Reducing Violence News Archive

The Stapleton Houses' Resource Hub initiative consists of five pop-up mobile kiosks near the development’s tennis court area. A product of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety, the program is effectively operating a hub to connect the community to requested services, resources, and programming. Some key issues for Stapleton’s resident stakeholder team have included health and overall wellness, safety and justice, connection to resource information, as well as youth programming and development. 

WNYC takes a comprehensive look at the factors fueling the recent rise in New York City's jail population, citing our recent analysis of the impact of COVID-19 and of the two waves of state-wide bail reform.

Spurred by the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police, New York is just one city where protesters are calling for money to be diverted from police budgets to the community. Mayor Bill de Blasio added $10 million of funding for community groups running alternative-to-policing programs, including Save Our Streets.

"In New York City, one study found that gun violence rates declined significantly in two neighborhoods operating violence interruption programs." The Appeal cites our Save Our Streets program in the Bronx as one way to reduce the footprint of police and create safer communities. 

Gun violence has risen in cities across the U.S. this summer, compounding the issues of systemic racism, intergenerational trauma, and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Nonprofit Quarterly explores research-backed solutions to gun violence, including violence interruption programs like our Save Our Streets, which approaches gun violence as a public health issue.

After an uptick in shootings across Brooklyn, dozens of anti-gun violence advocates, including Save Our Streets, gathered the community to speak out against gun violence. “We look at violence, especially gun violence, as a public health issue and not a criminal issue,” said Shadoe Tarver, our associate director of community safety. 

Save Our Streets, our anti-violence program, gathered in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn to denounce gun violence after a shooting. The program brings the community together to change norms and behaviors around violence and push for more resources for youth in the area.

Violence prevention groups like Save Our Streets will help lead the efforts toward ending gun violence in Brooklyn, with a goal to "saturate the community with the violence interrupters and outreach workers and all the members of the cure violence team,” said Ife Charles, our deputy director for S.O.S.

Anti-violence and community-based organizations in New York City present an alternative approach to public safety. Save Our Streets "helped reduce shootings in the South Bronx area where they work by sixty-three per cent," the New Yorker reports in a profile of our work.

The anti-violence work of Save Our Streets is continuing online during the coronavirus pandemic. By turning to social media, S.O.S. and RISE Project are offering virtual workshops on topics like abuse and intimate partner violence.