Photo Courtesy of Wiki Commons

There has undeniably been a spate of gun violence in New York City as of late. Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilmembers Fernando Cabrera and Jumaane Williams have announced their decision to launch the CeaseFire program, with the aim to reduce city gun violence.

The CeaseFire program is a  “public health model designed to reduce and prevent incidents of violence across the City.” It was designed in cooperation with the City’s Task Force to Combat Gun Violence, created last fall. The Force intends to release its full report soon.

Quinn called CeaseFire “an innovative approach to preventing gun violence that draws on the strength of our communities, and focuses on both rapid responses and early prevention.”

“We believe this initiative will complement the work of the NYPD and help save lives,” she said.

The program was developed from a model of “violence interruption and personal engagement,” and has been in the works for the past year, while the Force analyzed various safety and prevention approaches and practices. CeaseFire employs a model of immediate response, based on fostering relationships in the community and avoiding retaliation. Essentially it involves implementing a system wherein outreach counselors arrive immediately on scene in the wake of gun violence and try to build and nurture community bonds through peaceful means and dialogue.

Councilmember Williams said: “Our reward will hopefully be the sons and daughters of this city who we see walking our safer streets, rather than lying on them.” He acknowledged nonetheless the City still has a long way to go toward this ideal of safety.

The program will be implemented, with Council funding, in two neighborhoods determined most in need—the South Bronx and South Jamaica, Queens. A pilot program will also be implemented at Richmond University Medical Center to analyze a hospital-based approach.

“Our work in Crown Heights has demonstrated the positive impact that broad-based community-based collaboration can have in fighting the scourge of gun violence,” said Alfred Siegel, deputy director of the Center for Court Innovation.

The City’s Department of Health will fund two other programs in Harlem and East New York in conjunction with the City Council’s project.

—Alissa Fleck

Demonstrators gathered in Union Square on March 21 to protest Trayvon Martin’s shooting death in Sanford, Fla. creative commons photo

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, back from a tour of Asia, was asked at a recent press conference for his thoughts on the killing of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, a story that enveloped the national news over the past week.

The killing of the unarmed teen has become a flashpoint for gun control advocates and critics of racial profiling across the country, following the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the teen’s death, which some observers said may have been legal under a Florida law that allows a bystander in threat of imminent danger to use deadly force. The man who shot Martin, George Zimmerman, has not been arrested.

“Your heart just has to go out to the parents,” Bloomberg said at the press conference in Brooklyn. “I guess you pray for the deceased, but this really struck a nerve with a lot of people across the country. I think what you see here and we should be perfectly clear about this: The gun lobby is writing our nation’s gun laws.”

“It’s a disgrace,” Bloomberg added. “They write them in Washington, they write them in state capitals. And the result is that our children are being killed, our police officers are being killed, you and I and our families are in danger, in greater danger than we should be.”

On Wednesday, Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams, an outspoken critic of the city’s stop-and-frisk policy, joined demonstrators in Union Square wearing hoodies like the one Martin was wearing when he died. Williams said racial stereotyping is to blame for Martin’s killing.

“It’s Trayvon Martin in Florida. It’s Ramarley Graham in the Bronx. The darker your skin, the more you look like a criminal,” he said at the rally, Gothamist reported.

But Bloomberg stuck to the topic of gun control and did not bring up New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s stop-and-frisk policy, which Williams and other detractors argue disproportionately targets young men of color.

“I mean this is just the craziest thing, only in America,” Bloomberg said. “We have more guns than people, and the rest of the world is looking at us incredulously, that we’re letting people kill our citizens.”

This article originally appeared in City & State. To read more, visit cityandstate.com.