Springfield, MA – MORE (Mother Overlooked Reaching out Empowerment – fighting for justice for the families of the murdered and missing in Springfield) held a memorial vigil, the third of a series to call attention to the number of unsolved BIPOC homicides in the city of Springfield.
Since 2017 there are 40+ unsolved recorded murders in Springfield.
Members of the MORE community came together to unite families who continue to suffer over the loss of their loved ones, and the on-going pain of not nearly enough happening to not only solve these crimes, but to also restore and transform justice as well.
MORE members are organizing press conference / memorial vigils at sites of unsolved homicides in Springfield. This was the third memorial vigil of the series and is in honor of Tamara Clark: 2/9/83 to 6/26/20.
Tangela Clark, Tamara’s mother spoke at the memorial vigil. In describing what happened, Tangela reported, “It was a Friday night, June 26, 2020, when Tamara was out and saw a man she knew and hadn’t seen for a while. She stopped and got out of her car to say a quick hello lasting about two minutes when a truck drove by and shot my daughter twice and shot her friend four or five times in the back of his leg. He survived, but unfortunately my daughter didn’t make it.” When speaking about her daughter she said, “Tamara was a ‘beautiful soul’ and someone took that away from us. My daughter was intelligent, beautiful, outgoing and she loved to travel.
Her murder is still unsolved it feels like the police department doesn’t care about solving my daughter’s case. I am now trying to get a drive-by shooting law on the books in honor of my daughter.” She added, “We as a community need to fight together to end this gun violence in our community and state.”
Also speaking at the memorial vigil was Juanita Batchelor, Executive Director of MORE. Juanita is mother to Darrell Lee Jenkins, Jr., who was also killed by gun violence and remains an unsolved murder. Juanita said, “My son’s murder is still unsolved after all these years; and there are so many others, and the list keeps growing. I have stayed in touch with the police about the investigation, but nothing happens. Police generally say that the community needs to talk about what happened and without that they don’t have information. This seems to me to be weak response. I founded MORE to bring those impacted by gun violence/homicides together to organize and fight for our rights”
The final speaker was Minister Charles Stokes, member of MORE MEN.
Charles about police, policing, and what needs to happen (MORE Solutions), and how to join the growing movement to build healthy communities and attain peace and justice. About all this Minister Stokes explained, “We have a police department in the city of Springfield that was under a two-year Department of Justice investigation that resulted in a scathing report that stated that the narcotics unit needlessly escalated encounters with community members and that they used a pattern of excessive force. There is now a federal court ordered consent decree placed upon the SPD. With community relations so terrible how on earth do the police expect our community to trust them with such serious and sensitive information?” Charles added, “In terms of fighting for justice for the families who have suffered a homicide, we are going beyond the SPD at this point, calling for the Hampden County DA to do their due justice to help families who have suffered. Let’s also remember that these families of unsolved murders are largely all BIPOC. The murder victims who are white generally have their cases solved and closed.”
