Three Things To Read This Week

America experienced the sharpest single-year drop in murders ever last year. President Joe Biden credited the American Rescue Plan, “the largest-ever federal investment in fighting and preventing crime at any time in our history,” for the decrease—specifically underscoring the important role that community violence intervention played in that investment strategy. 

This edition of Safer Cities focuses on how community violence intervention investments played out in three different cities—Baltimore, Detroit, and Orlando. Each of these programs leverage the fact that gun violence often spreads through cycles of retaliation between groups of people within the same social network. And they all rely on trained community experts to intervene in conflicts—especially within these social networks—to prevent violence before it happens.

1. This Baltimore Neighborhood Went “An Entire Year Without A Murder.” 

From The Epicenter of Unrest To Zero Murders. The Baltimore neighborhood of Penn North historically has had one of the highest homicide rates in the U.S. and was known  as “the epicenter of unrest in the city.” But the neighborhood’s trajectory has shifted. For CBS Baltimore, Kelsey Kushner reports that Penn North went “478 days without a homicide investigation in the neighborhood,” following the implementation of Baltimore’s flagship community violence intervention program, called Safe Streets. 

Safe Streets As The Special Forces of Crime Reduction. Pastor Rodney Hudson—who oversees the congregation at Ames Memorial United Methodist Church, which is based in Penn North, called Safe Streets “the special forces of crime reduction in Baltimore … You won’t see all the work that it does, but you will know that it did its work. And you know, particularly in this community, that it has done its work whenever you have over 365 days, murder-free by gun violence.”

Safe Streets Reduces Gun Violence Across The City. Zooming out from the Penn North neighborhood, citywide there “clearly [has] been less gun violence as a result of Safe Streets’ work in Baltimore,” Daniel Webster, a professor at Johns Hopkins University, told the Baltimore Sun. Webster, the co-author of a 2023 study that examined “nearly 15 years of data” related to shootings and homicides in the city, told The Baltimore Sun that the most pronounced decreases are concentrated in “the neighborhoods served by the five Safe Streets sites that have been open four years or more.” On average, Safe Streets has “led to reductions in nonfatal shootings and homicides,” including an  “average of 22% fewer homicides than predicted [and] 23% reduction in nonfatal shootings.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott Praises Safe Streets: “Safe Streets workers are out there mediating conflict that most people would run away from…Saving lives and neighbors across Baltimore City, through Safe Streets, through community violence intervention, is the right thing to do.”

2. In Detroit, “Homicides And Shootings Dropped 72%”. 

In the neighborhoods that Detroit’s CVI program—Force Detroit—serves, “homicides and shootings dropped 72% between November 2023 and January 2024 compared with the same time frame a year prior,” Andrea May Sahouri reports for the Detroit Free Press. This dramatic decline was also well beyond “the 37% average reduction in violent crime the city has seen” in the areas not served by a community violence intervention program.

It Boils Down To Trust. Deputy Mayor Todd Bettison, a former longtime Detroit police officer, told the Detroit Free Press that he supports community violence intervention programs because: “these groups are doing something the police can’t do… because credible messengers are at the forefront of the prevention and intervention work…. They've developed trust with the community, and we're seeing that with these statistics.”

For Force Detroit Leaders, Violence Prevention Is Personal. For The Michigan Chronicle, Biba Adams, writes that the force that motivates the leaders of Force Detroit  to “interrupt, prevent, and reduce violence in our communities” is the desire as “deeply embedded community leaders” to “change an environment of violence that one has either been on the giving or receiving end of…” As one of these leaders, Karisha Vanzant, told the Chronicle, “The work we do is so personal to me because throughout my life, I have experienced violence on many different levels. And being a part of this organization has made me find solutions to [the] violence.

3. Study: Orlando Neighborhood “Gun Homicides Down 20%, Shootings Dropped By A Third.” 

Advance Peace, Orlando’s community violence intervention program appears to be working to reduce gun violence. As Gene Saladna reports for WFTV, a new report from the UC-Berkeley School of Public Health found a  “20% reduction in firearm homicides [and] “36% reduction in non-fatal shootings” relative to the twelve months prior to the launch of Advance Peace. According to the same report, Advance Peace likely saved “tax payers [saved] between $8.3-$8.9M by preventing likely injury shootings and homicides.”

How A Murder Paved The Way To Life As A Community Violence Intervention Specialist. Raysean Brown, a leader on the Advance Peace team, told WESH’s Marlei Martinez that “preventing shootings in his hometown is a passion [and that] he got into this work after his childhood friend was murdered in 2016 —an innocent bystander killed in a drive-by shooting.” 

What The Work Looks Like: As WESH reports, the work Brown does today is extremely rigorous, and includes:

• “Identifying and focusing on a narrow group of people who drive gun violence  (“the guys that are committing the gun violence or most likely to be the victim of gun violence”);

• “Checking in with assigned [at-risk youth] three times a day”; and

• Developing “a life map of goals for [at-risk youth] [and then] connecting [them] with mental health, education and employment services, as well as housing support, legal support and de-escalation training…”

Advance Peace Poised To Expand. Just this month, city leaders in Orlando secured a $1.5 million federal grant that is expected to expand the program from five to eight neighborhoods.