Anti-gun program is a SNUG fit
THE Bronx has a new weapon in the war against gun violence.
Operation SNUG — guns spelled backwards - will launch this year in the borough for the first time ever with the help of Jacobi Medical Center, officials told The News.
The initiative, based on the successful Ceasefire program launched in Chicago in 2000, provides former gang members with jobs mentoring adolescents in troubled neighborhoods.
Members, dubbed “violence interrupters,” also reach out to high-risk individuals — often exconvicts or gang members — and work on ways to settle conflicts without violence.
“SNUG’s aggressive and proven approach makes it clear to our young people that guns and gang violence do not need to be a way of life,” State Senator Jeff Klein (D-Throgs Neck) said in a statement announcing the initiative.
Klein helped acquire $250,000 in state funding for the program last year and Jacobi, which was chosen by the state Division of Criminal Services, provided another $50,000.
In addition to former gang members, the program also enlists counselors who work with victims of gun violence immediately after an incident, often while the victim is still in the hospital, to prevent retaliation.
“Empirical evidence shows that hospital-based interventions are extremely effective,” said Jacobi’s Dr. Stephen Blumberg.SNUG has been used in other boroughs in the past with mixed results. A report released by the Center for Public Safety Initiatives at Rochester Institute of Technology last year found the effect on overall crime was hard to gauge.
“The success is really measured in the amount of conflicts that you prevent from escalating,” said Courtney Bennett, the Harlem SNUG Director. “It’s about stopping things before they get started.”
The Bronx was one of seven areas selected across the state for part of $2.18 million for the initiative this year.
The three-year-old outpost in Harlem, run by the New York Mission Society, is now backed by funding from the City Council. “We were really able to turn some lives around,” Bennett said.