Why Does This Exist?

The CDC’s National Vital Statistics System records roughly 20,000 gun homicide deaths in the United States annually. What follows is how law enforcement leaders, researchers, trauma surgeons, and program officials describe the gap that community violence intervention was built to fill.

The Problem: Violence Concentrates and Repeats

The epidemiological consensus holds that “most gun violence isn’t random” but instead “often spreads through small groups of people who know each other.” Seventy-three percent of respondents in a 2024 national survey found this description convincing.

In June 2024, the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory declaring firearm violence a public health crisis, describing violence as spreading through identifiable social networks in patterns analogous to infectious disease transmission. Epidemiologist Gary Slutkin, founder of the Cure Violence model, first applied this framework in the early 2000s, treating the interruption of retaliatory cycles as a containment strategy.

The concentration data bears this out. In Chicago, fifteen neighborhoods account for roughly half of the city’s gun violence, per the Chicago Tribune. In Orlando, the Advance Peace program focuses on what program worker Raysean Brown described to WESH as “the guys that are committing the gun violence or most likely to be the victim.” In Aurora, Colorado, the SAVE program targets what Division Chief Mark Hildebrand described as “specific social groups of kids in the highest risk.”

A Minneapolis analysis found that 41% of shooting victims were shot again within five years. Dr. Ashley Williams Hogue, a trauma surgeon in Mobile, Alabama, has described operating on the same patients in separate shooting incidents.

The Status Quo: What Policing Can and Cannot Do

Several law enforcement leaders have described the structural boundary in specific terms.

Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul told WAFB: “Over 47% of our shooting incidents happen inside of a house or on a property. I could have 200 more officers on the streets and it wouldn’t solve the problem.”

Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling has said: “We can’t arrest our way out of this… What we should be trying to do is build our communities and build our children.”

Aurora Division Chief Mark Hildebrand, in charge of homicide investigations, told reporters he supports CVI because he recognizes the limitations of enforcement alone.

Commander Andre Parham of the Chicago Police Department put the access problem directly: CVI workers have “the ability to communicate and build relationships in a way that us, the police, we just can’t. It just is not possible.”

These are not ideological arguments against policing. They are operational assessments from officers who describe a gap between what enforcement can reach and where retaliatory violence incubates — private conversations, social media disputes, the emotional aftermath of a previous shooting.

The Human Cost of the Gap

The Minneapolis data — 41% of shooting victims reshot within five years — describes the cycle at the individual level. Dr. Williams Hogue’s experience in Mobile describes it at the clinical level: the hospital treats the wound and discharges the patient back into the same conditions.

For families, the ProPublica investigation by Alec MacGillis documented what happens when intervention exists. In Oakland, violence interrupter Joseph Truehill met the family of a murdered 15-year-old at the hospital, where the teen “was pronounced deceased on arrival, and he stayed with them until 5 a.m.” He “connected the mother to long-term support, checked on her daily for two weeks, ordered DoorDash meals, helped with funeral costs, provided personal care services before the funeral, organized support for her surviving children, and connected her to a support group.” The mother testified: “If I didn’t [get support]… I might be in retaliation mode because I didn’t get help that I needed back then… I would have been so buried in anger… Without them, I don’t think I would have made it through mentally.”

That testimony illustrates the counterfactual: without intervention, grief becomes retaliatory intent.

The Public Health Framework

Dr. Randi Smith, the trauma surgeon leading Grady Hospital’s IVYY program in Atlanta, described the approach in a 2021 AJC op-ed: treat violence like any infectious disease, with containment, root cause analysis, and prevention of spread. Baltimore hospital leaders have described how hospitals have moved beyond simply treating wounds and discharging patients back into the same conditions.

The U.S. Surgeon General’s 2024 advisory formalized this framing at the federal level, describing firearm violence as “a public health crisis in America.” The framework shifts the intervention point upstream — adding prevention where criminal justice provides only post-harm response — and changes outcome metrics from arrests and convictions to shootings prevented and lives stabilized.

What Changed: Why CVI Is Growing Now

Three convergent developments accelerated CVI’s growth. Baltimore Safe Streets launched in 2007. Cure Violence has operated since the early 2000s. But the field expanded rapidly when the evidence, the funding, and the endorsements arrived together.

The evidence base matured. The University of Chicago’s 2024 READI evaluation found a 65% reduction in shooting and homicide arrests among 2,456 participants (though the pre-specified primary outcome did not reach conventional statistical significance; a 40-month follow-up is forthcoming). A 2024 Denver GRID evaluation found participants roughly 70% less likely to perpetrate violence among 143 participants. The University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Choose to Change evaluation (2,074 youth) found approximately a 50% reduction in violent-crime arrests at two years, sustained through 36 months. Johns Hopkins tracked Baltimore Safe Streets from 2007 through 2022 and found 22% fewer homicides than predicted in program areas.

Federal investment accelerated. The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) sent billions in flexible funding to local governments, many of which directed portions to CVI. A February 2024 White House estimate credited CVI with contributing to the 12.4% national homicide decline.

That investment has since contracted sharply. In April 2025, the DOJ terminated more than 360 grants valued at $811 million across public safety programs, with roughly $145 to $169 million specifically targeting CVI, per Reuters and the Council on Criminal Justice. The White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention closed. Baltimore’s ROCA program lost $1 million overnight; LifeBridge Health, which operates six Safe Streets sites, lost $1.2 million. A class-action lawsuit was filed in May 2025 but dismissed in July; the case is on appeal in the D.C. Circuit. The FY2026 federal budget proposes eliminating CVI grant funding entirely.

Programs that survived the contraction are those with diversified funding: Medicaid reimbursement (nine states as of early 2025, including Michigan, which Governor Whitmer signed into law in January 2025), state appropriations, local budget lines, and philanthropic support. State CVI funding grew from $70 million across five states in 2017 to more than $520 million across thirteen states and Washington D.C. in 2024, per Giffords Law Center.

Police chiefs added their voices. Superintendent Snelling’s statement that the city “can’t arrest our way out” carries different weight than the same argument from an advocate. Chief Beck calling “intervention groups the answer,” Chief Backus in Lansing saying “I don’t know anybody else can pick up that space,” and Chief Paul in Baton Rouge citing the 47% figure all moved the conversation from ideological to operational.

The Root Cause Caveat

CVI workers are direct about their limits. As they describe their own role: they are “treating the bleeding while someone else works on the disease.”

CVI does not claim to eliminate the conditions that produce concentrated violence: poverty, lack of economic opportunity, inadequate housing, underfunded schools, accumulated trauma, decades of disinvestment. As Aqeela Sherrills, advisor to the White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative, stated: “You can’t have public safety without the public. Police can’t do this job by themselves. Community violence intervention complements law enforcement. They are both vital for public safety.”

Bottom Line

Community violence intervention exists because gun violence concentrates in identifiable networks where retaliation drives the cycle, and policing — as Superintendent Snelling, Chief Paul, Chief Beck, and Commander Parham have each described — cannot access the private spaces and trust-dependent relationships where decisions about retaliation are made. The model has grown because the evidence base now includes three randomized controlled trials (READI, Denver GRID, Choose to Change), because police chiefs have publicly endorsed the complementary relationship, and because federal investment created a window for rapid expansion that is now contracting. CVI does not replace policing or address root causes. It reaches the moment before the trigger is pulled, in spaces no one else can enter.

Source Appendix

U.S. gun homicide deaths (~20,000/year). CDC WONDER database, National Vital Statistics System. Also: Gun Violence Archive annual reports. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
Violence as contagious disease / epidemiological model. Cure Violence Global, founded by Dr. Gary Slutkin (former WHO epidemiologist). https://cvg.org/ Also: U.S. Surgeon General Advisory on Firearm Violence, June 2024. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK605169/
Shooting victims reshot — 41% within five years (Minneapolis). CBS Minnesota, reporting on Minneapolis Next Step program. Also: PBS Frontline, 2021. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/groups-arise-spurred-by-minneapolis-gun-violence-to-enact-early-interventions/
Chief Murphy Paul, Baton Rouge — 47% quote. WAFB Baton Rouge, June 2021. https://www.wafb.com/2021/06/10/community-based-initiatives-make-push-break-crimes-violent-grip-baton-rouge/
READI RCT — 2,456 participants, 65% reduction. Heller et al., QJE, 2024. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10898100/
Denver GRID — 143 participants, ~70% less likely. Pyrooz, D.C., NIJ, 2024. https://nij.ojp.gov/library/publications/multidisciplinary-teams-street-outreach-and-gang-intervention-mixed-methods
Choose to Change RCT — 2,074 youth, ~50% reduction at 2 years. University of Chicago Crime Lab. https://crimelab.uchicago.edu/
Johns Hopkins 15-year evaluation — 22% fewer homicides, $7.20-$19.20 ROI. Webster et al., Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. https://www.thebanner.com/community/criminal-justice/safe-streets-penn-north-JLZH6TGFJFAYHCIIMMTT4J4OD4/
Federal 12.4% national homicide decline estimate. White House Fact Sheet, February 2024. https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/02/06/fact-sheet-the-biden-%E2%81%A0harris-administration-advances-equity-and-opportunity-for-black-americans-and-communities-across-the-country-2/
April 2025 DOJ grant terminations — 360+ grants, $811M. Reuters, “US Justice Dept grant cuts valued at $811 million,” April 2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-dept-grant-cuts-valued-811-million-people-familiar-say-2025-04-24/ Also: Council on Criminal Justice, “DOJ Funding Update: A Deeper Look at the Cuts,” 2025. https://counciloncj.org/doj-funding-update-a-deeper-look-at-the-cuts/ https://counciloncj.org/doj-funding-update-a-deeper-look-at-the-cuts/
Baltimore ROCA $1M loss, LifeBridge $1.2M loss. Baltimore Banner, Baltimore Sun, WYPR reporting, April-May 2025.
State CVI funding — $70M/5 states (2017) to $520M+/13 states + DC (2024). Giffords Law Center. https://giffords.org/
Medicaid reimbursement — 9 states as of January 2025. HAVI state tracking. Michigan: Governor Whitmer signed HB 6046, January 2025.
Superintendent Snelling, Chief Beck, Chief Backus, Chief Paul quotes. See Q01 Source Appendix entries 8-11.
Aqeela Sherrills — “You can’t have public safety without the public.” Philadelphia Citizen, “Aqeela Sherrills on Brokering Peace in Highly Traumatized Communities,” January 24, 2022. https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/aqeela-sherrills-brokering-peace/ (First half of quote confirmed; extended version from White House CVI Collaborative event, not indexed online.) Also cited at White House CVI Collaborative events.
Oakland mother testimony — Joseph Truehill. ProPublica, Alec MacGillis, May 2023. https://www.propublica.org/article/are-community-violence-interruption-programs-effective
Dr. Randi Smith, Grady Hospital Atlanta. AJC op-ed by Smith and Dreier, July 2021. https://www.ajc.com/opinion/opinion-hospitals-can-be-violence-prevention-centers/74VGH5WMMBC2TEOLZIGF4YJO4I/
Baltimore hospital leadership on violence intervention. LifeBridge Health/Center for Hope. See also: NPR, Andrea Hsu, April 8, 2016. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/08/473379238/baltimore-sees-hospitals-as-key-to-breaking-a-cycle-of-violence
Dr. Ashley Williams Hogue, Mobile Alabama. USA Health / City of Mobile HVIP launch, July 2024. https://www.cityofmobile.org/news/mobile-launches-areas-first-hospital-based-violence-intervention-program/
CVI program descriptions and 2024 survey — 73% convincing, workforce descriptions. 2024 national survey. https://safercitiesresearch.com/
Division Chief Mark Hildebrand, Aurora Colorado — SAVE program. 9NEWS, September 2023. https://www.9news.com/article/news/crime/aurora-program-reduce-youth-violence/73-49d6756d-113b-4653-98a2-e4ab972d3bfa
Chicago — fifteen neighborhoods, roughly half of city gun violence. Chicago Tribune, February 2024. https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/02/01/foundations-business-interests-raise-66-million-to-fight-crime-in-chicago/
Class-action lawsuit dismissed July 2025, D.C. Circuit appeal, FY2026 elimination proposal. Vera Institute of Justice, et al. v. United States Department of Justice, et al., Case No. 1:25-cv-01643 (D.D.C.). Filed May 21, 2025; dismissed July 7, 2025 by Judge Amit Mehta. Vera press release: https://www.vera.org/newsroom/vera-institute-of-justice-and-coalition-file-federal-class-action-challenging-doj-termination-of-safety-and-justice-grants AP dismissal coverage: https://www.cbs42.com/news/national/ap-federal-judge-dismisses-lawsuit-seeking-to-stop-doj-grant-cancellations/