Crisis Management System (CMS)

The NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) serves as the Mayor’s advisor on public safety strategy, and shapes and funds justice strategies at every stage. Housed within MOCJ, the Mayor’s Office to Prevent Gun Violence (OPGV) is the backbone of citywide efforts to work with New Yorkers as partners in reducing gun violence in New York City. OPGV’s mission is to create safe, empowered, and interconnected communities, utilizing a multitude of public safety strategies.

In the last two years, New York City has experienced unprecedented conditions, including a crisis of gun violence, with a 70% increase in gun shootings. OPGV coordinates the city’s various anti-gun violence initiatives and amplifies community-based intervention and prevention services to create safe, empowered, and interconnected communities in New York City. New York City’s Crisis Management System (CMS) is a city-wide effort coordinated by OPGV to reduce gun violence and address its impact on communities.

The CMS network, comprised of multiple community-based organizations providing crucial services to high-risk youth and young adults, is designed to address the negative impact of gun violence on individuals and communities. It operates across the five boroughs of New York City in multiple underserved communities of color that have experienced historic disinvestment and inequity. CMS organizations focus on many different touch points where high-risk youth and young adults may be located, including schools, detention facilities, and correctional facilities, while also engaging in street outreach/violence intervention and prevention efforts to build community awareness and momentum to actively mitigate cyclical patterns of violence. Service allocation is participant-driven and determined. Participants and community members are free to engage in as many offered services as needed.

The continuity of services provided by the CMS network is of utmost importance in addressing the gun violence problem in New York City. Even as shooting incidents have risen citywide, police precincts with active CMS programming have experienced a proportionally smaller increase compared to comparable precincts without CMS services, illustrating the need to continue and bolster community-based approaches to public safety.

With a goal of interrupting, reducing, and preventing gun violence in New York City, community-based organizations that are part of the CMS network will be grant subrecipients of MOCJ/OPGV. The Byrne Discretionary Community Project Funding /Byrne Discretionary Grants Program will permit enhancement of several types of programming utilized by the CBOs to recruit and engage program participants in core activities.