Gun violence disproportionately impacts Jacksonville’s Black community, data shows
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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Records show gun violence in Jacksonville continues to disproportionately impact the Black community at an alarming rate.
According to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, in 2017, there were 116 homicides. Of those, 80 victims (68.9%) were Black and 34 victims (29.3%) were white.
In 2020, there were 141 homicides. Of those, 110 were Black victims (78%) versus 30 white victims (21.2%).
Maurice Hobbs was one of those statistics in 2017.
“Maurice had just turned 18, two days before he was shot. January 26, 2017, was the day he began to live through me,” Latasha Hobbs, Maurice Hobbs’s mother, said.
Hobbs was driving to pick up her son when he was shot and killed.