Tops Supermarket Buffalo, NY (Photo/Associated Press)
By Karen Stokes
This week marks two years since a self-described white supremacist killed 10 Black people at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo.
There will be a permanent memorial honoring the victims of the racist mass shooting at Tops supermarket.
The space features a sculpture entitled Unity, which was created by Buffalo-based artist Valeria Cray and her son Hiram Cray, as well as 10 granite honor bollards for each victim. It also features a pear tree gifted to the City of Buffalo through the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s Survivor Tree Seedling Program, which provides seedlings from a tree that survived the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Greg Jackson, Deputy Director of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention was in Buffalo, NY to observe the second anniversary of a tragedy.
“The community here is obviously still in pain because there’s so much loss and when I was getting out of my car someone asked me if I lost someone here and I said, yes we all lost someone here. He agreed and that’s really the sentiment that everyone here suffered a loss whether it’s a family member, a church member, a security guard, a faith leader in the community, a teacher that they learned from there’s a lot of folks hurting.”
But Jackson revealed that there’s also a lot of energy and excitement because since that tragedy, there are the leaders that testified before congress that helped us get the bipartisan Save the Community Act passed, the first bill in 30 years on gun violence.
“These are leaders who introduced the president of the United States during his largest address on gun violence, these are leaders who from that day are now city council members, they’re now running for state legislature. So there’s so much momentum and excitement and passion from the folks here to bring about change and frankly they’ve been doing it and changing our country for the better. But also inspiration and renewed excitement amongst a community that’s been fighting so hard for two years,” Jackson said.
Once the bipartisan Save the Community Act was passed the Office of Gun Violence Prevention was the team charged with implementing it. So that’s $30 billion to address violence that includes measures to expand background checks, make sure those who are under 21 receive a check on their juvenile history and their mental health history before or being approved to purchase. We’ve cracked down on gun trafficking we’ve prosecuted over 700 gun traffickers to reduce the flow of illegal guns in our communities, we’ve worked to improve and strengthen victim services and our team actually created the first ever FEMA style response emergencies like what happened here in Buffalo to make sure when something like this happens we have the Department of Education, Department of Human Services, the Small Business Administration and seven other agencies all prepared to deploy and support communities recover and heal and that didn’t exist before Buffalo. Those are just a few things that our office is playing a huge role in as we work together to address this crisis of gun violence.
“This crisis is relentless, which is hard. That’s why the President created an office that can work on this issue,” Jackson said. “Our office is working with communities to save people knowing that it’s going to take a consistent aggressive effort to address this crisis and it’s starting to work. Last year we saw the deepest decline in homicides in American history with a 13.5% decline of homicides and we know that is a direct result of dollars that this President poured into communities to help community safety but also lifesaving policy measures and so we’re going to keep fighting despite the aggressive nature of this health crisis but that’s really our biggest challenge.”
An ABC News analysis of the most recent FBI data shows that of the more than 8,500 hate crimes reported nationwide between 2020 and 2022, Black people were targeted in 52.3% of the offenses. Between 2021 and 2022, the numbers rose from 2,217 to 3,421, making Black people four times more likely to be targeted than the overall U.S. non-Hispanic Black population. Hate crimes targeting Black people under the age of 18 rose 10% in 2020, 12% in 2021 and 14.6% in 2022, according to the data.
“Unfortunately we’ve seen hate crimes rising since 2016 and I think we are in a world where unfortunately that type of language and those types of actions have not been held accountable. For those who have spoken out in such ways have been overlooked and sometimes celebrated by the previous president. President Biden is committed to changing that, he’s made it very clear that there’s no room for hate in our country whether it’s verbal or physical and we have to start holding individuals accountable.”