Greensboro Police Chief Brian James held a press conference on Tuesday, July 7 to talk about having had seven murders in the first seven days of July and 29 murders so far this year.
James asked the community for help solving the murders and in stopping the wave of violence.
In answer to a question, James said that none of the murders was in the two areas targeted by the Cure Violence program.
In 2019, the City Council voted to allocate $500,000 to One Step Further, a nonprofit run by City Councilmember Yvonne Johnson, to fund a Cure Violence program in Greensboro.
Cure Violence is a program out of Chicago that treats violent crime like an epidemic and by working with the community attempts to stop violent crimes, particularly murders, before they happen.
Cure Violence does not work with the police department. It is a completely separate program that makes a point of not working with or sharing information with the police department.
However, James said he does talk to representatives of Cure Violence and said, “There actually have not been any homicides in the areas targeted by Cure Violence.”
The two areas that Cure Violence targets are around Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and around Smith Homes. Those two areas were chosen because they were among those that had the highest incidence of violent crime in the past.
One of the issues that was discussed by the City Council when the decision was being made on funding the program was whether Cure Violence reduced overall violent crime or moved violent crime out of the specific areas it targeted into other areas.
When asked if that was “good news” that there had been no murders in the Cure Violence areas, James said, “That is good news. However again we are looking at 29 for the city as whole.”
Anyone interested in reducing violence – all types of violence – should watch One Punch Homicide. It’s getting great reviews and can be seen free online.
So all it has done is displace the violence to other neighborhoods? And it is again left up to the police to deal with the mess? Maybe if they had worked WITH the police, crime could have been decreased across the entire city. #DefundCureViolence
Remember the group homes and progams former police officer James Hinson was in charge of ? We all know how that turned out.
There always seems to be problems with possible conflict of interest with politicians these days, What ever happened to the full disclosures of financial. property, and etc. holdings that were to be shown to the public?
I believe there was an ethics bill passed several years ago, for full disclosure for those running for office.
if you want programs to curtail violence in communities, why not give the money to the city and county to oversee, or to the leaders of the communities to oversee, it seems they would know best how and where the money should go.
Has Ms Johnson shared all her financial records for her program? How much does she get paid, along with her employees. How much actually goes into communities? Lot of questions need to be answere.
Maybe Mr. Hammer can print more on her program.
Amen ,, full disclosure
Sure it’s great that these two small areas had no murder. Now let us all ignore the rest of the city as it drowns in blood. I don’t think you can rule the cure violence a success, when the best case scenario is that it displaced the homicides to other areas. We are still looking at record numbers, so let’s all agree that any program hailing from Chicago, AKA the most violent city in America, needs to ignored. Talk about half a million dollars down the drain.
Agree 100%
CURE THE VIOLENCE has been handed a princely sum, yet we have no evidence that it has been successful albeit the fact that murders have moved from the CTV areas to neighboring communities. Where is the accountability?
With our fabulous city council in charge , Doubt we will EVER know where this money goes. Still waiting on the accountability of the Sit in Museum .
Two more homicides over night between the 13th and 14th. Sadly, this is going to take more than a single speech from the chief or a couple of ex-con Cure Violence guys walkomg through a few neighborhoods. Who would have thought that intimidating the police into not doing their jobs would lead to a spike in violent crime? Oh wait, everyone, literally everyone knew that, except City Council.
Maybe Cure Violence was smart enough to stay away from the most dangerous areas of the city. After all, Cure Violence Lives Matter!
It would be interesting to have a follow up article Cure Violence. How the program works? What are their success stats? What do they use to track the program? What is their budget? What do members of the community say about the program? What is happening with the gang s?
Also, nothing was mentioned in the current article if the victims or alleged criminals involved in the murders were residents of the CV communities.
See the following, but essentially, there are no scientific measures of success for this program. A lot of anecdotal measures, but nothing scientifically sound.
https://www.rhinotimes.com/news/cure-violence-what-is-the-metric-of-success/
https://johnjayrec.nyc/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cvplan.pdf