East Montgomery Times

Guided by the Philadelphia Roadmap to Safer Communities, Philadelphia made a historic investment in reducing gun violence in fiscal year 2023, with $209 million to address urgent violence prevention needs through a multi-disciplinary approach focused on community empowerment, employment and careers, healing, prevention, and safe havens for children and youth.

For Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) Mayor Kenney is building on that momentum and proposing $233 million to help make our communities safer and reduce violence.

Connected and thriving youth and adults	$82,527,404	$86,681,051
City-coordinated services	$42,825,626	$62,225,549
Strong community engagement and partnerships*	$35,939,009	$27,390,533
Safe and healthier neighborhoods	$48,485,670	$56,974,963
Total	$209,777,709	$233,272,096

*The funding for Strong Community Engagement & Partnerships shows a decrease from FY23 to FY24 because additional Community Expansion Grant funding was rolled over from FY22 to FY23 to allow more time for community-based program grantees to ramp up their programming and fully expend their funding.

The Office of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Criminal Justice and Public Safety (CJPS) is in the process of evaluating current grantees for renewals and will share if there will be any anticipated rollover of funds in April 2023. The current proposed FY24 funding will support a new round of grantees as well as the renewal of existing grantees.

Key investments Mayor Kenney proposed

Group Violence Intervention

An additional $1.38 million over five years to provide stipends to participants in the Group Violence Intervention (GVI) strategy.

GVI provides social services and support to individuals and neighborhood groups directly connected to gun violence, focuses messaging on deterrence and law enforcement actions, and amplifies community-rooted messaging to combat violence. The City recently released the results of an outside evaluation of the program which showed promising outcomes.

Throughout the program’s initial execution period, GVI teams provided services to 113 groups in Philadelphia. Within those groups, 276 individuals were directly contacted at least once.

On average, these groups saw a 38.6 percent reduction in shootings per week. Groups who received services from the GVI program at least twice saw an even more significant drop (50.3 percent) in the number of weekly shootings.

Investigations and evidence

Mayor Kenney allocated $14.7 million over five years towards the Philadelphia Police Department’s Office of Forensic Science, to support evidence processing and investigations.

These investments will complement $50 million in funding for a new state-of-the-art forensic lab and help the Department further improve its homicide clearance rate, which increased from 42 percent in 2021 to 47 percent in 2022.

Strategic deployment and staffing

Operation Pinpoint

The City plans to invest $9.2 million over five years to support Operation Pinpoint, which deploys additional police resources to the places where violent crimes occur the most. Operation Pinpoint is the Philadelphia Police Department’s (PPD) place-based strategy that focuses resources on the areas hardest hit by gun violence.

Pinpoint Areas were re-examined in FY23, resulting in PPD increasing the number of Pinpoint areas to over 45 locations. The revised Pinpoint grid includes four police districts (22nd, 24th, 25th, and 39th) receiving resources and additional personnel, with 100 officers being redeployed to these high-violence districts.

Recruitment support

The proposed budget also includes $1 million over five years to support recruitment and help PPD hire a diverse pool of qualified candidates.

Criminal justice partners

Mayor Kenney proposed $25 million over five years in the District Attorney’s Office to sustain their critical work on investigations and prosecutions. The Five Year Plan also commits $25 million to the Defender Association of Philadelphia to provide quality legal services and support for vulnerable Philadelphians in the criminal justice system.

New and expanded initiatives in Fiscal Year 2024

Looking ahead to fiscal year 2024, the City will strategically focus on new investments to bolster the goals and outcomes of existing programs and address gaps in services.

• In response to a recent positive evaluation, the City is moving forward with expanding the Group Violence Intervention program and its services. Since the conclusion of the evaluation period, GVI has expanded into 15 police districts throughout the city of Philadelphia. In the next year, the GVI program plans to staff 12 case managers, three site supervisors, a peer retention specialist, and a data manager.
• The Community Violence Intervention (CVI) pilot program will launch in the Spring of 2023. It will provide support services, transitional jobs, and behavioral health interventions to individuals at high risk of being involved in gun violence. The program is based on the Heartland Alliance READI National Center for Safe Communities model. Heartland supported the launch of CVI by leading an 18-month feasibility study with Philadelphia.
• Police-Assisted Diversion (PAD) is a pre-booking diversion program where police contact leads to a real-time connection to social service providers during mere encounters in the community and at the point of arrest for offenses such as retail theft, prostitution, or the possession or purchasing of narcotics. After a successful pilot phase, PAD will be expanded to a city-wide model by the Summer of 2023.
• The Office of the Victim Advocate (OVA) was launched in February 2022 and has been building its capacity, creating public resources, and assessing community needs to inform future programming. In FY23, OVA was allocated $500,000 to support victim relocation. It has since built the foundation for a pilot program that will fully launch in Fall 2023.

Original source can be found here.