MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — The shooting and death of Joshua Corey Jones in Milledgeville marks the first homicide of the year inside the city's limits. However, it's not the first in the community.
Last year, city leaders wanted to create an anti-violence program to combat this type of violence. Some residents continue to be concerned about crime.
Purses, bread, and cigarettes. The Milledgeville Discount Mart on the south side of town has a little bit of everything.
“Everything that you can really use,” Jimmie Dale Jones said.
Jones has lived in Milledgeville her whole life. She says the community has a little bit of everything too. Even things that aren't so good.
“There's definitely a crime problem,” Jones said.
She says gang problems and peer pressure for young people contribute to the long-standing problem
“Gunshots firing, murder. It’s sad that there's nothing being done about it,” Jones said.
Last July, after a wave of gang and gun violence, Mayor Mary Parham Copelan said the city wanted to create an anti-violence crime plan.
They began with a survey.
“We didn't have any sort of survey of any idea of how the community felt about the ongoing violence,” Melissa Smith with the NAACP said. “So, to date we've collected more than 200 surveys.
Smith says they began surveying the community last October. She says they didn’t get many responses with digital versions and decided to make the switch to paper surveys beginning in February.
Surveys were handed out at public events. They contained questions about how people feel about crime, why they think it's happening and what could solve it.
“76% of our respondents said that violence is a somewhat or a very serious problem,” Smith said. “68 said they had never been a victim of a crime. So, they’re not personally impacted in that specific way, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have a personal impact. 64% say they believe crime has increased since they’ve lived in Milledgeville.”
The results also say that over half of surveyors avoid specific areas of town because of the crime.
“Next is to overlay this with additional statistics from local law enforcement, from our health agencies and from our hospital so that we can contextualize these results,” Smith said.
Smith says the NAACP, New Vision, the Georgia Department of Health, hospitals and nonprofits have already begun working on their own community projects.
She says they’ve created a committee and have applied for grants to pay for and build a community garden at the Milledgeville Manor– one of the areas with a lot of concern for safety.
“We care,” Smith said. “People say they need something and we want to help provide that in an effort to just grow the bonds of community all around. That’s what the survey is about.”
We reached out to the mayor and City Manager Hank Griffeth. They said they would not comment until Smith presents results to the City Council next Tuesday.
Smith says they will continue to collect survey information. The ground-breaking for the community garden will happen on Saturday, August 26 at 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.