Somerville is one of many communities in the Boston area lobbying for increased funding for anti-gang violence programs through the Senator Charles Shannon Community Safety Initiative, a gang and youth violence prevention grant program administered by the Executive Office of Public Safety.
Statewide public safety advocates are lobbying to extend the $11 million grant to $20 to $30 million for the coming fiscal year, according to a fact sheet provided by Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone's office.
Somerville belongs to one of 15 coalitions and 34 municipalities currently benefiting from the grant. Mayor Curtatone applied for the grant in April 2006 through the Metro Mayors Coalition, a coalition of mayors and city managers sponsored by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC).
The MAPC, which consists of 12 cities including Somerville and Medford, had to demonstrate that there is youth and gang violence within their communities and had to formulate a comprehensive plan to work with law enforcement, human service professionals and government officials in order to receive funding, according to the fact sheet. MAPC requested $2.6 million and was granted $1 million.
"The MAPC allocates that funding to regional programs and to individual city police departments," said, Meaghan Silverberg, press secretary for Mayor Curtatone.
The MAPC's Metro Mayors Coalition hosted the Community Safety Summit at the end of November, and more than 150 people attended to promote increased funding for youth violence prevention and law enforcement strategies.
According to the Somerville Journal, State Senate President Robert Travaglini said to attendees that if communities prove their current initiatives are successful, the legislature will continue to fund the programs.
Rebecca Edmonson, legislative director for Senator Jarrett Barrios, however, said that due to a $480 million cut from the state budget, "We're standing on thin ice trying to get the Shannon Grant refunded."
Barrios co-sponsored the bill that led to increased funding for cities and towns to combat gang violence in 2005. Edmonson said that Barrios would like more funding to address the rise of gang violence throughout the Commonwealth.
"More money means that more towns can get help," she said.
She said that local law enforcement in particular needs more funding because many federal grants have recently dried up.
"When you have community policing and interaction with the community, gun violence and gang violence go down," she said. "That's what we're trying to bring back."
Sean Carron, Policy Consul of the MAPC, said that the Shannon Grant programs have been successful in getting cities and towns to cooperate better on violence prevention and law enforcement programs.
"If the grant continues to be successful in facilitating communities to work better together from a regional standpoint, I think we'd be really glad," he said.
Kelly Nantel, Director of Communications for Secretary of Public Safety Robert Haas, said that Secretary Haas agrees that the Shannon Grant's success is due to its collaborative efforts.
"As a whole, the secretary believes that jurisdictions partnering together is the most effective way to address community problems," she said.
The Legislative session ends on Jan. 4, and a decision on the refunding of the grant will be discussed at that time.
Silverberg said that Somerville also receives mini-grants through the Shannon Grant which benefit quasi-public agencies and non-profit agencies including Teen Empowerment, the Community Action Agency of Somerville (CASS) and the Somerville police department.
She said that the Shannon Grant funds an anti-gang taskforce, which brings together police organizations from all over the region to talk about practices and strategies for combating gang violence.
"We understand that gangs do not respect municipal boundaries, so the more that our police officers can communicate with police officers in neighboring cities, the more successful we are in prevention," she said.
Silverberg said that the anti-gang taskforce tracks patterns, locates gang movement and compiles comprehensive information on gang activity in the region.
She said that the Shannon Grant is funding a peace summit sponsored by Teen Empowerment and Somerville Cares About Prevention which will hire 25 teen youth-workers to collaborate with the staff from Teen Empowerment. The conference will take place in the early spring and will facilitate theatre performances, workshops and productive dialogues between youth and the Somerville police.
"They're hoping that the conference will attract regional youth to come together," she said.
Silverberg said that the conference promotes the philosophy of the Shannon Grant. "The purpose of the funding is to be used for both violence prevention and law enforcement together in order to have a successful violence prevention strategy within a community," she said.
Mayor Curtatone, who co-chairs the Metro Mayors Coalition's Community Safety Initiative along with Chelsea's City Manager Jay Ash, said at a Community Safety Summit in November that the programs developed by the grant have been successful.
He said that youth arrests decreased 34 percent last year, and that the number of kids involved in extra-curricular activities increased from 58 percent in 2004 to 63 percent in 2006, and that gang violence and drug overdoses are declining, according to the Somerville Journal.
This grant, however, is largely unrelated to previous disputes at Tufts over gangs.
Gang activity has been controversial topic at Tufts in the past, with the Tufts ACLU joining Somerville community members in objecting to the controversial Somerville Gang Ordinance.
This Somerville agreement on gang policing included a list of 13 criteria that need to be filled in order for an arrest to be legal, worrying some of racial profiling and compromised rights to assembly.
The TCU Senate also addressed the ordinance with an October 2004 resolution.
