Comprehensive Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative

The City of Grand Rapids’ Office of Oversight and Public Accountability proposes building a comprehensive violence reduction strategy through a two-pronged approach. First, to build off the momentum and progress made by Cure Violence in the City’s 3rd Ward, the grantee proposes a City-wide expansion of the Cure Violence Model to the First and Second Wards. Cure Violence has demonstrably improved outcomes for the highest risk individuals (with regards to gun violence) in the Third Ward; yet violence in the City has continued to rise in other geographic locations. Expansion to the First and Second Wards enables the City to build on its existing efforts while implementing a proven strategy that has worked in other City locales. Through Cure Violence’s street-level outreach and the Data Informed Community Engagement initiative, the City of Grand Rapids has identified target areas - small geographic areas within each ward that house the most dense population of high-risk individuals and are most likely to be the sites of violent crime. While Cure Violence has reduced violence significantly the Third Ward target area, violence persists in the other two target areas. The second part of this proposal is the development of centralized violence prevention efforts within the City of Grand Rapids. Cure Violence is a tremendous piece of the City’s strategy to reduce violence, but on its own, it does not present an optimized violence interruption and reduction effort. This proposal aims to build a platform with the sole focus of reducing violence in the City, which will enable Grand Rapids to develop a violence reduction strategy that amalgamates the many individual pieces that already exist and propose innovative wrap-around services together under one unified, data-informed strategy to substantially and institutionally reduce gun violence in the City. The initial plan is to hire a Violence Prevention Specialist who will serve to convene stakeholders around the issue of gun violence; facilitate the monitoring and evaluation of Cure Violence’s expansion; and research and develop a suite of complementary CVI strategies.