Nine people shot to death in Lauderhill last year and they’re on track to beat that number this year, so the city is launching an effort called “Lauderhill Peace 365.” NBC6’s Ari Odzer reports
Lauderhill is not a big city, but it has suffered a 44% increase in homicides. From three people shot to death in 2022 to nine in 2023, the city is on track, unfortunately, to beat that number this year. So Lauderhill is launching what it calls a movement to change the culture of violence.
It’s called Lauderhill Peace 365, an initiative that includes research to isolate the cause of the local gun violence wave, community engagement encouraging everyone to make a commitment to nonviolence, and free conflict resolution workshops aimed at teenagers, all in conjunction with stepped-up policing.
“Any one of those things isolated by itself will not move the needle, but when you combine them, when you combine great policing with technology, with community involvement and with a movement that really encourages people to shift their mindset, I believe you’re gonna see a change in Lauderhill,” said city commissioner Melissa Dunn.
The nine homicides last year include the unsolved murder, on the Fourth of July, of 19-year-old Destiny Bucknor, who would’ve turned 20 on Saturday.
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“These are human beings that we don’t get back, this is not a toy that you just discard and say, oh, let me go pick up another one at Walmart, these are human lives,” said Brittany Bucknor, Destiny’s mother.
She’s turning her still overwhelming grief into action by joining the Lauderhill Peace 365 movement.
“I wouldn’t put this pain on not even my worst enemy, never in a million years, and my heart goes out to the families that have lost loved ones due to gun violence because it is not easy,” Bucknor said. “Been so much gun violence and plagued with gun violence it’s getting to the point where it’s disgusting, and we shouldn’t have to turn on the news every morning and hear about another shooting and senseless gun violence of a young adult, or a child, and seeing a mother cry.”
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Like the murder of 17-year-old John Pompilus, who was killed during an argument. No one will ever know if conflict resolution skills would’ve saved his life.
“I went to the funeral, Ari, and I will never, ever, ever for as long as I live forget the sound of the mother’s wailing, I don’t want that happening anymore,” Dunn said.
Mancito Telfort wrote a rap song for this effort.
“Because this is where I’m from, and I wouldn’t want another child to go through the things that I went through,” Telfort said.
He says as a former gang member who served two terms in prison, he’s the perfect ambassador to reach teenagers.
“If I could go back, I would go and get straight A’s, the best I could, go to college and network with the individuals who’s going in that positive direction in life because the people I skipped school with, a lot of people I was in the streets with, they either dead or I saw them in prison,” Telfort said.
The official kickoff of Lauderhill Peace 365 is on Monday. City officials are hoping to see dividends from the movement in two to three years.
