City plans $9M deal to rein in street gun violence

As Pittsburgh confronts rising gun violence, city officials are proposing a $9 million contract with a Hill District-based nonprofit to stem street violence.

The Peduto administration on Tuesday introduced a resolution to increase the city’s existing agreement with the Center that CARES to just over $9 million from the two-year, $937,500 contract approved in February.

The new agreement would begin later this year and is set to expire at the end of 2025.

The nonprofit center, run by the Rev. Glenn Grayson whose son was killed in a highly publicized shooting outside of the city in 2010, employs a dozen street outreach workers in seven city neighborhoods where they intervene if a “beef” or retaliatory attack appears imminent.

Funds would be used to retain and hire new street outreach workers, provide training and create preventative measures, according to Shatara Murphy, deputy director of community affairs for the city’s Department of Public Safety.

“A lot of work needs to be done to be sure these [crimes] don’t happen,” Ms. Murphy said. “We need the voice and the insight of the community to actually create effective programming. Some of these dollars will be used to make sure that part of the strategy is implemented properly.”

City officials in recent years have credited the group violence intervention strategy for Pittsburgh’s decreasing homicide rate. In 2019, the city recorded 37 homicides, the lowest number since 1998.

Both homicides and nonfatal shootings combined dropped 38% between 2016 and 2019, according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette analysis of police statistics.

“This work is about improving the quality of life in our communities, specifically the ones that are plagued by violence.” — Shatara Murphy, deputy director of community affairs, Pittsburgh Department of Public Safety

But along with the COVID-19 pandemic came a troubling increase in gun crime.

Pittsburgh has seen a 46% rise in shootings that left people injured and a similar percentage jump in homicides over the same time last year, according to the Post-Gazette analysis published in August. Nearly one-third of the city’s 41 homicide victims as of Aug. 19 were teens, the analysis found.

In June alone, the city saw 27 shootings — the highest number in years — in neighborhoods from Homewood to the Hill District to the South Side.

The millions slated for Rev. Grayson’s organization to prevent such shootings would be funded through the city’s STOP the

Violence Trust Fund — an account established at the height of the racial injustice protests of 2020 and which receives a matching percentage of the city’s annual police budget.

Councilmen Ricky Burgess and Daniel Lavelle championed their STOP the Violence initiative — an effort meant to reach Pittsburgh’s Black communities and decrease gun crime — in 2018.

“This has been a strategy long in the making, but we take into consideration where we are currently,” Ms. Murphy said. “None of us could have ever predicted gun violence would look like it does at present day.”

Ms. Murphy could not provide the total number of outreach workers contracted through the Center that CARES, and other nonprofits that help Pittsburgh Police with group violence intervention work, including Operation Better Block in Homewood and the South Pittsburgh Peacemakers.

She added that funds will also be used to analyze the overall effectiveness of the strategy “a little bit better than we are right now.”

“This work is about improving the quality of life in our communities, specifically the ones that are plagued by violence,” she said.

Rev. Grayson declined to comment.

Pittsburgh City Council is expected discuss the proposed contract next Wednesday.