Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh appointed Lateef Johnson-Kinsey (pictured), a Syracuse pastor, as the director of the Mayor's Office to Reduce Gun Violence. Friday, April 1, 2022. N. Scott Trimble | strimble@syracuse.com

Syracuse, N.Y. -- Lateef Johnson-Kinsey has seen the way gun violence has rocked Syracuse.

As a pastor, his church has held services for those killed by gun violence. As a dean at the Syracuse Academy of the Sciences, he’s interacted with kids who came to school the day after a shooting near them.

Not long after he was ordained, Johnson-Kinsey’s cousin was shot just blocks from his church. He said he’s lost family members to gun violence.

On Friday, he was tasked with leading the effort to stop what city leaders called a crisis.

“It’s personal for me,” Johnson-Kinsey said.

City officials introduced Johnson-Kinsey as the new director of the Office to Reduce Gun Violence.

When he starts as the director on April 13, Johnson-Kinsey will be charged with stemming a burgeoning problem.

In the last two years, gun violence has ramped up in the city. Syracuse registered its worst marks in the last decade for shootings, victims and murders in 2020. 2021 was the second worst year in the last decade for all three of those numbers.

Johnson-Kinsey grew up in Syracuse, graduated from Nottingham High School and has been a pastor at The Well of Hope Church on South Avenue since 2013.

He’s currently the dean of students at Syracuse Academy of Science, a job he’ll be leaving today for his new job at the city. Johnson-Kinsey has also been part of Syracuse Cure Violence (also called SNUG), a violence reduction group that operates out of the Southwest Community Center, and worked with a team that deals with people who are on parole or serving probation.

The city will pay Johnson-Kinsey $65,000 a year to lead the office.

“No one person can do this. No one person has all the answers,” Johnson-Kinsey said Friday. “Syracuse as a community, we’ll do this together.”

Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens, who led the search for someone to head up the office, said Kinsey is a “unicorn” because of his experience in law enforcement as a former corrections officer, his work as a pastor and his extensive experience working with kids.

“We need somebody . . . that can have a presence in all of these different rooms and all these different circles,” Walsh said, “to be just as comfortable walking into the public safety building as they are walking down any block in the city of Syracuse.”

Walsh said Johnson-Kinsey will be a “glue guy” and “point guard.” The city’s goal is to have Johnson-Kinsey coordinate with the city’s existing anti-gun violence initiatives, like SNUG, while the city finds ways to fill in the gaps.

The Syracuse Common Council has already approved a request from the mayor’s office to spend $70,000 on a study by Chicago-based community violence prevention expert Chico Tillmon. He is expected to identify root causes of violence and gaps in services.

Tillmon will begin his study in May and it is expected to last through the summer, Owens said. Johnson-Kinsey will use that study to identify ways the city can help reduce gun violence.

Some gaps have already been identified. Owens said the city is looking into creating respite places for gun violence victims, so that people who have been shot are not immediately going back to the same place they were shot.

The Syracuse chapter of the National Action Network, a civil rights group started by Rev. Al Sharpton, suggested the creation of the office before the pandemic. They recommended the office be based on an office in New York City.

NAN president Pastor Bernard Alex said New York City’s gun violence reduction office created a list of services for those who are considered at-risk, something Syracuse doesn’t have and he believes would be beneficial.

“We are a service-rich community,” Owens said Friday. “We just don’t get those services to people in a time of need.”

Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Chris Libonati by phone at 585-290-0718 or by email at clibonati@syracuse.com.

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