They say nothing good happens late at night, but on weekends this summer, in some of Savannah’s most dangerous neighborhoods, something inspiring and impactful is happening late into the notorious nights. In Grant Center Gymnasium on Savannah’s westside at 123 West St. and in the W.W. Law Center Gym at 910 E. Bolton St., a newly launched city program called “Summer Night Lights” is attracting hundreds of teens every Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
Opening the pair of gyms to youth and young adults, three times per week from 6 p.m. to midnight, the City of Savannah is trying to curb crime issues among teens and young adults by providing food, basketball and other activities for any kids looking for options other than the streets. The City of Savannah’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement was created in January of 2022 with the goal of “implementing crime reduction strategies and increasing neighborhood safety through a collaborative community approach.” John Bush is the first ever Director of ONSE, and he is the one in charge of overseeing the Summer Night Lights program, which he strongly advocated for since taking the job on January 18, 2022.
“Our target age group is 11 to 18. Every Thursday, Friday, Saturday we feed them (7-9 p.m.) and we allow them to take advantage of city facilities during hours when a lot of other stuff is going down just outside the doors on the streets,” Bush said, while watching a pickup basketball game still going strong well past 10:30 p.m. in the Grant gym on Thursday, June 22.
“We’ve had about 80 or 90 people at [Grant] on average so far. And that’s per night, so we allow the younger kids to stay until 9 or 9:30 p.m. and the older ones, they usually come in around this time and with the music and basketball. But it’s safe and it’s a realistic option for most of these kids who have never had many options besides the streets before now.”
In 2022, the budget for ONSE was $1.3 million. In 2023, it’s $1.6 million. It’s a big responsibility for Bush and his team. A fact that he is well aware of.
“The mindset for me and [the ONSE staff] is first to be on the same page about all of it. Why are we doing this? Do we all understand the goals here? It starts there and the community [as a] whole can see this investment is worth it. But it starts with us and it really starts with me,” said Bush. “In our office, I have a wall filled with the photos of every [homicide] victim we lost in 2021 and 2022. That is why we are here. We don’t want to see anymore faces on that wall. We’re working towards that every day.”
Bush didn’t know it at the time, but at almost the exact time of his touting a decline in gun-related homicides so far in 2023, another victim was about to be shot and killed just a few miles from where we stood. The official SPD release detailed the incident early the following morning: “At approximately 10 p.m., officers responded to a convenience store located at 1114 Abercorn St. and discovered an adult male victim suffering from serious gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital. Detectives continue to investigate the incident.”
It was the fifth homicide reported to Savannah Police in 2023 and the fourth by gun. The victim was 24-year-old Tyrone Kinlaw. It’ll mean another victim photo on the wall at Bush’s office.
Although 17 homicides had already taken place by this same time in 2022, the June murders serve as a glaring reminder that the threat of gun violence rising in the summer months (as it has done traditionally over the years) is still very much alive. It isn’t proof that a program works or doesn’t work. Rather, it’s proof of the need for programs and options for the victims and criminals alike.
“I don’t want to be in [any] more hospitals with these families,” said Bush, the longtime resident of Savannah. ”I’ve seen kids [in] this gym one day and the next day they’re lying in the street or hospital.”
Savannah went nearly 100 days without a murder from late 2022 until the first homicide of 2023 occurred the first week of March.
Nazentea Phillips, 18, was shot on March 5 on East 55th Street and he died from gunshot wounds at Memorial Hospital three days later on March 8. Nearly 70 days went by until the city’s next homicide, but on June 10 a pair of homicides (one by gunshot) brought the count to three. Jamie Burton, 25, was the victim shot and killed in Westlake Apartments on Savannah’s Westside that day.
Eight days later, on June 18, 20-year-old Rion Plummer was shot and killed on Congress Street in downtown Savannah bringing the homicide count to four before the June 22 murder of Kinlaw became the fifth. Plummer, a Jenkins High graduate, was one of those young men who Bush would routinely see in the gym for SNL.
“Rion was a frequent attender of Summer Night Lights,” said Bush, a Windsor Forest graduate. “He was one of our guys really.”
For Bush and many others atop the city’s pushback programs to violent crime, the run of homicides in June is not unexpected.
“This has all been based on a data-driven approach,” Bush said. He believes in using funds to provide positive outlets for teens and young adults as opposed to directing the money towards more law enforcement and more arrests. “If we can save one murder from happening, it’s all worth it.”
Bush isn’t just saying that. There is actual evidence to put a dollar-amount on the price of each homicide. Wages lost, court costs, investigations, imprisonment and many other factors go into the numbers. It’s clear that each homicide costs the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In fact, an internal report entitled “Gunfire Analysis Value Report” was given by ShotSpotter to the SPD on January 30, 2023 and it breaks down exactly what the metrics looked like for Savannah from January 1, 2021 to December 31, 2022. Now called SoundThinking, the publicly traded (and somewhat controversial) gunfire location service company lists Joel Vargas as the presenter of the January 30 report.
Within it are charts, graphs and exact address locations for the number of rounds fired at any given time of day, days of the week, months in the year and more highly specific information. In short, it reveals a lot.
Perhaps the most telling part of the 31-page report is the table showing what each homicide costs. According to the report, there were 56 fatal shooting victims in Savannah from January 1, 2021 through December 31, 2022. The total cost of gun violence was $46.3 million ($46,357,472) and the average cost per gun homicide was $827,812. So, Bush isn’t just saying the words to say them. Every homicide stopped, is not only a life saved, but also more than $800,000 saved. It may not be the black and white, but for Bush, the data is vital.
“The data tells us it doesn’t work to simply to just … you can’t just expect the people to change or actions to change because of increased police numbers. That’s part of it, getting the one-percent of kids that cause the crime off the streets so they don’t keep influencing our 10-to-20 percent of kids that are sort of in the middle. We want that group to have a choice, a real choice.”
The data is what led to the ONSE department’s initial creation. And the data was too damning to ignore. Trends are fairly easy to spot, and one of the trends is seemingly spiking as the temperature is rising. In late May, Assistant Police Chief Robert Gavin spoke with Georgia Public Broadcasting about the decline in homicides to that point on the calendar. Written and reported by Jake Shore, the story includes a prophetic paragraph summarizing Gavin’s outlook succinctly.
“While the murder rate drop is a refreshing statistic,” Shore wrote. “Gavin warned that the onset of summer could mean more crime. The season is typically when more crime occurs.”
It’s no secret. Savannah’s violent crime has been an issue for several years now. How to fix it is an inexact science to be sure.
For politicians and citizens alike, the number of gun homicides is what raises the most concern. The city’s crime stats from 2021 and 2022 more than justify the concern. According to the SPD Official 2022 Crime Report, 28 of the city’s 32 homicides in 2022 were by gun. Of the 32 total homicide victims, 23 (72%) were black males and 24 (75%) were aged 36-or-under. The numbers were almost identical to the year before. In 2021, 28 of the 34 reported homicides in Savannah were committed via gun.
Moving forward into July, Bush knows the program he oversees is more important than ever. It was a quiet start to 2023 in terms of gun violence, but June’s homicides prevent anyone from celebrating any accomplishments just yet.
“No new faces. That’s my motto for 2023,” Bush says. “Everyday when we look at those faces, we’re going to work to make sure that they push us forward and next year we’ll do the same. If we can’t eliminate the [deaths] we can decrease them. We can save people that way.”