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Oh.

Good afternoon and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we're devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

Today is Friday, January 30th.

My name is Dan Moulthrop.

I'm the chief executive here.

And I'm pleased to introduce our forum today, which is the local law enforcement forum and part of the City Club's Criminal Justice series.

It's about the longest it's taken to get people to quiet down.

Good job.

Really appreciate the enthuses ASM.

Today we are taking you to Omaha, Nebraska.

In 2009, 246 people in Omaha, Nebraska were victims of gun violence.

By 2022, that number was cut in half.

And that reduction in gun violence was the result of the work of Omaha 360, a persistent and consistent effort by organizations and leaders across the city who came together every week and continue to come together every week to share data, coordinate strategies, and respond to community needs.

This work is paired with youth engagement, reentry services, engagement with law enforcement agencies, all supporting violence prevention from every angle on the stage.

With us center stage is Willie Barney.

He's CEO and founder of Empower Omaha, which is a community building initiative that has grown from 90 an idea and into a broad, community wide collaborative supporting efforts in education, workforce development and housing.

And they birth Omaha 3060.

Douglas County, Nebraska's sheriff's office was a key partner to that effort.

And also joining us is Wayne Hudson, chief of Shaker Heights Police, who helped lead and support the work while he was working in Omaha.

Yeah.

Pretty cool.

Okay, great.

It's a little, little murmur for Chief Hudson.

Meanwhile, municipalities across Cuyahoga County have long sought to reduce gun violence with some success.

Recent years have seen emergency departments, however, consistently reporting more than 300 gunshot wounds each year.

The Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas has recently created a new violence intervention program.

County Executive Chris Ronayne recently appointed Myesha Watkins, our moderator today as the administrator of the county's Office of Violence Prevention.

It is an office of one.

It should be noted.

My issue is a licensed social worker and violence prevention expert, and she spent years as the executive director for the Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance.

Today, we'll hear more about the Omaha 360 project, their successful violence intervention, and the lessons we may learn about community response and what that might look like here in Cleveland in Greater Cleveland.

Before we begin, a quick reminder for our live stream and radio audience.

If you have a question during the Q&A portion of the forum, please text it to (330)541-5794 and our team will try to work it into the program.

Now, members and friends of the City Club, please join me in welcoming Willie Barney, Chief Wayne Hudson and Myesha Watkins.

Think.

Thank you, everybody, for being here.

I was excited to see that we were actually zero degrees today and that negative.

So give it up for Mother Nature.

As we go into this conversation, I do want to have a moment of silence for any lives that we lost to senseless gun violence in our county.

To date and so if we can just take a moment.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Mister Barney, for being here.

Thank you for being here.

I do want to share a quick story.

Last April, there was a tragic shooting in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where a young person shot and killed another person inside of the library.

And I remember someone saying that they wanted to connect me to the police chief.

And I was like, if the police chief is trying to make this a black person problem, I'm not going to have this conversation with him because it's not about race.

Especially in a community like Shaker Heights, as very affluent.

And so when I got on a phone call with the chief, the conversation was, what can we do to help divert further violence?

And what does, what does that look like?

And he and I was like, oh my gosh, look at me giving you an opportunity.

This is a really good conversation.

So I want I want you to have an open mind as we indulge in this conversation that just because, past and present, challenges allow us not to work together, that there are opportunities where we will send our humanity to get set a greater goal, which is to end gun violence, to eradicate it, but to do it together.

So I do want to say thank you, chief, for not allowing me to go there.

And we actually met at the same place.

Thank you.

So, and this is a question for you both.

What does real public safety look like?

Yeah, I think it has to start with the reality that we have to believe we can make the change.

When we start at the table, 20 years ago, believe it or not, we had to ask ourselves, can we move the dial if we work more closely together?

And we didn't know we had done the studies.

We looked at the Boston Ten-Point coalition.

We looked at other cities.

But a lot of times, the violence efforts, they go for five, six, seven years or even have some success and then it's evaporates.

Or what if something happens to that, that long term success?

So I think those relationships, to me, what I have learned is the relationships, trust and transparency is really what takes and sustains the work over time.

Were Wayne and I have each other cell phone numbers and I can call them at 6:00 in the morning on a Saturday.

Try not to do it too much, but when something occurs in the community, we have that direct relationship that we can trust that we have built over time because we see each other every single week and we're both focused on a common vision of how we move our city forward into your opening point.

How do we create an environment that is safe for our kids, our families, law enforcement, everybody and so if we have that common vision and we have that belief that we can move the dial, we can change this.

It does not have to be this way.

We can build and create stronger communities.

So that's critically important.

Appreciate you.

What he said.

Not from a law enforcement standpoint.

I've often said this, throughout history, there's been several times that we haven't been on the right side of history.

We might have been on the right side of law, but we haven't been on the right side of history.

We only got the civil rights movement.

Some of the things we did in law enforcement was wrong.

So how do we build that back?

Is by law enforcement in the community coming together.

And dropping the past, not forgetting about it, but dropping the past, coming together with open minds and open hearts and say, how can we make this community better?

How can we build something better for the youth that are coming up and for our seniors?

We, like Willie, said, we have to have trust.

We in law enforcement, we I think we're responsible for making those spaces because, look, the community most times is not going to come to us.

So we must make those positive spaces.

We can have those open and honest conversations.

That's one thing that drew me to Shaker Heights is when I did my research, when this job was open.

I think Shaker Heights is a little different on different city.

They're not afraid of having those hard conversations, sitting down and talking to individuals that you may not get along with.

I often say that is, it is hard to dehumanize someone when you're sitting across the table having a conversation.

And that's the big thing with I'm all 360, everybody's in one room.

Everybody's talking about the issues going on in the community and how we all can best take care of it.

We may come out from different angles, but the goal is a safe community.

Absolutely.

And I think if we remember what the goal is, it's easier to get there.

When I did my work with Cleveland Peacemakers, oftentimes working in communities that were the most impacted by violence was also really triggered by law enforcement.

And so oftentimes the goals is that if there is more violence, then we need to create more law enforcement and put more officers on the streets.

And I think if we're talking about history that has never deemed to be successful, but I think if we can create a space where it's like protocols over personalities, I may not want to work with you, but will that get in a way of saving lives?

And I think the answer is it will.

And if you want to be a part of solution, you can't beat a problem.

That is saying, I choose not to work with someone who may have caused harm because I don't think that they have met, reformed or redeemed enough.

But ultimately, the people who are the most proximate to the problem are closest to the solution.

But if your biases are around to say, well, what do you have to offer, then the trust cannot be there.

So even with our conversations when developing Omaha at 360, what where did what people did you bring to the table?

Because when you think about public safety, oftentimes we all think about law enforcement.

But how do we bring the people back into public safety and have those conversations?

Yeah, I think more so that we've now been working with 200 plus cities have contacted us.

We've just had our head down doing the work.

200 plus cities, 50 have come to see what we're doing in Omaha, and it.

And one of the things they ask is, okay, why is this so different?

And it had it caused some pause and make me realize that, okay, obviously we didn't start here.

You know, when we first started, it was an African-American driven.

How do we change the what's happening in our communities from economics, employment, housing, revitalization?

Obviously, we're all working hard, but we are not getting it done.

If only 50% of our young people are graduating from high school.

We are not getting it done.

If we have 250 nonfatal shootings every single year.

So how do we as an internal community?

And that's the biggest.

The biggest flip for us is the community took ownership of this issue.

It wasn't just a law enforcement issue that we point to them and say, you're the problem, you're the issue.

Why don't you fix this?

It was a community had to take it on.

And so as we built that community support internally, we came to the area of violence because, just as we were getting ready, we had this big, great strategy of how we were going to work together and change Omaha.

Well, that summer and one month, there were 35 shootings in one particular neighborhood.

And so we said, there is no way that we can create the safe, thriving community that we want if our kids and our our seniors are afraid.

Just being in their own households and their own neighborhoods.

So that's when we began to shift.

And when we made that shift, we made, okay, we're going to need to sit down with the police department.

And there were some people in our group there that we will not say now with the police department.

You talked about, we said, no, there's a thousand police officers out here every day in our community.

How are we?

How are we going to address gun violence and not sit down and at least have a conversation to better understand what is actually going on?

And some of the folks that, that's not for me.

Then I had the conversation with, at that point, the deputy chief and the chief of police and I said, I need you to come to this community forum to have a conversation about how we work together.

And he looked at me and he said, no, thank you.

I've been there.

I'm always the issue.

I'm the problem.

I said, give us a chance to create a forum where we can have bold, productive conversations and strategically look at how we move together as a community.

So we had to work both sides and not everybody was ready, but we had to go with who was.

And that's something I will share with anybody.

Don't wait on everybody, because if you wait on everybody, you will never move.

It.

You got to have a sense of urgency.

Go with who's ready and have some successes.

Eventually others will come.

So we started with three, and now we have 500 plus organizations that are working consistently to reduce gun violence.

Chief, I have a question for you because I think personally, if someone was to invite me into a space where I knew I was going to be the target, I would say, no, I can't do that.

But too often in our personal and professional spaces are the same.

And so how did you get into a space where you're saying, this is bigger than how someone makes me feel, because our feelings and emotions can't be more heightened in the people who are being shot and killed in the communities that we serve.

And even if you hurt my feelings by having a conversation, there are more people that are grieving for the loss of their child, their spouse, their loved one, their colleague.

And so how did you get into a position where you're just like, you can hurt my feelings, but if the angle is going to be saving lives and I'm willing to risk that.

So, Mister Barney, you talked about that neighborhood with these 300 something shootings.

That was my neighborhood.

That's where I grew up.

That's what I saw.

And I didn't want that for my community in Omaha.

And I don't want that for community here.

So to me, it's it's all about being genuine building trust.

And that's what I did in Omaha is I would go into those spaces where I knew I wasn't wanted, okay.

And I would do it in full uniform because I want people to see the uniform and have that conversations and realize, oh, I'm from that neighborhood.

I'm just like everybody else.

It's just that I put this uniform on, okay?

I had different duty and responsibilities, but at the end of the day, we all want the same thing.

And that is a safe community, a nonviolent community, a place where our kids can go out and about and have fun.

So that's what I set out to do.

But I'm address one thing you said before I'm going to go back.

We will never, ever arrest our way out of this problem.

We will never do it.

We can add more cops.

We can add more troopers.

We can do all that.

But we will never arrest our way out of this problem.

We always got to have our community partners always want to help.

Them.

Can I can I lean into that a little bit?

This is the conversation.

I'm just through this work.

I just want to pause for a minute because I'm often the the person that gets a chance to come and travel to different cities and share.

But behind me is, you know, hundreds of people.

Our chief of police, our mayor, now, our elected officials, our city council, state senators.

Just as important are folks with lived experience that are doing direct intervention in the middle of the night, a hospital.

I heard the hospital systems, those doctors and nurses in the neighborhoods and the schools, the teachers that are dealing with and having to go to the classroom and tell the young person that one of your classmates was shot last night.

All those people, are doing that work in alignment now.

And through that process, what we learn by building that trust.

Our chief of police just four years ago, understanding that we could not arrest our way out of this.

And we've got to address root cause, employment, education, entrepreneurship, housing.

We took everything that we had learned, and we went to the state to secure an upper, make a proposal in the midst of the chief of police and the police union testifying with us, the chief said, I would rather have a thousand strategically placed jobs in this community than a thousand more police officers.

Yeah.

And it it it changed the ballgame.

When the state senators and the governor and others started to hear that the chief of police was willing to say, I want to see this community thrive.

And the way that we reduce violence is by investing in the community, not necessarily always arresting.

You know what y'all are dropping to make up here.

But when one thing, one thing that what Omaha has, they have a police chief and his command staff that are really bought in.

If you don't have a chief, you don't have the other commanders bought in.

It's not going to work because as a as a chief goal is how the troops will go.

Absolutely.

And I appreciate you both talking about, like buy in.

And oftentimes when you talk about violence prevention, there are people not in this room, but there are people that are saying, this doesn't impact me, so why should I care or why should I be invested?

The reality is, and I oftentimes share, is that violence has no border.

And like the young people say, it's on sight.

And so there was a situation that a conflict happened somewhere, but the life was lost in a city that had nothing to do with the conflict.

And then you have people in all cities that are saying, well, what are we supposed to do?

We just had a homicide.

If we buy in into a comprehensive strategy around how to address violence prevention, then we will have this network where I'm calling us six a Am to say, you know, somebody just got shot and I don't want this to continue.

What can we do collectively and I, I really want to give kudos to our county executive for creating this office, because Cuyahoga County is huge and it's different like cities, Cleveland is different from Solon is different from Shaker, is different from East Cleveland.

But what's the same as people where we're one county, like we're all residents of the county are?

How do we center that?

To say, I don't think we should put dollars here because I'm not impacted by it, but just wait.

If you ignore prevention, then intervention is going to be necessary when it comes to you because you're not equipped to handle it.

And so I think one of the things as we talked about success, oftentimes people are say, well, violence is being reduced because more people are being arrested.

And although damaged culture stands by that, that's not the only way to define success.

And I want you to talk more about it, Mr.

Barnes, is that the equal system of public safety and violence prevention is like violence impacts everything it does.

And so how do we get people to buy in to be able to share the same space, to get to the end goal, to to figure out what are those success factors?

Thank you.

Got three different questions in there that I want to really answer as well because I mean I'm not there.

So you just but the different things that you hit on made me trigger a different two different things.

I want to make sure I try to get out there.

One is absolutely you think about, the impact that we can make by looking at, for example, let me get back 360.

It's collaboration is prevention.

It's intimate intervention.

Yes.

There is some enforcement, smaller reentry and support services.

If you're going to have a comprehensive effort in a city, in a county, you have to look at that holistically.

When we first started, 90% of violence prevention was enforcement and everything else was small.

Now the chief will tell you that it's a third prevention.

It's a third intervention in some enforcement.

And now reentry and support services are a bigger part of what we're doing as a community.

It's critically important.

And so that's one of the biggest things that that I wanted to make sure I get out is that you have to look at this balanced approach and engage as many people as you possibly can.

Celebrate each role, each lever that people are playing.

And to your point about, getting away from enforcement, one of the most encouraging things.

We just did our annual summit last week where the mayor and other everybody comes together to give an update to the community.

One of the most encouraging things that we've seen is a reduction in violent, violent crime is one of the lowest we've seen in history.

Arrests have gone down for four years in a row, and the tension of youth has gone down for four years in a row.

So violence down, arrests down, detention down.

And that was being honest.

That was a struggle for us.

We saw it.

We started seeing as violence was coming down.

Arrests were going up, detention, was slightly going back up for youth specifically, but now with intentional focus.

And we came around the table and said reducing violence is one part of it.

But if we're just locking kids up, putting families in prison, that's not getting it.

But it took even additional focus to bring those other two areas down as well.

I appreciate that.

I want to take a moment to give a personal shout out to Joe Sheehan, through his program, the VIP program, Cleveland Peacemakers partner with the court.

And it was a young person who got caught with the firearm.

It just changes like grace over Jill and a diversion opportunity.

And once you graduate from this program, you your felony is expunged because this young person graduated from the program.

He is now a part of an internship with the NBA.

He has the National Classic Basketball Association and partnership with the Cavs and the Cuyahoga County Office of Violence Prevention, where he's traveling to DC to Virginia and doing his capstone on how do we improve the system.

So second chances and diversion is absolutely, absolutely necessary because what opportunities are needed for young people who make decisions, who live in communities where their built environment caused them to either in their thought, in their mind, and even when I grew up in these communities, like, what do I need to do to survive?

Thriving is secondary to my survival.

But I do want to say thank you for creating that opportunity.

He's done a great job of making and so we will do something real quick.

Yeah.

Why don't I talk about this earlier?

Any time I travel, I get a chance to see the young people in the room and I want to celebrate them.

Can we, the high school students and other some other students that are in the room, can you stand up real quick?

Come on.

That's awesome.

Thank you.

It's so and it's so and critically important that you are not only in the room, but you are part of the conversation.

I talked to a few individuals, and Wayne knows this because he's deeply involved in youth.

Not only youth voice, but youth leadership, youth civic engagement, our youth 360 group, they go to city council, they go to the school board, they go to the state Senate and they share their ideas.

Because to your point, earlier, those with lived experience that live closest to what's going on, I believe, have the solutions that need to be implemented.

So I want to recognize and celebrate you all.

I appreciate that, and I think it's important for young people to know, since we, are able to give you a shout out, that the number one cause of premature death for all teens and kids in our country is gun violence.

So to have you.

Yeah.

I see your face on, boy.

Yes, that is crazy, right?

Because it's preventable.

It is.

It's a preventable disease.

And the fact that the inability to handle conflict is causing not just young people, because the average shooter in our country is 27.

So not to put blame on young people, but it's causing people to handle conflict with a firearm and that does not need to happen.

So I appreciate of shock, but we want to make sure the young people know this information so that when you're faced with conflict that your first mind isn't to go to violence, but it's the go to how do we de-escalate?

How do I save my life?

And how do I save the person who is beefing with me for no reason?

Because, you know, it's always down.

So that duty.

So as we think about because we don't have that much time as we think about what does this look like in Cuyahoga County?

Like what are some things that we should consider and shout out to the chief that we have you here in proximity, to be able to talk to all your law enforcement partners, to say, yes, we need to bring this here, because I'm going to need you to be a champion.

And so, like, what do we need to do to bring this here?

Well, I think we got to have an umbrella organization.

One thing I think that, and I raise a lot.

Well, let me say I'm thinking of somebody like.

Yeah, let me say this.

I think one of the reasons why I'm all 316 Empowerment Network was so successful is that it was a separate from government.

So it doesn't matter who's in charge.

I'm it doesn't because we know you change administrations.

The direction might change.

Absolutely.

But the mission may never change.

But so that's why I think why the Empowerment Network is so successful.

How do we do it here?

I would love to see you take this on.

Get everybody in the room once a week for an hour.

And that's what I'm all 360 do.

And we talk about different things that's going on in our community and how we can help.

And I'm going to give you one example.

It was the gang unit back in Omaha.

They kept on having problem.

This young man kept on having problems with them.

Kink, anger end up having contact with them and said, why, what is it?

What do you like to do?

How can we keep you out of trouble?

Kind of find out.

The young man loves horses.

So, Kim, can you remember at 360 that there was an organization there that took care of horses?

So he contacted and said, would you mind having this kid come out and just spend some time with the horses?

Kid came out if the direct the director said, look, you can come here as long as you want, but if I get one report from a gang unit that you've been arrested, picked up or anything, you can't come here.

Kid never got in trouble again.

You just got to find that one thing that that the young kids want.

What is that trigger to keep them out of trouble.

And I think that Omaha 360.

Getting Cleveland getting Cuyahoga County all involved into.

How can we all sit down and talk about how can we address this problem, what's going on this Saturday?

Well, we have a rival football game.

I'm all three six.

They'll say, okay, who can help?

You have 100 black men.

You have passes and preachers and they will all show up at this event, because who's going to fight with the mammoth pastor right there?

Who's going to do that?

That's not going to do it.

So getting everybody in the room, everybody on the same page.

As much as you can talk about how can we reduce the violence, our whole community, we cannot I think my senior people for being here, I want to say that right.

So.

But just because we live on the outskirts of Cleveland, like Myesha said, crime doesn't stop.

It travels across borders.

We can't just push it in Cleveland.

They'll push it back.

No, let's all work together on this problem.

So we all have our communities safer, and we have an amazing, county sheriff that can definitely help lead us out.

So.

But I think is really important what you mentioned.

And I know we're going to get, close to end and zoom, but to your point of like, how do we decenter government systems and put this in community?

I'm a community person to my heart, and we have so many amazing community organizations here.

But in order for community to take this charge, investment is necessary.

This is not community service.

This is community work, and it should be invested in and actually as a line item in the public safety budget bill.

That's another matter that the conversation about and staffing.

Yeah.

So I think it's important that we think about how does this live outside of administration AI systems.

And then we just continue to support it.

So shout out to the community organizations here throughout Northeast Ohio, because Akron is in a building to that.

Does this work?

Moms demand action.

We appreciate you.

And as we go into our last conversation, our last question is that what were the challenges like, as you think back 20 years?

Like, what has been the challenge?

We noticed this is you're prolonging life and saving lives.

But what were the challenges initially?

Initially 20 years.

Some of them are still there.

You know, I'm 20 years into it, but I just wanted to pause for a minute and didn't want to go jump past what you just said.

There are people in the room that work 24 seven.

They they're they're in the shoot.

They go to the shooting thing.

They they're the ones that have to put their thumb in to stop.

They're the ones that in the hospital.

They're the ones that are talking to the young man that's on the edge and doesn't.

So can we can we just celebrate the 24 over seven intervention?

Activist folks say, stand up, please.

Like say please, please.

Yeah.

Appreciate.

Yes.

Thank you.

Because I do that because we kind of we I do that intentionally because we got a group back home that for years were doing the work, but they they just were not appreciated and not invested in.

And so it's taken us years and some pain to figure out.

We've got to invest on the front end of this and we've got to invest in those small grassroot organizations.

Sometimes it's a one person operation, sometimes it's a five person operation, sometimes they just trying to operate.

But fact.

But the community knows they're the person that everybody goes to.

Oh yeah.

And we have not built capacity strong enough.

So now we are finally in a position where four years into, some things to be able to invest in those smaller organizations that do that work.

So I think that was an early lesson, but it's definitely a lesson that we had to revisit even after we saw the declines.

Then we started getting into the conflict more between smaller grassroot and the larger groups that seemed to get more of the resources and law enforcement that had seemed to have more the resources.

So we had to come back into it, and we switched from a social solution to an economic solution.

And what we realized is that if once this area could be brought to a higher level of economic growth and opportunity, it would add $4 billion of economic activity to the whole region.

So when we talked to the state senators, the governors and others, it would add $4 billion.

Not only is it the right thing to do, but it makes economic sense to do it as well.

And to do that, put it more on the prevention and intervention side.

So those are some things that we process and go through.

And I don't know how much time I have, but I want to make sure that we also what happens when a major issue happens between police and community.

And now does everybody leave the table, tell you I told you it wasn't going to work?

Yeah, well I'm not I'm not going to sit down with them.

How do you maintain for 20 years when those things do happen?

Because they do happen in a city of a million people, you know, 500,000 in the city proper, something is going to happen.

And so how do you address those issues?

How do you keep everybody at the table and keep moving forward when those things happen?

I appreciate you saying that, chief.

Do you want to say anything before we go into Q&A?

Yeah, just kind of piggyback that.

And how you keep it going is you got to have a leader that's involved in the community that people know they can trust.

They know that if there is a controversial shooting or controversial incident, that you're going to be transparent as much as you could, as much as you can.

Because you have to always be cultivating those relationships, and they got to be genuine.

And again, people, the community most times will not come to you.

You're going to have to go to the barbershops, the hair salons, the bars, churches, the synagogues.

You're going to have to be open and be willing to have those difficult conversations.

I appreciate that.

And so, we are at time, but I want you to know that this conversation really is not to talk about how separate we are in different roles, but how we can complement one another.

This isn't saying that we don't need law enforcement.

We need more community.

This is saying that we need everybody.

Right?

So whatever seat that you're sitting in, literally and figuratively, we need you is going to take all of us.

So if you're here saying, well, I don't know what I can do, there is something for you to do.

Come see me.

I give you a test, okay?

You got to listen.

So we are about to begin a Q&A for those just joining via our live stream radio audience.

Myesha Watkins, administrator for Cuyahoga County Office of Violence Prevention and moderator for today's conversation.

Today, we are discussing how the City of Omaha reduce gun violence by 50%, through their Omaha 360 initiative.

Joining me on stage is Willie Barney, CEO and founder of Empower Omaha, and Wayne D Hudson, chief of police at City of Shaker Heights.

We welcome questions from everyone City Club members, guests, students and those joining via our live stream at City club.org or live radio broadcast at 89.7 WKSU Ideastream Public Media.

If you would like to text a question, please text it to (330)541-5794.

That's (330)541-5794, and city club staff will try to work it into the program.

May we have the first question please.

How do you handle the comments from residents that side law enforcements and the judicial system for being light on crime, accusing judges and police for not removing supposed criminals from their communities when a system is instead offering individual programs and wraparound support instead of prison.

That's.

Yeah.

So let me start by saying this.

First of all, people don't they're not born criminals.

And there's situations, there's built environment.

There's all kinds of stuff that create the environment for someone to do.

So by the time we're dealing with arresting somebody, there's a whole lot of stuff that's failed a whole lot of stuff that's failed.

And so that's the first thing is we have to realize that every single person has gifts, potential brilliance within them.

So what are the things that we can do to help identify?

They love horses.

They love to cook.

There's some other things that we can do.

They need employment.

First of all, we talked to a lot of the young folks in our community that were involved in this first thing, look, man, I've applied 100 times, will not get a response, can't get a job.

I need to help pay bills at home.

So when we started to shift our focus to how are we addressing the economic side of this, how we addressing the built environment portion of this?

That's where we put a lot of focus.

Now there are some individuals that we've given opportunities repetitively, and they have that time chosen not to go with it.

That's where our enforcement friends have to be very focused on those individuals that are causing repeat issues.

Now we have a support groups that are in detention and in the prison system that can work with them while they're, getting getting that addressed.

However, for the most part, a good friend of mine who's actually from Cleveland, Ben Gray, often told me, Willie, 98% of the folks we're talking about, if given the opportunity, they would choose something different.

And so how do we make sure that we're doing that and we're balancing it out?

So it's not all arrests.

It is really tone prevention and intervention on the front side.

There's mad at and they're scared of okay.

For years we tend to lock people that we were mad at, scared of, mad at.

There's programs, there's intervention.

There's all kinds of things we can do.

Instead of putting somebody away in a jail and putting that record on them.

And now that's going to carry with them for years to come.

Scared it.

That's a different story.

Why are we scared?

We're again, we're not going to arrest and incarcerate our way out of this problem and and to the, to the point the most violent individuals, when we catch them, we will remove them from the street, and the judges will give them a corrective action to protect our communities.

Most times, most times they will do that.

Good afternoon.

My name is Tanya Harrington and I work for the City of.

I'm sorry, I work for Cuyahoga County and I'm in public safety and justice services with Myesha.

My concern is this.

I live in a city of East Cleveland, which is a very impoverished cit About two weeks ago, a young man was coming through a vacant field across the street from my home, and he was shot.

He fell in front of me.

Walk away.

When I came home to police cars and fire engines, my brother told me what happened, and we had to clean up his blood off the sidewalk.

That me?

I was distraught and very, very disturbed by this situation.

What can my city do to connect with this program?

Or would it be through the city of Cleveland that they would need to reach out?

Because we need some help in my city, you know, I'm really going to rely on these two.

First of all, I don't want to go past what you just said.

That's a reality that far too many of our communities and individuals have to face it until all groups understand and hear what you just said.

So my heart jumps out to you, because far too many of have to deal with it, and it's preventable.

That's the other thing that is extremely difficult to deal with is that this what we're talking about is preventable.

And we've seen 70% now, 80% reduction and gun violence in the community that he just talked about, 80% reduction.

That means kids are employed.

They have places to go after school.

There's positive things.

There's alternatives.

They're not walking past eight burned out houses.

So we got to change our mindset of what we allow people to have to live through.

And so the short answer is, I think between these two, and making that connection.

Would love to learn more.

I'm hoping even while I'm here to, to visit, go see some parts of the city.

But very much interested in how we can support and partner.

But I think between these two and others that I've met in the room, it sounds like there's some things there's definitely a lot already going, but we be in support of how we can partner on that.

I think.

Tie in to your point, with this Cuyahoga County Office of Violence Prevention and being able to go into different cities in addition to Cleveland is empowering local governments.

What does it look like to have a violence prevention strategy?

When I used to work at Cleveland Peacemakers, our team will seek out community organizations to clean up blood.

When she was what happened in the homes or in the communities.

Because bodies, when you go to scenes where shots are fired, bodies are laying there under a white blanket, is seeking through, and someone has to clean it up, or we'll have the next young person.

And we don't want them to turn into a life of violence because of fear of seeing someone shot and killed.

So our team will look for our organization to go out and clean it up so that the family member or the neighbor does not have to be responsible for that.

And so as I think about what does violence prevention look like at a county level, that can be something that I recommend to local government and community organizations is like, how do we implement that into, the strategy?

So again, my heart goes out to you and thank you for sharing.

Please bring them to East Cleveland since you used to live there, at least shout out to easy.

And we got we got to stop looking at violence as you know, just another thing.

I've been here for three years now and I've always, had the conversations about East Cleveland.

We really need to wrap our hands and our hearts around East Cleveland because it's part of this community.

So you.

Know, but let me emphasize, you said it before.

It's going to take some investment.

Yeah.

There are things that and this is I just came from New Orleans.

You know, we're working in Kansas City where we see the same thing.

And before, as I dug into this work for 25 years, I can know nothing about your community.

But I say, show me a map of poverty, unemployment and a couple of other factors, and then I'll show you and pinpoint for you where the highest level of violence typically.

That's it.

I don't even know anything about your city, but it's the data shows it.

So anyway, there's a lot of things from an economic data research evaluate all those things.

You can see it, but at the end of the day, we're going to have to collectively get in a room and figure out how we invest in our communities.

Thank you so much.

Hi.

My name is Nathan J. Williams.

I work with Cleveland Heights High School and this question is for Chief Hudson, but open to the panel.

I believe one of the most underutilized positions in our city is our school resource officers.

Off-Duty police officers who security in our school.

How could we rethink that position?

So those officers are trained better.

They interact with the students.

Maybe they create groups or student organizations.

How can we do that?

So we can meld this a little bit better.

Excellent.

Excellent question.

So school resource officers are there done different in different jurisdictions.

The way my school resource officers to be in Douglas County, we had a very extensive process in which someone was selected.

Once they were in there, I had a conversation with the administration.

I told them they're there to one, protect the, you know, the students, the faculty, the facility, but also to make connections with the youth and facility they are not the disciplinary police.

If little Johnny does not want to lead a classroom, do not call the SRO.

You have resources for that.

I want my people making connections.

So what we do is we require them to teach a class in school.

It could be something done by the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executive called the law.

And you.

I do a class here, and I do one back in Omaha on what to do when you stop by law enforcement, make those connections, connect with the kids, and then you'll see how that pays off dividends.

We don't have school resource officers in Shaker, but we do have is law enforcement officers that are working there on a part time basis.

But the connections that they make, you can see it on the street when you have contact with those kids because they know you.

And now instead of, you know, Chief Hudson is Wayne Hudson, the guy who bring pizza.

Pizza with the police.

I call it itself, but now it's getting them well trained and everybody cannot be a school resource officer.

Everybody cannot be a school resource officer.

One, you have to care about kids.

You have to care about education.

Those are the people that you want.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi.

My name is Ron Adrian.

I'm a retired, municipal court judge here in Cleveland.

I think it's a little known, or at least a little, thought about process as it relates to gun violence, that a lot of the gun violence that occurs in this community, in most communities is in, regards to suicides.

And, I would like to know whether or not in Omaha, there was a lot of thought or any thought given to suicide reduction, safe storage of, ammunition and weapons and whether or not that had an impact on what you saw by way of progress.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for that question.

Our particular effort for me, it's very focused on more street level gun violence.

That type of that violence that we have not in our 360 room done a lot around suicide, even though there are partners that work in domestic violence and suicide prevention that come to 360, it's not the way we when we bring our together, our weekly meeting of which is one part of 360, it's a one hour intensive meeting with sometimes 120 people in the room.

So it's entirely focused on the last seven days around gun violence.

What are some, prevention things that we need to do to to respond to what happened the last seven days, the next seven days, this basketball games coming up, this is occurring.

What how do we get ahead of the violence that may be coming this week?

So it's really focus on gun violence in that particular room.

But I would say what we've learned because this is happening and reentry, it's happening in education.

It's happening in housing where we have the same type table.

So the Empowerment Network is the organization, but we facilitate eight, seven different tables.

The 360 just happens to be one of those that is very in entirely focus on, reducing gun violence.

But I think the same effort type of collaborative approach certainly could be utilized for suicide prevention as well in judge, if I can, County Councilman Houser, he's not here.

And our county executive as well as the Academy of Medicine here and Moms Demand Action.

They have all of these initiatives around safe storage, throughout our county where it's and even as we think about community violence, if I am being bullied at school and I know my mom has a firearm at home and then I can take this firearm and cause violence in community, or if I'm being a bully on the other end and no one's listening to me, I can also take this firearm in, in my life.

And so having safe storage through Moms Demand Action, County councilman, our county executive and community organizations, the Academy of Medicine, is that we try to distribute over a thousand loud glasses throughout our county, with 215 of them going to East Cleveland.

And so it's happening here.

I think we do need to start centering, because a lot of black men and boys are dying at alarming rate.

The suicide violence in our country that we need to start talking about safe storage because we don't know what we don't know.

But if we do know that we have a lack, but somewhere that we can prevent and save the life of a person that's even trying to take theirs.

Thank you.

I'm gonna jump on a soapbox real quick here.

The mayors probably, like, don't even know.

Don't I?

So one thing that we really have to look at as well is our gun laws.

I'm a big gun owner.

I am a big gun.

Okay?

Studies have shown us that the teen brain isn't fully developed until you're 24.

Be at 18.

You can buy a AR 15, one of the most lethal weapons out there on the market.

18.

That does not make sense.

It doesn't make sense.

And that's.

Sort of the hope.

You know, something I want to go back to the young man's question.

There was another piece.

That piece were this may feel like a sound like assault on violence.

I can tell you that in addition to violence coming down, arrests coming down, detention coming down, we also have for three years running a 100% clearance rate when it comes to homicide.

And so that means that police and community are working together to solve those issues.

And the issues are being solved.

And so it's it's not either.

It's not either or.

It is both.

You have to be able to do both.

And then you got to add in there, because Omaha police, along with my agency, are both nasty accredited.

So we have to do surveys to see what is the perception of the community about the services that we provide and how safe they feel.

I know in Omaha police and in Shaker, that survey came back real high, that the community feels that they are in a safe environment, a blessing.

I appreciate that.

Okay.

Jan Ridgway and, just a quick question.

Has Omaha, at any point during this period been under a federal consent decree, and if so, how has that mesh with your plans for reducing violence?

Thank you for the question.

We have not, been under a federal decree.

We have work with cities that have, New Orleans just came out of one.

But we've been working with them for about three years.

But the same process that we went through to create a bottom up, community based plan, sit down with law enforcement to figure out how we could work together.

They're they've really, really honed in on the community based portion of it.

But Omaha has not been under decree, at all.

Oh, I thank you so much.

My name is Vanessa Ho, and I'm a trauma surgeon at MetroHealth.

And I also run a research program, a violence prevention coalition with many community partners who are here in this room.

Right.

Myesha and this bell from impact.

In our research, one of the things that we found is not only do you need to support social needs, but it is extremely important to have credible messengers, people like Cleveland Peacemakers, be our links to the community.

And what we found locally is that there has been inconsistent investment in those services.

And so it's been really hard to prove their worth because the funding goes up and down.

Yes.

So in order to make Omaha 360 work, what was the level of investment and the duration of the commitment of that investment to really prove your outcomes?

Yeah.

Thank you so much.

You're spot on.

And that's.

That think that's one of the things there's only a few cities across the country where you'll see a ten year, 15 year substantial decline over time.

And a sustained there may be a few years, but it's on that decline.

Oakland was one of them.

Omaha was one of them.

There may be something I'm missing, but typically, and this has come to come back to, this is preventable.

When Chicago was at its highest, they had ceasefire partnership.

All those things brought it down.

Then they got defunded.

You will see almost the same pattern change in administration, lack of funding or something triggers that.

And then you see it go right back to where it was.

There has to be some kind of strategic approach to support those in the intervention based organizations.

Because that's really where we have seen the greatest impact.

Of course, law enforcement has a role, but those intervention folks that are recognized by the community have the respect of the community and can go into those situations and work with young people, work with families, help connect them with, wraparound services, help connect them with employment opportunities.

Those are the most effective in this, fight that we have.

And so there has to be strategic investment.

Like I said, we we struggled with that over time.

We actually created a number of gang intervention organizations ourselves to help fill a gap.

And each time there was something that happened that.

So now we have a number of them.

We have U-turn that does great work.

We have some individual smaller agencies.

But we have just in the last 4 or 5 years, been able to secure additional resources that are now on the upward trend of being able to sustain investment.

And those small grassroot organizations that are doing the work, if I can add, Live Free USA came to Cleveland a few years ago and said in order to address the amount of violence that we experience here, a $10 million investment every year is necessary.

And so when you think about one, homicide cost taxpayers $1 million.

And so the return on investment will absolutely happen.

Just invest in $10 million a year.

Absolutely.

And I'm gonna jump real quick a return on investment.

So one thing that we know in law enforcement, what happens when school's out, when it comes to, crime and violence, it goes up.

Okay.

One thing that the Empowerment Network do is they employ a lot of young kids in the community.

They give them certain training, and they have certain organizations that will take these kids on for the summertime, and the kids get paid.

So what's going on is then you'll see your crime rate for juveniles.

It goes down because what's the old thing I don't hands is the devil workshop.

Kids have something to do and shout out to while you.

It's our summer employment program here that doesn't require that we join our young people.

The data showed that summer was our lowest level of gun violence.

Youth had employment and entrepreneurship opportunities and some money in their pocket, you know, period.

There we drop the mic.

My name is Tyler Wilson.

I'm from Cleveland Heights High School.

And my school district.

Gun violence is a prominent thing among other things, in the schools.

We some of us are afraid of, you know, gun threats and a lot of other stuff.

How as students and community members, how can we help minimize that fear that of that anxiety?

And it hurts my heart.

I mean, the only thing he should be worried about is grades, not about gun violence.

That's where your voice as a student is powerful.

You stand up to your teacher, your administration saying, and your your law enforcement officials and say, we want a change.

We want a difference.

We want to feel safe in our school.

We want the violence out, and we're going to keep on demanding it until it's done.

Your voice is more powerful than you think it is.

Yeah.

Tyler.

Tyler is his name.

Tyler.

Tyler, I want to say thank you for asking that question to, as a parent of children who go to Cleveland High School District, got to have them.

Same concerns.

And so I just want to let you know that I'm here with you.

You can always reach out to me.

And if you need me to come and speak alongside you, which are superintendent, I will be able to support you.

And I'll be there with you.

Chief, I do some real quick.

Can everybody hear me say this with me?

It's unacceptable.

It's unacceptable to say it like you mean it.

It's unacceptable that that young man or anyone else in that school or any other school, we have to get that.

Nobody moves until there's a sense of urgency.

Yeah, that's a fact.

Nobody moves until there's a sense of urgency and we can get it becomes normal for us.

And it's not normal.

No, not no.

We can't allow somebody that has to go clean up blood from an incident in front of their house, or kids going to school because they're scared to go to school or not going to school.

So that unacceptable piece has to hit us.

And now we changed.

And now we come to the table even in a greater way.

And everybody has a role to play.

This is not just a certain group.

This is something that everyone can help prevent.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much.

We needed it.

Tell us a, Hey, baby.

Hey, my my name is Ben Simmons.

I wear a lot of hats.

I have one boss in the real world.

Her name is Valencia Evans, my child.

So, yeah, she run this?

Everything I do is about her.

So basically, I serve the communities of Cleveland, the impoverished communities of Cleveland.

And you see it when I looked in the title, it is how you all reduce violence.

One of our biggest challenges being community workers in trying to reduce violence is getting men involved.

Men from the community, young men and men to step back up into these communities and say, enough is enough.

This is my community.

So my question is, how did you all in Omaha?

If you are in Omaha, we're able to get mean just the average me and they go to work every day.

They run businesses.

How were you able to get them involved to motivate them and let them see some?

And one thing I do want to state before I sit down, I want to state a simple fact because you say the sense of urgency from the year 2020 to the year 2024.

In the city of Cleveland, there were 952 homicides.

That's the city of Cleveland.

Of those 90, I ain't even got to the worst part.

Out of those 952 homicides, 825 of them were African Americans.

I mean, we make up 46% of the population, but 88% of the homicides, which is why, I mean, need to step up.

It is a sense of urgency, and that is unacceptable.

So my question again is how were you all able to get me involved?

And do you have any suggestions of strategies that can help us get young people involved in the process of their own up listening?

Hey, I love it.

I love it, absolutely.

Yes.

I know, I know, we're getting tight on time, but I want to make sure we connect.

And you're absolutely right.

That's, I say, the grassroot, a lot of interventionists, a lot of them are men that we're working with specifically black men.

They have either small agency or just individual.

We've helped them build capacity, actually create organizations.

Some of them specialize in different things, but we brought them to the table.

There are other initiatives that are specifically reaching out to men in the community.

So all of it is needed.

And there are some things that we've done well.

There's some things that we still are working on, but we've tried to align more of those entities, individuals and show that, yes, you have to be a part of this.

It impacts everybody.

It absolutely impacts everybody.

You got to reach out to fraternities.

You got to reach out to different organizations.

The hundred black men model, what they see is what they will be if they don't see us strong black men in these positions.

What are they seeing?

What will they be?

Got to reach out to all the organizations.

You got to pull them in, I told people.

Are you mentoring the young man down the street?

Nah, I'm too busy.

Well, somebody is not too busy to mentor him, and he might be mentoring the wrong way.

That's in there right down the street from you.

Yeah.

So you can be part of the solution or you can be part of the problem.

Our thanks to Willie Barney, to Chief Hudson, Myesha Watkins and Sheriff, thank you so much.

Forums like this one are made possible thanks to generous support from individuals like all of you, you can learn more about how to become a guardian of free speech at City club.org.

Thank you all so much.

Stay warm.

Check in on any vulnerable people you know please, this weekend and, we'll see you soon.

Thank you.

This forum is now adjourned.

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