City Leaders Have Launched Initiatives and Hope Season Ticket Holders Will Take Part in the Solutions.
As reported by KGW8:
The City of Salem has seen a rise in violent crime over the past ten years, and gun violence has doubled in the last five.
In response, the mayor and police chief teamed up to start the Community Violence Reduction Initiative. The initiative aims to address the rise in violent crime by bringing together leaders and members of the community to develop strategies to deal with the problem.
“It’s a focused group of individuals who are at risk of being involved in this type of behavior. We really want to start a community conversation on disrupting that behavior, and ultimately, my goal is to prevent it,” said Mayor Chris Hoy.
Hoy is hoping that connecting youth to community programs and positive groups will help reduce their involvement in gun crimes.
“When we don’t fill the void with something positive, something negative can unfortunately take hold, and that’s unfortunately what we are seeing,” he said.
The city held its first of several related community outreach meetings Wednesday night at the East Salem Community Center. They plan to hold more of these events this year with the hopes of developing a community-focused strategy that is specific to Salem to help deal with the problem of violent crime and youth gun violence. Salem resident Almaluma Campos attended the meeting. She said her son was recently assaulted while having lunch.
"When he walked outside the restaurant, some kid hit him and we took him to the hospital," said Campos. "We're afraid when we go outside because a lot of people-- you never know who's who."
Comentarios