Momentum For Community Violence Intervention Keeps Building
As cities across the country seek innovative solutions to curb gun violence, community violence intervention is becoming a core policy lever that leaders are pulling. This week’s Safer Cities spotlights five community violence intervention efforts that illustrate CVI’s growing momentum:
1. How Pittsburgh (PA) cut the time it takes to provide support to gun violence victims from three days to less than 24 hours.
For Public Source, Venuri Siriwardane, reports on Allegheny County’s $50 million investment in “13 local [community violence intervention programs] … to carry out [the county’s] plan to treat violence like an infectious disease… to reduce violence in the county. These trained teams “respond to every shooting, hurry to hospitals, work with at-risk youth and otherwise try to curb violence” in the county, and the new funding injection has also allowed the programs to apply novel approaches to their work, as Siriwardane reports:
“When a victim of gun violence is brought to [the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center], a nurse in the trauma center might rush to their station and pick up a business card from Richard Garland…. scan the QR code on the card, which pulls up a form they can fill out and send to Garland’s team at Reimagine Reentry… The form provides crucial information about the victim, including their name, age, where they were shot and whether they’ve consented to receiving services [from Reimagine Reentry]... within 24 hours, a violence prevention coach from Reimagine will visit their bedside and offer services such as therapy, job training and housing assistance to intercept victims before they retaliate—a practice that could result in fewer gun-related homicides and help stop the cycle of violence in Allegheny County communities…
[Before the new funding] It would take [Garland’s team] up to three days to reach a victim’s bedside… [but the] infusion of cash from the county [allowed] Garland to pay for the QR code system and hire three staffers for Reimagine’s hospital-based violence intervention program… Now his team is able to reach victims across four hospitals in less than a day.”
Another program, Focus on Renewal, is using the funds to “place participants in jobs at local businesses” to further stabilize victims of violence. Cynthia Haines, who leads the program, told the magazine that the “funding from the county—about $1.3 million over the last year” allowed her to “hire a job coach and supervisor to help participants succeed [in their new jobs],” offer “cognitive behavioral therapy, guest speaker sessions to ‘open their minds up’ to different career possibilities” and she’s gotten commitment from “at least 20 local businesses to hiring [program participants].”
2. The Aurora (CO) Division Police Chief In Charge of Homicide Investigations Supports CVI Because Police “Can’t Do It Alone”.
For 9News, Denver’s local NBC affiliate, Kelly Reinke reports on a new community violence intervention program in the city of Aurora, just outside of Denver, called Standing Against Violence Every Day. Aurora Police Division Chief Mark Hildebrend told the news station that he supports the program because he “wants to help before someone pulls the trigger [but that] he can’t do it alone.” Joseph DeHerrera, who oversees the CVI effort, explained to the news station that outreach workers “identify the specific social groups of kids in the highest risk of [gun violence], [and] meet the teens and their families in person to offer … mental health resources, housing resources, food resources, or resources to help participate in school more…[because] ‘we don't want them involved in the criminal justice system, and we want them to be productive members of society.’”
3. Novel New University of Chicago Program Trains CVI Leaders From Cities Across The Country.
For The Chicago Defender, Tacuma Roeback reports on a new effort out of the University of Chicago’s new Community Violence Intervention Leadership Academy, which “welcomed its first cohort of leaders from 21 cities nationwide [to help] address cycles of violence”—including leaders from Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans, Nashville, and more. A first of its kind program and curriculum, Roeback details the program’s training and structure:
“[The program] equips senior and executive leaders working in community violence intervention with the skills and knowledge needed to alter their communities and the organizations they lead … [during an] intensive six-month [program] overseen by expert practitioners and scholars… [including] immersive training in program management, workforce retention, data literacy, evaluation techniques and a host of other critical competencies… culminat[ing] with a community-focused capstone project where members apply their newfound expertise to real-world challenges.”
After city leaders complete their training, “researchers from leading universities will conduct qualitative and quantitative studies to gauge how effectively the [programs] reduce violence [and] undertake a comprehensive assessment of the training’s effectiveness.”
Former Chicago and Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck lauded the program and told the newspaper that “intervention groups are the answer to reducing violence…If you want to solve the problem of violence in the community, you have to work with people in the community…if CVI can get young people to lay down guns, I’m 100% behind that—and everybody else should be, too.”
4. Report Finds Charlotte (NC) Now Seeing Fewer Homicides In Area Where CVI Program Operates.
For The Trace, Chip Brownlee reports on Mecklenburg County’s Office of Violence Prevention, which has become the “centerpiece of a growing public health effort to combat gun violence in and around North Carolina’s largest city.” The department runs Alternatives to Violence, a community violence intervention program that functions as “a partnership between the city, county, and several nonprofit service providers.” Alternatives to Violence sends trained community members to respond to gun violence incidents “to interrupt cycles of retaliatory violence.” The program is already showing promising results, as Brownlee reports: “an early evaluation of Alternatives to Violence by the University of North Carolina Charlotte’s Urban Institute found evidence that gun crimes—specifically homicides and gun assaults—were significantly lower in the program’s catchment area.”
5. Mother Who Lost Her Daughter To Gun Violence In Oakland, California Says CVI Program Kept Her Out Of “Retaliation Mode” And From Being “Buried In Anger”.
Florence Middleton reports for Oaklandside on the city’s Department of Violence Prevention, which responds to “incidents like shootings and domestic violence after they happen, and it also works towards ‘interrupting’ violence or addressing the root causes to stop it before it occurs, [as well as providing] support [for] victims [and] others impacted by violence…” Joseph Truehill, a violence interrupter who works for a non-profit group that partners with the Department of Violence Prevention, told the newspaper that the group provides “therapy for the victim and his family, financial support, and relocation services if they no longer felt safe in their home.” Oaklandside reported on a shooting that Truehill responded involving a 15-year-old lost to gun violence:
“Truehill met her family at the hospital where [the teen] was pronounced deceased on arrival, and he stayed with them until 5 a.m.. That morning, he connected [the teen’s mother] to another violence interrupter who could support her long-term and to … mental health resources… he [also] ordered [the teen’s] family a big meal from DoorDash… Throughout those first two weeks, [the Department of Violence Prevention team] checked on [the mother] every day… [and] helped [her] with funeral-related costs, took her to get a manicure and pedicure before the funeral… supported her with giveaways like backpack drives for her two sons, inviting her to Christmas events and connecting her to a support group for mothers who have lost a child.”
The teen’s mother told the newspaper that these efforts changed the trajectory of her life: “If I didn’t [the support from these organizations]…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 the whole ordeal. I’m almost certain I would not have made it through mentally.”
