|
Since the coronavirus
pandemic began, a flurry of homicides related to gun
violence has taken place both in Toledo and across the
nation. Spurred by this recent gun violence epidemic, Mayor
Wade Kapszukiewicz and Chief of Staff Katy Crosby have
crafted a response.
More than 30,000 people die
annually as a result of gun violence, according to 2017
statistics. That number exceeds or is about the same as die
in car crashes, liver disease, and other leading causes of
death. The City of Toledo has, therefore, developed a
strategy to address the gun violence crisis as a public
health issue.
I spoke with The City of
Toledo’s Katy Crosby, coordinator of the new initiative, to
discuss her new vision for reducing local gun violence.
Perryman: What is the
significance of looking at gun violence through the lens of
public health?
Crosby: The main component of
looking at it as a public health crisis is really about
changing the community norms around gun violence. In
communities where we have the highest risk for gun violence
there is some normalization there that is significantly
impacted by the relationship between the community and
police. So, you don’t necessarily report the violence
because you don’t know what the result will be when a police
officer comes into the community. That can be challenging to
addressing issues related to gun violence for our folks.
So, we need to change community norms and work with
community members to make sure that they are aware of what
they can use to keep their community safe.
The other piece is
providing social services, and trauma-informed care for
those individuals and families that are high risk. We want
to ensure that if they have exposure we’re looking at
resources and strategies to address it. So, suppose you
think about the communities that are at higher risk; In that
case, those are also the communities that need the most
investment and so looking at how we can be more strategic
about providing resources in those communities.
Perryman: When I think of
public health, two responses come to mind: treatment and
prevention. Can you talk about gun violence as a public
health crisis in Toledo within those two categories?
Crosby: The public health model
is really about gathering the data, looking at the
epidemiology of gun violence, the patterns, and the
demographic information, and then narrowly tailoring our
focus and strategy around addressing those risks and
protective factors for intervention.
If you think about any
health issue, you have symptoms, and so you go through a
series of tests, document the symptoms, and then try to
figure out what is driving the symptoms. Gun violence is a
symptom, but the root cause is lack of investment. If you
want to eliminate the symptom of gun violence, we have to
address those root causes, which are the resources that I’m
talking about around infrastructure, investment, trauma
informed care, access to high opportunity communities, and
all of those things. Once we put those interventions in
place, we can evaluate whether they are making a difference
in reducing violence.
Perryman: What about
prevention?
Crosby: From a preventative
standpoint, it goes back to the discussion we were having
around our violence interrupters, being a part of the
response to potential retaliation, or the uptick in
violence. Suppose you are not comfortable calling the police
officers; In that case, we have respected folks in our
communities that are helping to intervene.
Also, a part of it is
teaching good conflict resolution skills. How do we help
people work through challenges when there’s tension and
teaching how to deescalate conflict? We are also looking at
hospital intervention programs. You can often intervene on
retaliatory actions in the waiting room if you have violence
interrupters that can come in and reach family members and
associates before they actually go out and retaliate and try
to diffuse the violence. Those are other preventative
measures that you can do to deter gun violence in addition
to addressing those root cause issues.
Perryman: You talked the
other day on our biweekly community call with the mayor
about a program called the Cure Violence Program. We’ve
tried several other initiatives in this community, such as
T-CIRV. Others have been applied nationally or in other
cities such as Operation Ceasefire and RECAP (Rebuilding
Every Community Around Peace). What makes you think that
the Cure Violence Program will work when all of these others
haven’t seemed to make a difference?
Crosby: I was a part of the
CIRV Program in Dayton, and I think there was a point in
time where it worked, and then it stopped working. From my
experience, if you think about the violence that we’re
experiencing right now and where it started off, now it has
morphed into different forms of violence. So, you have to
make adjustments to respond. I think that gun violence is
the same way; Therefore we need to look at what worked in
the past, what has changed since that time, and then make
adjustments.
What also happens whenever
you’re dealing with social issues is that we pilot things in
a controlled environment. When you scale it up, there’s all
of these factors that you can’t control.
So, we’ll have some
immediate successes and then have to make shifts because the
numbers might pick back up. We have just to stay the course
of addressing gun violence. I don’t want anybody to think
that this is the be-all, end-all, or cure-all. It is an
intervention strategy that can help reduce gun violence in
the situation that we’re currently dealing with.
Perryman: Let’s talk about
partners. It’s apparent that the healthcare industry would
be involved since we’re dealing with EMT’s, emergency room
staff, nurses, doctors trying to save and repair lives. Is
the Mental Health Board on the team since suicides are also
a big part of gun violence?
Crosby: Absolutely. When you’re
talking about urban gun violence, actually mental health is
not one of the top issues related to urban gun violence. It
is when you think about domestic violence and suicides, but
urban gun violence not so much.
The other part of the
mental health piece is the trauma that comes along with
living in a community that is high risk for gun violence or
having a family member that was exposed to it, and even just
having it in the back of your mind that something could
potentially happen. All of that creates posttraumatic stress
and trauma that needs to be addressed.
Perryman: Let’s talk about
the role of law enforcement.
Crosby: From my perspective,
law enforcement is an integral part of this. When violence
occurs, they address the issue from an arresting
perspective, getting people to the hospital when necessary,
those types of things. From a preventative standpoint,
however, it’s looking at how we can deter violence before it
starts and how we can look at our infrastructure to ensure
that it is maintained in a way that deters violence.
Perryman: Will mistrust of
the police somehow dampen the effectiveness of the
interventions?
Crosby: We need to make sure,
first of all, that people understand that violence
interrupters are not an extension of the police department.
Their role is to help deter violence when there is conflict,
intervene and stop the violence before law enforcement has
to get engaged.
So that’s the first
thing, is that when you hear the defund the police movement,
when you hear the conversations about people policing our
own communities, that’s part of it. Those violence
interrupters or other influencers will not be able to
address all issues, so there will be moments when the police
have to engage.
Perryman: What are the
expected outcomes?
Crosby: I just want to stress
that this is a very, very challenging issue. It’s not
something that’s going to be changed overnight. It’s going
to take a lot of time, energy, and effort from community
partners.
I would just ask for
patience, which is a hard thing to ask when dealing with
violence, and then also open-mindedness about engaging in
the process and being a part of the solution.
Perryman: How would you
expect the faith-based and nonprofits and other community
organizations to participate?
Crosby: Our nonprofit agencies
provide social services. If you think about the first one
that always comes to mind for me is Brothers United and the
relationship they have with fathers in the community who can
be potential role models or who might be high risk
themselves and their relationship and how they can help
redirect folks. I think about the faith-based community who
families may lean on for emotional support, if they’re
exposed to violence or there may be a child that grew up in
the church that’s high risk. Family members might be able to
lean on their faith-based community and redirect that
individual.
It takes a village to
raise a child. There are a ton of ways that we can be
creative about addressing these issues. We just have to work
together and be diligent and stick with it.
Perryman: Will the funds
for the initiative come from redirecting some of the police
budget or CDBG?
Crosby: We’ve reprioritized
some of our CDBG dollars to deal with housing issues, lead
abatement, workforce development issues, and things like
that, so that’ll be a part of the strategy. Also, our LED
lighting and using our crime data is prioritized. We’re also
having conversations with our private sector partners about
addressing the root causes of poverty. As we think through
how we invest resources in our community, I would see some
of that funding from those efforts.
We already have the
hospitals, ProMedica and Mercy, that have efforts around the
social determinants of health. We’re all working together
towards a common outcome to address these issues. We’re all
looking at the same communities. The most important thing is
how we are talking to each other about and working towards
common outcomes? I’ve been working hard on discovering ways
to have better collaboration and joint outcomes around
addressing both social determinants of health and the root
causes of poverty.
Perryman: Thank you. I
appreciate your time.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org |
