Durham Project Safe Neighborhoods and Community Engagement

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Proposal Overview & Purpose

The Durham Police Department is pleased to submit a proposal to manage and conduct the Durham Project Safe Neighborhoods and Community Engagement campaign. The goal of this initiative is to build a comprehensive, strategic response to the gun violence in our community that will save lives, reduce gunshot injuries, and provide safer neighborhoods for Durham citizens. The initiative will address the gun violence problem in the community by developing key criminal justice and community partnerships and data-driven strategies that will change the local norms from tolerance to intolerance of gun violence. We will utilize the resources of our federal, state and local criminal justice organizations to gather intelligence about gun violence and to identify the individuals most at risk of gun violence. We will develop strong and effective communication among organizations and agencies and will seek to fully employ existing community anti-violence resources through a collaborative “action team” that connects resources with needs and enhances the capacity of both law enforcement and the community-at-large to solve the problem of gun violence. Concurrently, the Durham Project Safe Neighborhoods and Community Engagement campaign will implement systematic community outreach, a gun violence web page, and media campaigns designed to reach a broad cross-section of the Durham community and galvanize it to take positive preventive and rehabilitative actions to deter violence.

Background

Durham’s community is witnessing an epidemic of gun violence. Durham County leads the state in juvenile gun deaths – an average of one fatal shooting of a Durham youth, 17 or younger, every three months. In 2000, Durham’s homicide rate was 15.1 per 100,000 people, almost 3 times the national homicide rate of 5.5/100,000 for that year. An assessment of 1997-98 homicides shows that violent youthful offenders ages 18 to 25 accounted for two-thirds of the homicides. In this group, 93% used firearms. Thus far in 2002, Durham is averaging a homicide every ten days. All but two (92%) of Durham’s 26 homicides this year were committed with a firearm. During the month of July 2002, Duke University Medical Center alone reported 27 gunshot cases. Four Durham citizens died from gunshot wounds during that month. A 1998 survey of Durham’s two hospitals by a Duke University student reported that approximately 150 young people are treated annually for nonfatal gunshot wounds. Unfortunately, there is no unified nonfatal gun violence reporting system in place and we cannot confirm hospital compliance with State laws requiring medical facilities to report all incidences of gunshot wounds to law enforcement authorities.

Gun violence is occurring predominantly in Durham’s poorer, African-American neighborhoods and with profound effects. Chronic and perennial shootings in these neighborhoods have become so dangerous that residents report that they are afraid to come out of their homes and often sleep on the floor and in bathtubs to shield themselves from stray bullets. Three thousand children in Durham’s Weed and Seed area alone are being exposed to the danger and trauma of gun violence. Citizens throughout Durham understand the risk frequent shootings pose and many simply avoid neighborhoods with high incidences of gun violence, further isolating and impoverishing these areas of our city.

The US Attorney’s office for the Middle District reports that approximately 8% of the criminal population commits 85% of the violent crime. Annually, approximately 400 offenders re-enter our community from state prison and 800 juveniles are served in Durham County’s juvenile justice system. These individuals pose both a risk to and an opportunity for the Durham community.

Project Safe Neighborhood Proposed Structure

The Project Safe Neighborhood action team will also be comprised of members from the following organizations:

• Durham Congregations in Action (DCIA) -- an organization of over 58 churches representing approximately 20,000 congregants, it is entering into a pilot project with the Reentry Program and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). It connects offenders with supportive congregational teams. DCIA formed the Religious Coalition for a Non-Violent Durham in 1992, which has sponsored over 220 public prayer vigils for homicide victims at the site of their murder.
• Crime Cabinet – local community and government leaders, representatives from criminal justice agencies and local organizations meet to improve the quality of life in the community through identifying crime related issues and recommending solutions. 

The Durham Police Department recognizes that Durham has a wealth of interested, involved and active citizens and organizations currently working to reduce gun violence in Durham. A key component of the Durham Project Safe Neighborhood and Community Engagement campaign will be to hire a combined Project Coordinator and Re-entry Case Worker to work with existing community teams and organizations to build a cohesive community response to gun violence that increases community capacity and capability to serve juvenile and adult offenders’ reentry to the community and that decreases violent incidences overall.

The ongoing, collaborative “action team” will build upon the work of the following programs:

• STARS Program (Strategies to Abate and Reduce Senseless Violence) – a team with the Police Department, the STARS Program aims to reduce gun-related violent crime by identifying repeat violent offenders, offering community resources and alternatives to those willing to change and vigorously prosecuting those who continue to commit crimes. 
• Durham’s Operation Weed and Seed -- comprised of all levels of law enforcement and myriad public and private agencies devoted to eliminating crime and to revitalizing those neighborhoods experiencing the greatest amount of Durham’s crime.
• Durham Reentry Program -- a recent initiative between the Criminal Justice Resource Center, the Division of Community Corrections (Probation and Parole) and the Durham Police Department, the Program works with inmates prior to and after release from prison, enhancing monitoring and supervising while offering wrap around rehabilitation services.
• Partners Against Crime (PAC) –the five Durham PACs are organized within the police districts and work to prevent crime at the neighborhood level through collaboration among police, residents and local government officials.
• Durham County Gun Safety Team – founded in January 2000, the group unites local government agencies and community leaders to reduce death and injury related to firearms through education and awareness and has organized regular activities and events on gun safety education in schools and in the community.

Project Safe Neighborhood Personnel & Responsibilities

The Coordinator/Re-entry Case Worker will serve on the committees mentioned above and will lead a team of active participants, including law enforcement personnel, that will organize large-scale media campaigns and community outreach. Members of the faith community, Partners Against Crime, Crime Cabinet, the outreach coordinator for the Religious Coalition, and others will work with the Coordinator/Case Worker to build capacity and opportunity for community support of Re-entry, STARS and other criminal justice initiatives. Specifically, PSN Coordinator/Re-entry Case Worker will:

• Facilitate cooperation, understanding and accountability among PSN action team members by setting clear goals, preparing an action plan, determining timelines for achievement, and encouraging members to share information and pool resources and contacts to accomplish its objectives;
• Assist in development of team’s strategy to engage, involve, and utilize the Durham community – especially religious congregations and neighborhood organizations - in order to change the local norms from tolerance to intolerance of gun violence through bulletin inserts in the churches, presentations at PAC, PTA, Resident Council meetings, public service announcements, publicizing volunteer opportunities in re-entry programs in local media, educational activities at neighborhood, school, and health festivals, editorial pieces in local, and regular gun violence reports that highlight gun violence statistics and practical measures citizens can take to address solutions. Expertise and materials will be sought from Winston-Salem State University’s Center for Community Safety for PSN Community Engagement campaign.
• Work closely with gun violence data analyst and US Attorney’s Office to utilize all available federal resources and to learn the best practices of other Middle District cities including gun violence research from the UNC-Greensboro’s Center for the Study of Social Issues
• Direct identified or developed resources towards the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), and the Criminal Justice Resource Center for their work with offenders, such as, working with the job development coordinator at the Chamber of Commerce, and officials with city and county Departments of Human Resources;
• Follow up with all offenders identified and notified by the STARS program to solicit their feedback to ensure that offenders’ needs are met;
• Report unmet needs and missing resources for re-entry and community outreach; and,
• Collect and analyze data on all STARS offenders for the program evaluation, including conducting a twelve-month recidivism studies.

The development of a successful gun violence reduction strategy depends on a thorough understanding of the problem of gun violence in Durham. The Durham Police Department will hire a part-time data analyst to enhance on-going efforts to improve collection and dissemination of crime data related to gun violence. The analyst will aggregate existing resources (weekly DPD briefings, Duke University’s nonfatal gunshot data collection, ATF and SBI information) to analyze available data on gun violence (including Youth Gun Crime Interdiction Initiative data), and make this data accessible to law enforcement and all PSN-related agencies and comprehensible for the general public. The data analyst will work with the PSN Coordinator/Case Worker who will disseminate important information to the community through media outreach and a newly developed website. Duke's Institute of Public Policy will assist with the development of the website.

Conclusion

The Durham Project Safe Neighborhoods and Community Engagement campaign will contain several components that will operate simultaneously and collectively to enhance overall capacity for addressing our critical need to reduce gun violence. These components are analysis of gun violence data and the dissemination of this data for developing effective strategies, increase of community awareness, involvement and collaboration between law enforcement and Durham’s many agencies, organizations, and committees dedicated to reducing gun violence, and lastly development of viable resources for those offenders who are willing to put down the guns. The Durham Police Department welcomes this opportunity to develop better gun crime intelligence and to work more closely with the Durham community to save lives and reduce gun violence throughout our city.

2003 Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG) Proposal

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