Organizations gain access to increased state funding to curb violence – Macomb Daily
[ad_1]
Alia Harvey-Quinn, left, director of Force Detroit, talks about violence prevention while state Rep. Christine Morse listens last month at a Community Violence Intervention forum at Perfecting Church on Van Dyke in Detroit.
JAMESON COOK — THE MACOMB DAILY
A Community Violence Intervention town hall recently held on the east side of Detroit was part of a statewide effort spearheaded by Democrats to try to funnel more money and resources to preventing crime at the grassroots level.
State Rep. Donavan McKinney, a Detroit Democrat who also represents Center Line and part of Warren, played host and was joined by state Rep. Christine Morse, a Kalamazoo Democrat, and a handful of community leaders in crime prevention and response, in the event last month in the gymnasium at Perfecting Church on Van Dyke Avenue at Nevada Street. Other such forums, sponsored by the House Democrats, are being held throughout the state.
“There’s a lot of monies around this particular issue that’s going to impact not only the city of Detroit and surrounding area, but across the state,” McKinney told a crowd about 50.
McKinney is one of two lawmakers – the other is fellow Democrat Kimberly Edwards – as the first Blacks to represent Macomb County, and he said he is the only Black lawmaker currently representing a white majority district in Michigan.
But he said race doesn’t matter when it comes to stopping violence.
“This conversation is deeper than race,” he told the crowd. “This is deeper than the Eight Mile border. I preach all the time, every time I get on the mic, we are one. We have to stop acting like we’re not together and don’t have similar issues, especially when it comes to community violence.”
Dollars for community organizations
State lawmakers earlier this year approved Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s proposal to allocate a total of over $12 million in community violence intervention programs via the state Department of Health and Human Services for this budget year and next year, with $7 million available in funding proposals that were due Oct. 23. Additional funding will be available next year.
Potential recipients include nonprofits, private, public, federally recognized tribes and universities, and Indian Health Services, Tribal and Urban Indian organizations.
In addition, two state bills introduced this year by Democratic state Reps. Nate Shannon of Sterling Heights and Alabas Farhat of Dearborn that would create a Public Safety Trust Fund to use part of state sales tax revenue to provide over $100 million each to local police departments based on each communities’ crime statistics over three years.
An amendment was added that would funnel 6.5% of that funding toward the community violence intervention programs created under Whitmer’s proposal. McKinney, who lobbied to add the wrinkle, said that would guarantee funding for those organizations; he hopes the bills are passed this year.
Meanwhile, the city of Detroit earlier this year initiated a program, “ShotStoppers,” which has allocated $10 million to groups that received $700,000 to try to reduce homicides and shootings in a 5-square-mile area, with the ability to receive up to $700,000 in succeeding years.
Funding for the program came from the city’s share of American Rescue Plan Act funds and is in addition to the $50 million in ARPA funds already appropriated for public safety initiatives.
Two of the groups represented at the forum, Force Detroit and Detroit Peoples Community, received ShotStoppers funding.
The town hall featured short introductory talks by each of the seven panelists, including McKinney and Morse, and comments by them and more than a dozen people during the open session.
Provide better options to youth
A consensus reached at the event was that young people, especially those born into poverty, must be provided opportunities and alternatives to a life of crime in order to make money.
The concept of “paying people” to not commit crime generated stark comments.
“You gotta pay the shooter because if you don’t pay the shooter you can’t stop the bullets,” said Shawanna Vaughn of Detroit.
Alia Harvey-Quinn, director of Force Detroit, responded: “I think we got to be careful with the narrative about paying people to get out of violence. It’s true that money and access to it to get out of poverty is critical for people to be able to reimagine their lifestyle. (But) I think that looks more like private sector entrepreneurship.
“That’s the fundamental choice. We can pay people to stop shooting or we can solve the core problem.”
But she conceded many criminals make more breaking the law than they would working.
“Folks have always been hustling in our community, and you can make more hustling sometimes more than even a really good job,” she said.
Vaughn, who said she moved from New York where she served in prison for bank robbery, agreed people in poverty need to be offered “tangibles.”
“If you’re born into poverty, that’s a mental-health issue,” she said. “How do you create more money for more tangibles for these young people? Because if we don’t have tangibles to give them, we can’t take their guns away and we can’t save them their mental health.”
Vaughn objected to labeling people “criminals” because it dehumanizes them.
“You didn’t birth a criminal so there are none,” she turned and told the crowd. “People do things out of necessity. It does not make them criminals. If you want change, change the verbiage. You can’t have safety in the community and say the children are the problem. We failed. We get an F. They came into the conditions we gave them.”
Multi-pronged approach
Negus Vu of Detroit Peoples Community said his organization employs a “cure violence approach” that goes at problems like a doctor combats a virus. It’s “a holistic mindset of helping solve community violence” that attempts to get at the root of people’s issues and stop “mindset and the mental health conditions and the violence before it starts,” he aid
The organization focuses on youth said Vu, the father of six children.
“Our entire strategy centers around supporting our neighborhood schools in our targeted area, supporting the children coming home from juvenile detention facilities and supporting our returning citizens … supporting people with the resources they need,” he said.
He said people’s declining mental health and inability to obtain sufficient food, clothing, shelter, money and other resources “are at the root cause of violence. We’re able to figure out what our people need, where their deficiencies are, where the problems are at (so) we can get ahead of these problems and solve them before they start.”
Lawmaker Morse, who earned her law degree at Wayne State University, said the safety of the community is impacted by the quality of basic life needs that are met.
“We definitely recognize that social determinants – health, food – are just one part of the puzzle” at reducing violence, she said.
Morse, who is chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee on Health and Human Services, noted the COVID-19 pandemic shined a light on the health-care disparities “in communities of color.”
“Your health care needs to meet you in your community” via services such as mobile health-care units and community clinics, she said.
Crime reduction suggestions
Some speakers offered concrete ways to reduce crime.
Sandra Turned-Handy, who was in the audience and resides near Gratiot Avenue and Seven Mile Road, said ongoing investment in the community is required to battle crime.
“Criminals see how we treat the area. If they see we don’t care, they don’t care,” she said. “Once that money is gone, they’re coming back.”
Vanessa Peake of Detroit said the city has to stop permitting so many strip clubs, marijuana dispensaries and liquor stores, “all of which attract criminal activity.”
“If we really want to stop the violence in the inner-city neighborhoods in Detroit, we need to look at what we’re putting in the inner-city neighborhoods of Detroit,” Peake said then pleaded with the state representatives to provide more funds for city residents to access so they can open desirable businesses.
“Suburbia has what the majority of us want, what this room wants,” she said. “Please help us.”
Katrina LaFleur encouraged people to interact with everyone they see in the neighborhood to help create a feeling of community.
“I’m not fearful of young people that walk in my block because I know them,” Lafluer aid. “They don’t walk by me without me saying, ‘Good morning, how are you doing? Where’s my smile? How you doin’?’ My dad who is 87 years of age asks everybody, how are they doin’? So they know us.”
A speaker suggested the state provide free or discounted ring cameras to help scare away criminals, or catch them after a crime is committed.
Others talked about the need for more recreation centers in the city, more transportation for youths to travel to those centers and keeping centers open on weekends and holidays.
Adrienne Scruggs said there needs to be more free after-school programs for parents who cannot afford them, and more adult males are needed to volunteer as role models for boys.
“How do we reach the young men so they can be men?” added Monique Taylor.
Helping crime victims
Among the group representatives was LaToyia Richardson of DLIVE (Detroit Life is Valuable Everyday), which formed in 2016 to help people between 14 and 30 who have been a victim of violence as a result of a gunshot, stabbing or other assault.
She said so many of the victims are children.
“I’m meeting these babies in the hospital,” she said.
She noted a Henry Ford Health System study a few years ago that showed 40% of crime victims who are hospitalized return to the hospital.
The group provides crisis management, mentorship, mental-health counseling and education. It is based at Detroit Medical Center – Sinai Grace Hospital, with the Wayne State University Department of Emergency Medicine.
Harvey-Quinn of Force Detroit, who said he life was “shattered” by violence as a youth, said crime victims “often lack the resources to rebuild their lives.
“Your house gets shot up, what do you do from there?” she said. “Who’s funding the move out of your house? How do you talk to your kids about this?”
‘Pastor Mo’
Also serving as a panelist was “Pastor Mo,” Maurice Hardwick, a former self-described “drug lord in this community” who is a community activist, artist and senior pastor at Power Ministries Church in Detroit. He started the Live in Peace Movement and leads the Bod of Believers Outreach Ministry, and his “Bars Over Bars” initiative promotes rap lyrics with positive messages.
Mo, a husband and father of five, supported the comments of many of the speakers and described some of his past, saying youngsters involved in the drug business don’t want to participate in community programs.
He said he was shot seven times.
“These kids have it so bad they live in a culture of violence,” Mo said. “There’s heavy competition for money and territory … You would die for a block” of territory.
The extreme violence has killed about 100 people he knew involved in the drug organization.
“There’s 100 of us (in the cemetery) at 13 and Van Dyke,” an apparent reference to Detroit Memorial Park East on 13 Mile east of Ryan Road just a mile south of the Warren border. “There’s 10 of us left.”
Lawmaker: It’s in community’s hands
Toward the end of the event, McKinney, who is a husband and father, pointed out that government funding can’t solve all of the problems that lead to crime. Communities must engage as well.
“We have bring the community back together. It’s going to be up to us in this room,” he said. “This is deeper than politics. This is deeper than any piece of legislation. We have to take control of the destiny of our community, how we want our youth to act, how they want to treat us as individuals, and how they grow up.”
“It takes a village to raise these kids. I’m tired of them acting like they don’t have a community because they actually do. You guys are sitting right here.”
“We have to bring faith into it, and more importantly, we have to bring love into it. Where is that love, dog? Tough love, but love.”
[ad_2]
Source link
