Against the backdrop of declining homicides, an anti-gun violence group hosted a “Rally for Peace” in West Palm Beach last weekend, supporting families of shooting victims and promoting resources for young men in violent neighborhoods.
The event Saturday organized by Inner City Innovators saw more than 100 people turn out, donned in orange shirts — the color for gun violence awareness — at Coleman Park’s gymnasium, near the once-deadly Tamarind corridor.
Ricky Aiken founded the group more than a decade ago, responding to a spike in violence in the neighborhood. He said Inner City Innovators started out informally in 2015. Volunteers rented vans, responding to shootings by taking young people away from the area where they occurred, in order to prevent retaliation.
The next step, he said, was to mentor young men as part of the “Hope Dealer” program.
“Growing up, the only role models I had to look up to were the neighborhood dope dealers,” he said. “We wanted to go back to our communities and give our young people something better to look up to.”
The rally occurred as Palm Beach County has seen a stark decline in homicides.
READ MORE: Revisiting 'Young Survivors: The Unspoken Trauma of Gun Violence,' a WLRN series
The county’s medical examiner’s office reported 85 killings in 2016. That spiked to 106 in 2018, up to a high of 113 in 2021.
By 2025, however, the number of homicides dropped precipitously — to 67, the medical examiner reported. Community engagement programs, like Aiken's, have been credited with reducing gun violence in other major U.S. cities.
On the humid Saturday afternoon, rally attendees heard from the mother of a Riviera Beach murder victim, “Hope Dealer” program graduates, and teenage participants for a youth-led discussion with mental health professionals.
Jeri Stanley's son, Christopher Coleman, Jr., died a day after he was shot in Riviera Beach on Jan. 2. She told the crowd how the pain never goes away.
" The truth is, after the death of a child, there is no complete peace. A piece of the puzzle is forever missing," she said.
His killing remains unsolved by the Riviera Beach Police Department.
" The killer is still out there, and this too consumes me every day," she said. Members of the crowd embraced her after she finished speaking.
'Speak my mind'
The rally also focused on the graduates of the "Hope Dealer" mentorship program.
Javen Bennett, 22, said, as a result of its influence, his perspective has shifted.
Growing up, “ we either think hoop, football, or rap. If that doesn't work, the streets,” he said.
“A lot of the things that we're around and we view are nothing but negative, and we happen to get drawn into it,” Bennett continued, “Which causes us to make a lot of mistakes that could follow us until we're 50.”
The mentors taught him it was OK to make mistakes and to learn from them, he said.
Richard Perry, 25 and another “Hope Dealer” graduate, said sitting down with other men, who understood his background and experiences, helped him open up and make better choices.
“ The tongue is very powerful,” he said, “ I could speak up and speak my mind and not have to feel no way about anything or any burdens on my back.”
Different answers to the same question
West Palm Beach provides a window into two differing responses to gun violence, over the same time period.
Responding to a spike in murders in 2019, newly-elected Mayor Keith James hired former Chief Frank Adderley to take over the city police department and gave him a mandate to reduce murders. Adderley then created the agency’s so-called “GHOST” unit, which concentrated police attention and arrests in the violent Tamarind corridor.
In the ensuing years, the unit wreaked havoc on the community, leading deadly chases into other cities and effecting violent arrests in West Palm, WLRN revealed in a months-long investigation.
Seven officers were ultimately indicted for their role in a fatal chase and coverup in 2024, and have pleaded not guilty.
Adderley disbanded the unit and was later fired for unrelated, financial misconduct reasons, the mayor said.
Aiken and Inner City Innovators took a different tack to curb murders.
Groups like Aiken’s practice “community violence intervention."
CVI employs what are known as credible messengers — individuals who can speak to the realities of crime-ridden neighborhoods and support the young people experiencing and perpetrating violence.
" We kick them out into the world and we expect them to compete. You can't compete when there's gunshots going off in your community, and that's the norm," Aiken said at the rally.
" We realize that they're gonna need the support to get to a place when they can simply exist as young people," he said.
Since starting out, the group has expanded into Riviera Beach.
Aiken said he has hopes to bring the program countywide.
