The Wilmington City Council unanimously adopted the gun violence report quietly released last month by Mayor Mike Purzycki’s administration.
The long-anticipated report examines the city’s gun violence epidemic and offers ways the city could implement community-based initiatives to combat violent crime. It was presented by members of Newark, New Jersey’s Community-Based Public Safety Collective to council members in September.
The 34-page document outlines what the Collective believes are the drivers of the city’s violence. They include “racially discriminatory housing practices,” the War on Drugs – which “has been documented to have targeted Black neighborhoods,” the report says – barriers to successful reentry after incarceration and lack of educational and economic opportunities.
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While none of these are new revelations, the report takes the unprecedented step of highlighting the city’s internal dysfunction and offers recommendations for implementing community-based intervention protocols and programs.
Recommendations include adequately funding a variety of intervention programs; advocating for improvements to the state victim compensation system; properly funding trauma recovery centers; and training intervention groups on fiscal management, leadership development and formal intervention protocols, among others.
With the report’s adoption by the City Council, council members and the executive office will be working together on the next steps, said Councilperson Christofer Johnson. He said they’ll be formulating an action plan, allocating funds for intervention groups as well as doing violence coordinator training.
The Wilmington City Council on Thursday also appointed Mona A. Parikh to chief of staff, a position that has been vacant since February, and agreed to create a fees and fines taskforce.
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The lengthy council meeting also included an extensive tribute to former longtime council member Loretta Walsh, who retired from the post earlier this month.
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