City gets $100,000 gift to reduce violence

Ceasefire program will operate in 2 neighborhoods

Bader Philanthropies is giving $100,000 to the City of Milwaukee for Ceasefire, a violence interruption program, officials announced Sunday.

The money is in addition to $280,000 already committed to Ceasefire in the 2018 city budget and will allow the program to operate in two neighborhoods next year, instead of one.

Mayor Tom Barrett and the city’s Health Department, which includes the Office of Violence Prevention, have praised the Ceasefire program.

Officials say Ceasefire supports the first goal of the newly released Blueprint for Peace violence prevention plan: “Stop the shooting. Stop the violence.”

The program is based on the Cure Violence model, which involves training and paying trusted insiders of a community to anticipate where violence will occur and intervene before it erupts.

Cure Violence made headlines when it was the subject of a 2011 documentary, “The Interrupters,” that followed three Cure Violence workers in their Chicago neighborhoods.

As evidence of its success, the Chicago group has pointed to a 29% drop in shootings and homicides in “CeaseFire zones” in a three-year period. The Cure Violence website lists other promising results, such as reductions in killings of up to 56% and in shootings of up to 44% in all four program sites in Baltimore.

In other cities, Cure Violence has come under criticism for employing ex-gang members, some of whom have ended up reoffending.