The city’s non-police strategy for gun violence prevention reduced shootings by 21%, reported researchers for the New York City Comptroller’s Office. Findings released last Monday, Mar. 10, credited the Crisis Management System (CMS) for 1,567 fewer shootings since officially adopting Chicago’s Cure Violence model in 2012.
“We looked at 19 years of shooting data in the neighborhoods that have [a] CMS program and compared them to neighborhoods that are comparable in other ways but don’t have a [CMS] program,” said NYC Comptroller Brad Lander at a Harlem press conference. “What we found is a 21% better drop in shootings. The data shows this work works … that means fewer shootings, fewer people getting killed, [and] fewer people in the hospital.”
Cure Violence tackles gun violence as a public health epidemic rather than just crime. In practice, stopping the spread involves resolving conflicts peacefully and addressing environmental factors like poverty in the most affected neighborhoods — most New York City shootings are concentrated within 4% of city blocks.
The model deploys violence interrupters, like credible messengers who leverage former gang ties, previous criminal history, and neighborhood reputation to de-escalate potential shootings by engaging with “high risk” individuals without involving law enforcement or the criminal justice system.
How can researchers measure shootings that don’t happen? The report looks back as far as 2006, when the city began recording complete data on gun violence incidents to establish a predictive model throughout precincts. The researchers found the study “statistically significant” toward proving Cure Violence organizations helped reduce gun violence compared to operating neighborhoods before CMS programming started and other precincts where there are no such organizations.
Areas without coverage include Harlem’s 26th and 28th Precincts. The report also found neighborhoods like Brownsville, East Harlem, and South Bronx still faced “persistent concentrations of shootings” despite CMS presence. However, the researchers said the programming still effectively reduces gun violence in those areas.
However, the report also mentions gaps limiting CMS from further positive results. Findings pointed to longer payment delays among 1,400 requests in 112 different contracts over the past few years. Reimbursement times averaged 130 days in 2016. They jumped to 255 days, or more than eight and a half months, last year.
“We cannot put a bandaid on a gushing wound. Our children are dying in the street. It’s no [longer] that they’re getting shot or stabbed — they are dying,” said Harlem-based violence interrupter Iesha Sekou. “Many nights, the Street Corner Resources Speak Peace Forward team and others around the city that are doing this work sit with young people who are losing life. It is preventable. There are things we can do. There are things we are doing. But it is not enough.
“More funding needs to be accessed and that funding needs to be accessed in a timely manner. Do not ask us to go out and [almost] stand in front of a gun — and those who are caught up in the violence — and then we can’t get a paycheck or get the money to pay our staff.”
The report also found Cure Violence lacked access to NYPD data for violence interrupters to track real-time shootings and patterns over time. Researchers recommended enrolling CMS into ShotSpotter’s Data for Good program, which shares acoustic gunshot detection information traditionally used by police with appropriate civilian nonprofits and city agencies. More than 2,000 sensors are currently installed throughout the five boroughs.
While Lander criticized ShotSpotter as a police tool as recently as last month, his report said that “integration of ShotSpotter data into CMS has the potential to not only improve [community violence intervention] efficacy but reduce the costs of police-only response strategies that are extremely resource-intensive over time.”
Miami-Dade County implemented Data for Good to help dispatch violence interrupters from the municipalities’ “Walking One Stop” program toward areas where shots are detected the most. A 35% reduction in gun-related crimes was recorded in those targeted areas.
ShotSpotter’s parent company, SoundThinking, launched Data for Good in December 2022. While existing contracts largely stipulate the technology only be used for law enforcement purposes, a simple amendment would allow cities to opt into the program without drafting a new deal. There is also no additional cost for participating.
Alfred Lewers, SoundThinking’s senior director of trauma response and customer success, said the company has already spoken with NYPD Chief of Department John Chell, as well as executives of CMS organizations like Brooklyn’s Man Up! Inc. and Queens’ Life Camp, about how Data for Good could operate in New York City.
“We have a team of data specialists in our analysis team who would assist the organizations in getting access to the data, and that data would be anonymized, so it wouldn’t have any personal identifiable information,” said Lewers. “They wouldn’t have any specific addresses. It would be 100 blocks, and they would give the temporal grid, so if they know that gunfire is occurring in a certain area … then we would provide that information to them so that they can use it in the best way to serve that community.
“Depending on what community-based services or even government services are going to be provided, that will determine the cadence of data that we would be providing.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.
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