How Dallas tackled violent crime

With support for a New York-based grant program, Buffalo has been trying various evidence-based approaches to decrease violence, especially gun violence, in the city. The grant program, Gun Involved Violence Elimination, or GIVE, provides funding for police departments to adopt strategies like hot-spot policing, deterring those most at-risk, or street outreach to break the cycle of violence. While such strategies are linked to success, the process of implementing them, gaining support and trust from the community, and waiting for long-term change has proven challenging.

Community violence intervention programs like the interrupter model and groups like Cure Violence are deploying knowledgeable people — specifically those with experience in crime and the legal system — into neighborhoods to help steer people away from gangs and violent crime. The purpose with groups like Cure Violence is to treat violent crime — like gun violence — like an epidemic, deploying those with credibility into vulnerable populations. When Cure Violence was first launched in Chicago in 2000, shootings declined by 68%.

Homicide and shooting rates are declining in Baltimore. Officials credit the city's Group Violence Reduction Strategy that, when possible, offers services and support to those participating in violent crime instead of law-enforcement action.

With the largest backlog of rape kits in the country, North Carolina is taking steps to expedite the process. A key challenge in this effort is the autonomy of police departments to test them at their own discretion. Still, cities like Fayetteville are making headway and seeing results, namely, 37 arrests. On the state level, a bipartisan bill is in motion that would designate $6 million for testing rape kits.

Small and large cities around the United States have their own ways of deterring gun violence, from heavier police presences, to community engagement efforts, to public health approaches. An ongoing and similar challenge for these cities is pinpointing where the most effective change is coming from. In cities like Chattanooga, Savannah, and Philadelphia, each one has seen some impact from their work, but without ongoing evaluations, proving and thus sustaining the successful programming is challenging.

Chattanooga’s Violence Reduction Initiatives used a focused deterrence strategy to reduce crime. The initiative has led to a decrease in gang-involved homicides and shootings, working with individuals on probation to provide them with the social services they need to stop them from re-entering a life of crime. A core part of this method is to show communities that they’re not forgotten and that they’re cared for, and yet securing funding and consistent support for such programming has been challenging.

When Chicago raised the fee for not having a vehicle sticker, the move seemed like a way to raise revenue without punishing compliant drivers. But now, thanks in part to racial disparities in policing, thousands of mostly black people are going bankrupt due to ticket debt.

Young black Jacksonians are afraid to call the police in self defence for fear they will be accused of gang violence and arrested instead of protected. Various programs are using research of violence and recidivism to create programs that address the people most likely to commit violent crimes instead of just putting them in jail.

ClaimStat is a New York city program that uses data to track allegations of police misconduct on a neighborhood level and shares the information with the public, helping prevent lawsuits against the city and diverting settlement funds to core city services like education or street cleanup. Chicago looks to learn from the program and reduce the millions spent on police misconduct lawsuits each year.

National research suggests that training officers in community policing and using city crime analyses is more effective in lowering gun and drug crime, then hiring more cops to a department.