Violence intervention committee to host public meeting
The Pine Bluff Group Violence Intervention (GVI) Program Committee will host a town hall meeting at 6 p.m. Aug. 22 at the Pine Bluff Convention Center. The public is invited to attend.
Featured guests will be professor David Kennedy, the GVI creator from John Jay College in New York, and members of the GVI teams from Philadelphia and York, Pa.
The moderator will be Bessie Smith Lancelin, clinical director at the Southeast Arkansas Behavioral Healthcare System in Pine Bluff.
GVI is an evidence-based approach that elevates the role community support and social services play in reducing gun violence. The program involves law enforcement partnering with the community to focus on the small and active number of people driving the violence plaguing many neighborhoods, according to a news release.
Leanita “Nikki” Hughes is the GVI director at the city of Pine Bluff.
“The city of Pine Bluff’s Group Violence Intervention Strategy is looking to build collaborations with community partners to provide avenues to end group violence in our city,” Hughes said in the release.
The GVI Governance Board members are Pine Bluff Mayor Shirley Washington, Police Chief Denise Richardson, Jefferson County Sheriff Lafayette Woods Jr., Judge Earnest E. Brown Jr., prosecutor Kyle Hunter, City Attorney Althea Scott, Judge Alex Guynn, Pine Bluff School District Superintendent Jennifer Barbaree and Assistant Superintendent Phillip Carlock, Southeast Arkansas Behavioral Healthcare CEO Sherrie James, United Family Services Executive Director Lekita Thomas, Watson Chapel School District Superintendent Tom Wilson and Watson Chapel administrator Kerri McNeal.
“The collaborations between these key components and GVI have created opportunities for early interventions, gang awareness training and Care Theory Model training (at both school districts), and focused deterrence on at risk individuals,” Hughes said.
GVI is designed to reduce street-group-involved violence and homicide, according to the release.
“A partnership of law enforcement, community members, and social service providers directly engages the small and active number of people involved in violent street groups and delivers a credible moral message against violence, prior notice about the consequences of further violence, and a genuine offer of help for those who want it. This face-to-face meeting between group members and the strategy’s partners is a central method of communication,” according to the release.
The effort, started in Boston, was originally known as “Operation Ceasefire.” The program was linked to a 63% reduction in youth homicide victimization and has since been implemented as the GVI.
Replications of the strategy demonstrated evidence of effectiveness in reducing serious violence generated by street gangs or criminally active street groups in Cincinnati, Ohio; Indianapolis; Los Angeles; Lowell, Mass.; and Stockton, Calif., according to the release.