Albuquerque Violence Intervention Program and Community Safety Department

The City of Albuquerque's Community Safety (ACS) and Violence Intervention Program (VIP) will use the discretionary earmark funding to expand the scope of these programs.  This will enhance service in violence prevention, intervention, and support within Albuquerque.  The proposed individuals will support the administrative backing to help scale our work to a larger constituency.  In addition to expansion of the existing work, this funding can help with exploring the establishment of an Office of Violence Prevention for the City of Albuquerque.  ACS would seek to understand how such an Office could magnify work to help underserved and unserved populations, including communities of color.

The gap between the number of people who experience violent crime and those who receive help is largest for communities of color.  Albuquerque Community Safety and its Violence Intervention Program have already begun to address these disparities, but a substantial amount of work remains. While an impact has already been made, being a relatively new department requires substantial administrative and infrastructure work. This scaling is a critical time for any organization and success lends itself to long-term sustainability.

In exploring the establishment of an Office of Violence Prevention, the goal would be to bring together numerous programs in a highly-effective way.  These include some already started, some supported by this grant, and programs possibly assisted by other grants. Included within a possible Office could be the Violence Intervention Program, a School-Based Violence Intervention Program, Trauma Recovery Center, Community Oriented Response Assistance, an Opioid Prevention Program, and a possible Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Program.  This would be modeled after successful Offices in other areas, such as Newark and Philadelphia, but made unique to Albuquerque.  

The ultimate goal is to combine assertive outreach, advocacy, evidence-based mental health services, and comprehensive case management specific to the person or the community.  Through a diverse staff, even in program implementation, will be able to better support individuals who have been victims of violence, physical assault, sexual assault, opioid abuse, domestic violence, and more. The anticipated outcomes of this grant are twofold.  First, will be more capable to address existing need within the community through assertive outreach and case management.  Second, would develop a blueprint of evolving the Violence Intervention Program and Special Operations Bureau into an Office of Violence Prevention.  This may include reduction of disparities for victims of violence crime, increased access, consistency across the applicant's violence prevention programs, and increased healing for the City of Albuquerque.