GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Seven deadly shootings in the past six weeks in the Grand Rapids area has a pastor continuing his call for a state of emergency.
"We have to identify this city and county-wide and declare it a problem." Rev. Jerry Bishop said.
For more than a decade, the senior pastor at LifeQuest Urban Outreach Center has campaigned for a state of emergency on the urban male.
"How many more lives will be lost until we dive in with a resource-driven initiative?" Bishop said.
On Saturday, the pastor will lead a funeral for a victim of homicide. Last Sunday, he met with and prayed for a grieving, pregnant woman who had lost her boyfriend to gun violence. Bishop routinely sees suicides, too.
"All of these should be clarion calls for this supposed world-class community," he said. "What's disheartening is that we'll keep burying our young men and women and we'll keep building buildings."
Bishop says Grand Rapids is home to one of the best healthcare systems in the country and does well at developing its economy. He says the youth and the nonprofits and programs that help them are not being lifted up by this nearby prosperity and are "simply not being listened to" by those who lead the city.
"How much more death, suicide, gun violence, low academic scores, high levels of unhoused teens — how much more of that will grow until we simply, as a community, say, ‘Enough is enough?'" he said.
From Memorial Day to Labor Day in Grand Rapids, a total of five homicides were recorded by GPRD, according to publicly available crime data.
In addition, a total of twelve homicides from January through August of this year is the highest the city has seen in the past three years.
Homicides in Grand Rapids (January through August)
- 2022: 18
- 2023: 13
- 2024: 8
- 2025: 7
- 2026: 12
These numbers, of course, do not include the three deadly shootings that happened in recent weeks in nearby Gaines Township, Wyoming and Kentwood.
Kentwood Wyoming Byron Center
'We need to spread love': Family mourns 25-year-old fatal Kentwood shooting
Bishop calls this current reality a "cloud of hopelessness."
But hope, he says, can clear the skies.
"Hope is the largest unfunded initiative in West Michigan," he said. "Hope offers a meal, a coat. Hope offers a conversation, a safe place."
Hope does not deny the weather but deals with it.
"We're in a storm," Bishop said. "It's time for us to start investing in the rebuilding of lives outside of schools and outside of gyms, to go boots on ground in the neighborhood, just encouraging some people."
In a statement to FOX 17, Grand Rapids Police Chief Joe Trigg said, "As I say in my monthly crime stats presentation, one homicide is too many and we’ve had two this week."
"I can understand why the community is concerned, and while I can’t get into the details of ongoing investigations, I can say that neither of them is a random situation and our detectives are working hard to put all the pieces together."
"The biggest thing people who are concerned about gun violence in our community can do is to spread the word that guns are not the answer for disputes."
"Put the guns down."
