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HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – The city of Harrisburg is no stranger to gun violence, but so far this year, police report that the number of shootings is on the decline. Despite that, advocates remain adamant that more change is still needed.
Tone Cook is one of those advocates. He was just 17 when he lost his younger brother Michael, who was 15 when he passed.
“They [Michael and a friend] were playing with a gun, something they shouldn’t have at that age,” Cook said. “He passed a week and a half before his 16th birthday.”
That was in 1997, but for Cook, the loss is still fresh. That’s why for the past four years, Cook’s worked to turn his pain into purpose. He created “Michael’s Memory PUSH” in hopes of connecting communities across Harrisburg.
“PUSH is to push them all together,” Cook said.
Cook’s doing that as the city of Harrisburg highlights a slight decrease in gun violence.
This time last year, there were 45 shootings, 10 of them which were deadly. This year, there have been 31 shootings, five of which have been fatal.
“Typically speaking, we do start to see [gun violence] start to slow down with the warmer months coming to an end,” Lt. Kyle Gautsch with the Harrisburg City Police said. “But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”
Cook found those statistics somewhat shocking. He just lost his friend Richon Strain-Hankerson in July after he was shot and killed in Harrisburg.
“I swear, I’ve been to 10 different funerals in the past nine months,” Cook said. “I’m tired of hearing the mothers cry.”
Advocates are tired of it, too.
“Gun violence is more than a problem, it’s a crisis,” Josh Fleitman of Ceasefire Pennsylvania said. “Last year, we lost about 1,900 Pennsylvanians. There’s no corner of our Commonwealth that’s been left untouched.”
According to Harrisburg Police, young people are often the ones committing the acts of violence.
“As of right now, the majority of shootings we’re investigating are involving teenagers and [people] in their early twenties,” Gautsch said.
In 2020, the Commonwealth launched a violence dashboard, which breaks down shooting statistics by county. It can be found here.
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