed.
Varner welcomes any invitation to talk to the mayor about solutions.
"If we had more help, more productive type help, we could slow this problem down a bit," Varner said.