Gun Violence Prevention Groups Appeal for Support

As politicians on both sides of the aisle debate over more or less police, advocates and activists point to grassroots initiatives that continue to yield results. 

Organizers from the communities most affected by gun violence say their own voices and solutions are not being heard, reports The Guardian. Relying on arrests and prosecutions to reduce violent crime ignores the strides made by grassroots violence prevention and victim advocacy groups in past years—efforts that have proven to save lives, they argue.

Homicides in Oakland, Ca., dropped by nearly half in the six years following the launch of an innovative police-community partnership called Operation Ceasefire in 2012. And in Stockton, Ca.,  a recent evaluation of Advance Peace, a violence interruption program, found it contributed to a 20 percent drop in gun homicides and assaults and saved the city between $42.3m and $110m in its first two years of existence while operating on less than $900,000 over that same period. Preliminary data suggests that the crime rise remains concentrated in the under-served Black and Latinx communities that have struggled with violence for decades. Advocates remain wary of the Biden administration’s plan to give more funds to local police departments to hire more officers.