- Last year, spurred by Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, the Dallas City Council approved $1.6 million to launch a community violence intervention program known as Dallas CRED. The program relies on trained community experts, known as credible messengers, to build relationships with people at high risk of becoming either a victim or perpetrator of gun violence. The model leverages the fact that gun violence is contagious, spreading through cycles of retaliation between groups of people within the same social network. Thus, Dallas CRED works to intervene in brewing conflicts to prevent violence before it happens.
- Dallas CRED is operational in a handful of neighborhoods, including Oak Cliff, where the team includes people who live and grew up in the community. For decades, the Dallas Police Department considered the area around an apartment complex in Oak Cliff to be the single most violent place in Dallas. But no longer. The area just dropped off the police department’s list of top hotspots for violent crime, and Police Chief Eddie Garcia credits community leaders from Dallas CRED for contributing to the reduction in gun violence: “I credit the hard work of the men and women of the Dallas Police Department but also our community partners …. That [drop] didn’t happen by accident. That happened because of the great community support of people that live in that neighborhood.”
