Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Comprehensive Services Key In Deterring Violence, Crime and Negative Interactions With Police

    Two programs targeting two types of problems have been successful with one common element: interventions that provide needed social services rather than rely only on police responses. In Baltimore, shootings and homicides in the Belair-Edison neighborhood are down 20% in the year since the Safe Streets program put violence interrupters on the street to cool disputes before they turn violent. In Dallas, the Rapid Integrated Group Healthcare Team's medical and social-worker responses to mental health crises reduced emergency room admissions 30%, replacing arrests with social and health services.

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  • How to Defund the Police

    On the front lines of the defund-police movement, groups like Elite Learners and Save Our Streets Bed-Stuy mediate conflicts in ways that have lowered violence without the involvement of police, thus reducing arrests and incarceration at the same time. CMS workers often use the Cure Violence approach of "violence interruption," a form of outreach by community members to offer needed social services while preventing violence. The city, which credits these programs with a 15% decline in shootings in 17 precincts in a three-year span, is expanding the budget for this to nearly $50 million per year.

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  • With Abuse Victims Trapped at Home, Detroit Moves Restraining Order System Online

    Domestic abuse risks are on the rise, at a time of social isolation, economic disruption, and gun-buying, and so Wayne County, Michigan, court officials responded to the closing of their courthouses by allowing people to seek orders of protection online. A replacement for an onerous, face-to-face process, the new e-filing system processed fewer applications in its first month than before the pandemic crisis, but at least preserved a steady flow of cases that enable victims to block their abusers from possessing guns. Victim advocates hope the new system expands access even after the courthouses reopen.

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  • How police forces in western Canada are working to speed up ballistic imaging to solve gun crimes quicker

    As Canada sees an increase in gun violence, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are increasing their capacity to do ballistic imaging – an analysis that is able to potentially connect multiple crimes. Across the country, individual police agencies are developing their own way of conducting this analysis or working with the RCMP, which has access to an integrated network of crime information, to expedite the process.

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  • Arkansas Moms Turn to Food Pantry Boxes to Distribute Safe Gun Storage Tips

    After a 14-year-old girl in Jonesboro, Ark., accidentally shot and killed a friend, local activists distributed hundreds of fliers promoting safe gun storage strategies that have been proven to save lives. They gained access to a particularly vulnerable population by piggybacking on pandemic-related free-food distribution. Nationwide, children's deaths and injuries from accidental gunshots have increased substantially during the pandemic lockdown, with children idled at home and with gun sales surging.

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  • Chicago's Gun Violence Interrupters Take on Coronavirus

    Street outreach workers who work to reduce gun violence in Chicago are using the relationships they've built to now spread the word about the dangers of the coronavirus. “To the extent that we are the sort of conduits to vulnerable neighborhoods, it makes sense for us to sort of disseminate that information because it’s an important public service,” one outreach worker explains.

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  • This Tiny Louisiana Police Force Is a National Leader in Taking Guns From Abusers

    Despite a strong gun-rights culture in the state, Louisiana law enforcement agencies use aggressive gun-confiscation laws and procedures to disarm domestic abusers as part of a wider array of protections for victims. Thanks to the work of one abuse survivor turned cop in the small south Louisiana parish of Lafourche, new laws and local-federal collaboration have spread statewide, making convicted abusers less likely to have ready access to a gun.

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  • Case-By-Case, Gun-By-Gun: Denver Investigator Is Removing Firearms From Domestic Abusers

    The Denver, Colorado, district attorney’s office assigned an investigator to methodically search for signs that domestic abusers possessed prohibited guns, and then uses that information to take the guns away. Firearm prohibitions are required by federal law or through protective orders issued by courts. But enforcement in many places is spotty to nonexistent. By taking an active rather than passive approach to enforcement, the office has confiscated dozen of guns from people deemed a threat.

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  • Lake Oswego School District Uses Threat Assessment System to Prevent Student Harm

    Oregon's Lake Oswego School District takes a preventative approach to gun violence in its schools. The district's threat assessment team meets with students who have raised red flags, assesses the situation, and, if appropriate, connects them with mental health resources.

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  • This strategy helped stop murders, prosecutors say. But Kansas City police killed it

    Within a year of its creation, a state-federal collaboration to reduce gun violence in Kansas City seemed to result in a deep decline in killings. But the program, called Kansas City No Violence Alliance, collapsed by 2019 after police pulled their support. The program's approach, called focused deterrence, has been proven effective in multiple studies in other cities. But an analysis of the program in Kansas City found multiple failures in consistently getting targeted people to attend call-ins, where they are threatened with arrest if they commit violence but offered social services to choose another path.

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