Saginaw Community, Offender, and Victim Cooperation Initiative

Strategies for Policing Innovation (SPI), Purpose Area 1: Innovative Approaches provides resources to support projects to implement and test innovative approaches to operational challenges and violent crime reduction. SPI grant recipients will develop innovative, data-driven approaches to challenges currently confronting law enforcement agencies. Recipients must: 1) describe the innovative, data-driven approach to be implemented; 2) create an action plan to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach, for which an applicant may engage a research partner to create the plan; 3) identify a specific violent crime problem to address; 4) develop a prevention, mitigation, or response strategy to address the problem; 5) evaluate the project; and 6) assess and report the results to BJA for public availability. The evaluation design must include outcome measures capable of informing a credible assessment of the effectiveness of the strategies.

SPI is part of the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) Suite of Programs, which is focused on reducing violent crime. These initiatives will coordinate proactively with the PSN team in the respective district of the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) to enhance collaboration and strengthen the commitment to reducing violent crime.

The goal of the Saginaw Initiative to Reduce Violence—SIRV—is to reduce violence, especially gang-related violence, through an innovative, data-driven approach to policing and community partnership. The program involves a multipronged violence reduction strategy that aims to improve cooperation and engagement with the police by all parties impacted by violence—the community, victims, and offenders. The SIRV program contains four components: (1) improve community member trust, cooperation, and engagement by implementing front porch roll calls in Saginaw neighborhoods; (2) utilize a victim services specialist to increase cooperation among victims of violence and reduce the likelihood of retaliation; (3) use offender notification meetings to target prolific violent offenders and gang members to provide community services and send a deterrence message of aggressive law enforcement; (4) use video surveillance technology to monitor frequent gang retaliation corridors to aid in investigations. Each prong of SIRV targets resource gaps in the Saginaw community that contribute to the city’s violent crime and gang problems.

CA/NCF