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  • Baltimore's Violence Interrupters Confront Shootings, the Coronavirus, and Corrupt Cops

    July 26, 2020 |

    The Intercept |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Baltimore, Maryland

    Baltimore’s Safe Streets program, which uses a public-health approach to stopping the spread of community gun violence, mediated more than 1,800 conflicts in 2019 and is credited with preventing homicides altogether in one neighborhood, despite the city’s overall violent year. Since the program’s launch in 2007, studies have shown it to be effective in its use of “credible messengers” whose street savvy can be deployed to “interrupt” retaliatory violence. But the Baltimore program also illustrates tensions between such community-based programs and the police, especially when the police are corrupt.

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  • Reformed leaders of rival gangs in Lehigh Valley collaborate on a community need: Diapers Audio icon

    July 20, 2020 |

    The Morning Call |

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    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Allentown, Pennsylvania

    An anti-violence program served as the spark for a “diaper drive” that delivered more than 163,000 donated diapers to 1,100 families as the coronavirus shutdown took hold, a charity drive enabled by a gang truce – and run by gang members themselves. Members of the Latin Kings, Crips, and Bloods, working through the Zero Youth Violence program of the organization Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley, benefited from years of work to strengthen community relationships as a means of conducting “violence interruption” work.

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  • Community peacemakers in Chicago offer a proven alternative to policing

    July 14, 2020 |

    Waging Nonviolence |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

    Nonviolence Chicago uses street-outreach workers to mediate disputes and connect residents of violence-prone neighborhoods to needed services. Its work, amounting to tens of thousands of contacts per year with people involved in violence, has contributed to efforts that reduced homicides and nonfatal shootings in the Austin neighborhood by nearly half from 2016 to 2019. By replacing the police with former gang members and others with street credibility, and working with both victims and shooters, Nonviolence Chicago wins the trust of residents.

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  • Baltimore Hits Pause on Gun Violence Command Centers

    July 06, 2020 |

    The Trace |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Baltimore, Maryland

    A strategy to improve the intelligence that steers policing and violence-intervention efforts has worked in Chicago and shown promising early signs in Baltimore. But plans to expand Strategic Decision Support Centers in Baltimore ran into political opposition, based on sentiment in favor of diverting police resources to other strategies. Chicago’s SDSC program is credited with a much greater reduction in shootings than in untargeted areas of the city. Baltimore likewise has seen homicides decline where SDSCs help police and violence interrupters decide where and on whom to focus their interventions.

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

    July 03, 2020 |

    Afro News |

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    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Baltimore, Maryland

    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

    June 26, 2020 |

    The New Yorker |

    Text |

    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, New York, New York

    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

    May 29, 2020 |

    The Trace |

    Text |

    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Detroit, Michigan

    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

    May 27, 2020 |

    The Globe and Mail |

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    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: Canada, Edmonton, Alberta

    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

    May 26, 2020 |

    The Trace |

    Text |

    Under 800 Words

    Response Location: United States, Jonesboro, Arkansas

    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

    March 17, 2020 |

    The Trace |

    Text |

    Under 800 Words

    Response Location: United States, Chicago, Illinois

    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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