PINE BLUFF, Ark. — The Pine Bluff Police Department is investigating an overnight homicide at 2702 South Ash Steet, where authorities found 43-year-old Willie Purifoy dead with a gunshot wound.
Now, Pine Bluff community leaders are calling for change in their city regarding gun violence.
"Every time a homicide happens in our city, we lose two people," Rev. Jesse Turner said. "One person killed [and] the other person going to prison. That's the personal loss from our community."
Turner is a local pastor and the executive director of Interested Citizen for Voter Registration. He said every time an act of gun violence is committed, he and other community leaders place a cross in the ground to represent the life that was taken.
"The crosses you see there were put up for the family to let them know that someone is concerned about what happened to their relatives," Turner said.
Turner said gun violence is a vicious cycle that he won't ever get used to, and he wants to take action immediately to try and fix the ongoing issue.
"I'm looking for a law enforcement course that includes community policing," Turner said. "I'm looking for prevention, intervention, and treatment, which cares for young people... I'm looking for neighborhood restoration. Those things will take in the whole gamut."
Turner is aware that gun violence will never go away entirely but said without a strategy to reduce the homicides, they will continue to happen.
"We can't just wake up in the morning, someone has been killed, and we just say, 'Oh well, somebody got killed,' and go along with it," Turner said. "There needs to be some push... Ward 1 would have their own crime prevention strategies, and two, three and four. Each ward will have crime prevention strategies because everything is different in each ward, and if we can develop that, with people getting involved in that neighborhood, I think you can come up with the right things."
Turner said he just hoped that, in the end, they wouldn't have to put up another cross anytime soon.
"This one is up because we want to say we're concerned about you," Turner said. "We know that this is speaking life over death."