FLINT THE MOST VIOLENT CITY IN AMERICA PRESENTS A CARROT AND STICK CEASE FIRE CRIMINAL JUSTICE DRIVEN MODEL TO LOWER THE LEVEL OF VIOLENT CRIME!
Is this Mayorial politics or a well researched and effective program representing professional intergovernmental relations to reduce violence in our troubled city. I think the latter.[trb]
FLINTS CEASEFIRE, PREEMPTIVE STRIKE OR JUST ANOTHER LIBERAL PROGRAM TO CODDLE CRIMINALS?[tr]
I support and appreciate this effort just exercising my right here to bring forth information and ask a few questions.[trb] The use of the term “ Cease Fire” denotes to me taking guns off the street and reducing firearm related crimes. The Flint model as explained so far seems to have a few but not all of the essential criteria for this model to work. Hope they let me into the press conference I have a couple of questions.[trb]
FLINT, Michigan -- The first "call-in" meeting of the city's Ceasefire anti-crime program is under way at a Flint community center.[3]
This post is by Terry Bankert of GOOD MORNING FLINT! He is the reporter publisher. http://goodmorningflint.blogspot.com/
GOOD MORNING FLINT! A community focused blogg and news source. Bankert ,born in Flint, is a divorce/bankruptcy attorney and previously was Flint Ombudsman and before that Flint City Clerk. See vita at http://www.attorneybankert.com/
. His comments are CAPS OR cited [trb].The style is to minimize transitions, fully cite draw your own conclusions.[trb
THE FIRST FLINT "MEETING"!
The meeting, which is not open to news media, started with a session that included a crowd of residents, followed by a meeting among authorities, selected community figures and non-violent criminal suspects offenders called in to be offered a conditional hold on arrest warrants and a new path in life with the help of a social services and guidance.[3]
HERE IS WHAT WORKS
Tactics That Can Reduce Gun Violence
NIJ researchers have identified several intervention tactics that, if implemented properly, successfully disrupt or prevent offenders and potential offenders from acquiring and using illegal firearms. The researchers use special terms to describe these tactics, outlined below.[10]
Is the flint program firearm focused or intented to bring teenagers back from the brink of criminality?[trb]
Suppression and Deterrence
Interventions to stop or reduce gun violence within a community involve either suppression or deterrence. The most successful interventions do both by integrating tactics first developed in Boston (see Project Ceasefire and Focused Deterrence) and expanded upon by other cities. These tactics are:
"Retailing" — Retailing is deterrence intended to prevent crimes from happening.[10]
[Retailing Ensuring that an anticrime measure is known to the target criminal audience (e.g., gathering together all gang members to warn of prosecution, posting notices at notorious hangouts or conducting a media campaign about gun possession).[10]
WHAT RETAILING WILL THE FLINT PROGRAM DO?[TRB]
"Levers"/"Pulling Levers" — Preventing violent behavior or gun use by exploiting a targeted individual or groups' vulnerability to law enforcement to get them to comply. Levers involve suppression or the threat of suppression — increased police presence and use of harsh measures or sanctions against high-profile offenders.[10]
Retailing and lever pulling are accomplished using "carrots and sticks" — the simultaneous use of incentives and hardball law enforcement to show gang members or other targets of the intervention that the police and the community are serious, while offering alternatives to criminal behavior.[10] What levels will the flint program use?[trb]
An example of an effective stick is threatening federal prosecution for possession — not use — of an illegal weapon. Boston retailed to gang members that police were using this stick by posting announcements about the two-year imprisonment of a leading gang member for carrying a gun.[10]
A lever used to make gang members desist from violence is the threat of holding all of them accountable for violence committed by any one of them.[10]
Carrots provided by these programs are usually free access to services such as job placement and counseling. This requires considerable commitment by the local community to ensure that youth receive viable alternatives to violence and crime.[10]
Project Safe Neighborhoods continues to refine and implement these tactics nationwide.[10
HERE IS SOME BACK GROUND ON CEASE FIRE. [TRB]
CeaseFire is a national public health strategy proven to make communities safer...[4]
CeaseFire is a national public health strategy that has been scientifically proven to reduce shootings and killings. An interdisciplinary model, CeaseFire maintains that violence is a learned behavior that can be prevented using disease control methods. Concentrating intervention on communities most severely impacted by violence the model uses data to identify and detect potentially violent events, interrupt and intervene on situations likely to result in a shooting or killing and works to change the behavior and social norms that perpetuate violence [4]
IN BOSTON
The working group included community-based, street-wise individuals familiar with the local gang culture, such as a police gang unit known as the Youth Violence Strike Force (YVSF). The group struggled for months to design, implement and test an intervention [opens in pop-up window]; the result was Operation Ceasefire, which reduced firearm violence by 68 percent in one year.[9]
The two main elements of Ceasefire were (1) a direct attack on illicit firearms traffickers and (2) a set of intervention actions that gave gang members a strong deterrent to gun violence. Police placed strong and targeted enforcement pressure on gang members to discourage gun carrying. The researchers called this strategy "lever pulling [opens in pop-up window]" and called efforts to spread the word among gang members about increased enforcement "retailing [opens in pop-up window]."[9]
Why Ceasefire Worked
The "levers" were the youths' vulnerabilities to a wide range of penalties, from deportation, to going to prison for parole violations, to receiving a sentence for 10 years without parole in a federal penitentiary. Intervention operations involved cooperation between local police and federal law enforcement: [9]
The main components of the Ceasefire program can be replicated through a dedicated collaboration between local, state and federal partners that is evidence-based, uses proven tactics and strategies, continually monitors progress, and adjusts to circumstances. [9]
IN FLINT
About 80 cars sat outside the building when the meeting started. About half that many remain after residents were asked to leave so the session directly addressing the suspects could begin.[3]
Pastor Ronnie Wiggins of Higher Quality of Life Ministries sat in on the beginning of the meeting. He said he didn't know how many in the crowd were those invited as potential Ceasefire participants.[3]
But he believes the program will have an effect with time, as trust builds between the organizers and the individuals invited to participate.[3]
"It's a good start," he said. "I think it'll have to be an ongoing process."[3]
Bettie Wilborn, another resident who attended the first part of the meeting to hear about the effort, was pleased.[3]
The Program
Based on a public health model, CeaseFire works to interrupt the cycle of violence and to
change norms about behavior.
[7]
Some program elements focus on risky activities by a small
number of carefully selected members of the community with a high chance of either “being shot
or being a shooter” in the immediate future.
[7]
An outreach staff counseled clients they recruited on
the street. In the main, they were young men already marginalized from the rest of society; they
found their friends, identity and respect among their youthful peers, as far from the constraints of
society as they could put themselves.
[7]
The job of outreach workers was to mentor and counsel
them, assess their needs, and connect them with a broad range of services. CeaseFire’s violence
interrupters worked alone or in pairs, mediating conflicts between gangs and intervening to stem
the retaliatory violence that threatens to break out following a shooting.
[7]
They worked the street in
the night, talking to gang leaders, distraught friends and relatives of recent shooting victims, and
others who were positioned to initiate or sustain cycles of violence.
[7]
Local clergy and community
groups participated in marches, rallies and prayer vigils focused on reinforcing the
unacceptability of violence in the community. Educational materials were distributed that aimed
at changing norms about violence and enhancing knowledge of the risks of engaging in violence.
[7]
"It's reaching out to one another and trying to make the world better," said Wilborn, 72. "It's going to be alright if we keep working together. We have to watch out for one another."[3]
WHAT SOME MLIVE READERS SAID
intheknow767 July 21, 2011 at 9:02PM
THIS IS DANGEROUS BACK ROOM STREET JUSTICE THAT OUR CONSTITUTION WAS MEANT TO KEEP FROM HAPPENING. THERE WILL BE CLAIMS OF DISCRIMINATION, ETC. COURT PROCEEDINGS INVOLVING THE POTENTIAL DEPRIVATION OF ONE'S LIBERTY ARE HELD IN PUBLIC TO PROTECT EVERYONE...
THIS IS WHAT IS DONE IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES AND CERTAIN MID-EAST COUNTRIES...
TRIAL IS SECRECY...[3]
drummersmom July 21, 2011 at 8:09PM
I love how bad guys are always offered 'deals' while the rest of us are expected to play by the rules. [3]
jazzman71 July 21, 2011 at 8:39PM
The criminals get the deals because they do understand the rules. They know how to play the system and when to do it. They know who to con and how to do it. Twenty years from now the same criminals will be offered the same deals by the same people at the same expense to the taxpayers. Buy them a one way bus ticket and see what kind of deal they can get somewhere else. Those who support them can go with them, on the same bus, at their own expense. [3]
intheknow767 July 21, 2011 at 9:04PM
Follow
If you have arrest warrants, I demand, as a taxpayer that you arrest them...not coddle them into being "good".... Are you kidding me???[3]
976431 July 21, 2011 at 10:39PM
Then they'll throw in some bonuses, like the pukes in Detroit and Saginaw did. You know, the ones who want to have all the job application forms stripped of questions like "have you ever been convicted of a felony"?
Absolutely disgusting.
You pukes are pathetic.[3]
MORE ON THE NATIONAL MODEL BEING APPLIED TO THE STREETS OF FLINT.
The Department of Justice report validates the CeaseFire model as an evidence-based intervention that reduces shooting and killings and makes communities safer. The report found the program “effective” with “significant” and “moderate to large impact,” and with effects that are “immediate.”[6]
Summary of the Results – CeaseFire Chicago intervention is effective at:
Decreasing shootings and killings
41-73% drops in shootings and killings in CeaseFire zones.
16- 35% drop in shootings directly attributable to CeaseFire.[6]
Decreasing retaliatory murders
100% reductions in retaliation murders in 5 of 8 neighborhoods.[6]
Making shooting “hot spots” cooler
“In every program area there was a substantial decline in the median density of shootings following the introduction of CeaseFire.”[6]
Effectively helping highest risk youth
85 – 99% of high-risk clients needing help, received help from CeaseFire.
Clients received help in getting jobs, education, drug treatment, and more.
99% of clients reported that CeaseFire had a positive effect on their lives.[6]
Making neighborhoods safer
A positive effect on neighborhood safety was shown in every community studied.[6]
THE RECENT STICK.
"We want the criminals to know that if you use a gun in Flint, you're going do hard, federal time in prison," said U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.McQuaude, alongside Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton and nearly even level of law enforcement in Genesee County, announced a new initiative Thursday. It's aimed at shooting down guns crimes[2]
This is a well documented approach that should be supported by the comunity that should demand and reciueve transparency and commiunity reporting. [trb] http://www.attorneybankert.com/
SOURCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]CeaseFire Illinois (CeaseFire)
[6]
l
[7]
[8]
Slide show on Chicago program.
[9]
[10]
http://www.nij.gov/nij/topics/crime/gun-violence/prevention/tactics.htm
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