NORFOLK, Va. — Community organizations in five cities around Hampton Roads are hoping to reduce gun violence by 10% over the next three years. They hope to do that with help from a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. The name of the collaborative is "Safer Together."
Shootings are becoming all too normal in Hampton Roads, according to community leaders.
"We have some patients that have been there before, that have been shot two or three times before," said Valeria Mitchell, Trauma program manager at Sentara Norfolk General.
"It can be a crime scene at one moment," said Darrell Redmond, founder/executive director of Portsmouth-based Give Back 2 Da Block.
"Crime scene tape is gone, and people in that community are playing five minutes later."
Redmond said the problem often is worse in underserved areas.
"Two root causes of violence are underlying trauma and poverty," explained Redmond.
Hospital staff at Sentara Norfolk General said they see, on average, one person a day coming into the hospital with a gunshot wound.
There first step is, of course, medical treatment.
"We get the team down to the trauma bay to assess if they have life threatening wounds," said Mitchell. "But the work really starts after that."
"Once the services are done there, they're deployed back into the community," added Redmond. "Most of the time in the community they're going back, they're scared, they're injured, so they fear retaliation."
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Redmond and Mitchell are just two of many who are now taking a multi-pronged approach to the problem with the "Safer Together" initiative.
The Safer Together grant funding is going to three hospital-based violence intervention programs at Sentara Norfolk General (Foresight Program), Riverside Medical Center (Hand in Hand Program), and Chesapeake Regional Medical Center (HOPE Program). It's also going to three community organizations: Community of Change, Give Back 2 Da Block, and Ketchmore Kids. Norfolk State University will be the research institute for the initiative that will operate in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake, Newport News, and Hampton.
Redmond says one step of the initiative is building credible messengers.
"Credible messengers are people that were once upon a time liabilities in their community, now they train them up to become assets in their community to allow them to be that wedge and liaison between community and services needed," said Redmond.
He said in many underserved communities there's presently a lack of trust.
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"Resources for trauma, with therapists, mental health professionals, recovery specialists aren't employed in these communities to allow them to heal," said Redmond. "As opposed to other counterpart communities that a whole bunch of support and things poured inside it. So, it creates a sense of distrust because the only time the people inside these [underserved] communities see these type of people is when a crime happens."
Another step, Mitchell added, is building out post-hospital housing options.
"If the violence occurred in your home, outside your home, in your front yard it's kind of hard to go back there immediately, so we have to help patients reduce the stress and figure out where they can go," said Mitchell. That includes emergency relocation to hotels or other safe spaces in the community.
$300,000 from the grant is going towards emergency housing relocation.
The Safer Together initiative is in the middle of its soft launch, which organizers say has been going well. They hope to fully roll out the program by 2024.
"[Violence] is definitely a public health crisis. It really is. It's one we should all be concerned about, whether we have had a loved one shot or not, it affects the community," said Mitchell.
