TITLE
Recommendation to direct City Manager to provide a progress update on the Long Beach violence prevention and intervention strategies, and, further, engage with the County of Los Angeles to explore funding opportunities to accelerate the implementation of the SAFE Long Beach Violence Prevention Plan and intervention strategies through the recently adopted Measure J and other potential funding opportunities.
DISCUSSION
In July 2020, City Council unanimously approved a Long Beach Violence Interruption Strategy in response to an uptick in the number of reported shootings and instances of violent crime across the city. City Council requested the City Manager explore the creation of this strategy with the following inclusions:
· A full analysis of community based best practice violence interruption strategies nationwide
· Direct outreach to neighborhood leaders in the most impacted communities
· Direct funding for community-based organizations with expertise in violence prevention and community engagement
· Coordination of a violence prevention strategy through existing engagement efforts including COVID-19 contact tracing and Census 2020 outreach
· Coordination and expansion of existing youth engagement strategies in the short, medium, and long-terms
· The Deployment of a Summer Youth Employment Program
In October 2020, the Health and Human Services Department responded to this request and provided Council with a memo outlining their recent acquisition of the California Violence Prevention and Intervention grant. The memo noted that the focus of this funding is to establish a collaboration across departments and community institutions to reduce gun violence in Long Beach. The Department announced its intentions of launching the Long Beach Activating Safe Communities (LBASC) Program to address gun violence through a three-year $1.1 million Board of State Corrections and Community, California Violence Prevention (CalVIP) grant award. The LBASC Program w...
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