This article proposes potential strategies to address gun violence in communities of color while identifying the harms associated with a policing-centered, criminal legal approach. In addition to highlighting the dangers associated with the United States' current criminal legal tactics to reduce gun violence in these communities, the authors advocate for community-endorsed strategies that give those impacted by this issue the resources to take on gun violence in their own communities. Specifically, they identify, describe, and endorse a series of violence prevention programs that rely on community relations to detect and prevent incidents of gun violence and that view gun violence as a public health rather than criminal legal issue.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Cost of Injuries and Violence in the United States. Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS), available at <www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars> (last visited September 30, 2020).
2.
Violence Policy Center, When Men Murder Women: An Analysis of 2014 Homicide Data (September2016).
3.
Trans People of Color Coalition and Human Rights Campaign, A Time to Act: Fatal Violence Against Transgender People in America (2017).
4.
Giffords Law Center, Investing in Intervention: The Critical Role of State-Level Support in Breaking the Cycle of Urban Gun Violence (2016).
5.
M.DeLisi,et al., “Murder by Numbers: Monetary Costs Imposed by a Sample of Homicide Offender,”Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology21 (2010): 501-13.
6.
Y.Irvin-Erickson, M.Lynch, A.Gurvis, E.Mohr, and B.Bai, Gun Violence Affects the Economic Health of Communities (Urban Institute, 2017).
7.
E.L.Tung, L.C.Hawkley, K.A.Cagney, and M.E.Peek, “Social Isolation, Loneliness, and Violence Exposure in Urban Adults,”Health Affairs38, no. 10 (2019): 1670-1678.
8.
W.Parham-Payne, “The Role of the Media in the Disparate Response to Gun Violence in America.”Journal of Black Studies45, no. 8 (2014): 752-768.
9.
National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, Oakland's Successful Gun Violence Reduction Strategy (January2018).
10.
M.J.Matsuda, “Looking to the Bottom: Critical Legal Studies and Reparations,”Harvard Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review22 (1987): 323-99, at 330-32.
11.
M.Segraves, “DC Police Deploying More Officers in Violence Neighborhoods in Effort to Reduce Crime,”NBC Washington, October1, 2019.
12.
J.Ross, “Donald Trump Was Wrong about Stop and Frisk — and the Ruling That Called It Racial Profiling,”The Washington Post, October1, 2019.
13.
M.Bloomberg, “Michael Bloomberg: ‘Stop and Frisk’ Keeps New York Safe,”The Washington Post, August18, 2013.
14.
T.Bryant-Davis, T.Adams, A.Alejandre, and A.Gray, “The Trauma Lens of Police Violence against Racial and Ethnic Minorities,”Journal of Social Issues73, no. 4 (2017): 852-871.
15.
V.Newkirk, “Police Shootings Are Also Gun Violence,”The Atlantic, April6, 2018.
16.
J. A.Butts,et al., “Cure Violence: A Public Health Model to Reduce Gun Violence,”Annual Review of Public Health36 (2015): 39-53.
17.
A.Gangitano and J.Manchester, “Black Gun Violence Prevention Group Calls for Police Reform,”The Hill, June4, 2020.
18.
G.L.Schwartz and J.L.Jahn, “Mapping Fatal Police Violence across U.S. Metropolitan Areas: Overall Rates and Racial/Ethnic Inequities, 2013-2017,”PLoS ONE15, no. 6 (2002): e0229686.
19.
S.Sinyangwe, Mapping Police Violence (May29, 2020), available at <https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/> (last visited September 30, 2020).
20.
Everytown For Gun Safety Support Fund, Guns and Violence Against Women: America's Uniquely Lethal Intimate Partner Violence Problem (October17, 2019).
21.
National Domestic Violence Hotline, Who Will Help Me? Domestic Violence Survivors Speak Out About Law Enforcement Responses (April2015).
22.
See supra note 3.
23.
National Center for Transgender Equality, Blueprint for Equality: A Transgender Federal Agenda for the Next Presidential Administration and Congress (2016).
24.
T.R.Tyler, “Enhancing Police Legitimacy,”The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science593 (2004): 84-99, at 94.
25.
V.Weaver and A.E.Lerman, “Political Consequences of the Carceral State,”American Political Science Review4 (2010): 817, 829-832.
26.
K.C.Simmons, “The Legacy of Stop and Frisk: Addressing the Vestiges of a Violent Police Culture,”Wake Forest Law Review49 (2014): 849, 866-868.
27.
S.Dewan and M.Baker, “Facing Protests Over Use of Force, Police Respond with More Force,”New York Times, May31, 2020.
28.
S.Ryley, J.Singer-Vine, and S.Campbell, “Shoot Someone in a Major U.S. City, and Odds Are You'll Get Away With It,”The Trace and BuzzFeed News, January24, 2019.
29.
C.S.Koper and E.Mayo-Wilson, “Police Stategies to Reduce Illegal Possession and Carrying of Firemars: Effects on Gun Crime, Campbell Systematic Reviews8 (2012): 3-49.
30.
Id.
31.
J.Asher and B.Horwitz, “How Do the Police Actually Spend Their Time?”The New York Times, June19, 2020.
32.
M.C.Bell, “Anti-Segregation Policing,”New York University Law Review95, no. 3 (2020): 650-765, at 690-96.
33.
V.N.Gimbel and C.Muhammad, “Are Police Obsolete: Breaking Cycles of Violence through Abolition Democracy,”Cardozo Law Review40 (2018): 1453.
34.
Project Emancipation Now dispatches mediators with street and prison credibility to bring youth out of gangs, provide mentorship, provide jobs, and engage in violence interruption, available at <https://honablewholcombe.wixsite.com/projectemancipation> (last visited September 29, 2020).
35.
A.Okeowo, “How the Police Could be Defunded,”The New Yorker, June26, 2020.
36.
T.C.Scottek, “Caught on Camera, Police Explode in Rage and Violence across the US,”The Verge, May31, 2020.
37.
The Red Hook Initiative“gives young people and residents the tools, resources and opportunities they need to interrupt the systems and barriers that perpetuate historic inequities for the Red Hook community,”available at <https://rhicenter.org/> (last visited September 30, 2020).
38.
C.Barton, “Police, Power, and the Specter of Guns,”The Trace, June13, 2020.
Telephone conversation between the author and Chico Tillman on April 10, 2020.
42.
P.Sharkey, G.Torrats-Espinosa, and D.Takyar, “Community and Crime Decline: The Causal Effect of Local Nonprofits on Violent Crime,”American Sociological Review82, no. 6 (October2017): 1214-40, 1214.
43.
M.Eversley, “CeaseFire Chicago Changed Its Name to Cure Violence in 2012,”USA Today, September14, 2012.
J.George and J.Fenton, “W. Baltimore Safe Streets Work Suspended amid Criminal Allegations,”The Baltimore Sun, December11, 2013.
46.
D.W.Webster, S.ABuggs, and C.Crifasi, Estimating the Effects of Law Enforcement and Public Health Interventions Intended to Reduce Gun Violence in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (January2018).
47.
Id.
48.
Id.
49.
J.Anderson, “Baltimore City Council Members Say Budget Must Include Safe Streets Funding,”The Baltimore Sun, May19, 2017.
50.
The Center for Popular Democracyet al., Freedom to Thrive: Reimagining Safety & Security in Our Communities (July4, 2017).
51.
K.R.Fischer,et al., “Prevention Professional for Violence Intervention: A Newly Recognized Health Care Provider for Population Health Programs,”Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved31, no. 1 (2020): 25-34.
52.
F.Stockman and J.Eligon, “Cities Ask if It's Time to Defund Police and ‘Reimagine’ Public Safety,”New York Times, June5, 2020.
53.
S.W.Kight and K.Hart, “The Cities That Are Already Defunding the Oolice,”Axios, June27, 2020.
54.
D.Andone, C.Maxouris, and J.Campbell, “Minneapolis City Council Members Intend to Defund and Dismantle the City's Police Department,”CNN, June7, 2020.
55.
Advance Peace, Believe in an America without Urban Gun Violence, Organization Description, available at <https://www.advancepeace.org/> (last visited September 30, 2020).
56.
See supra note 43.
57.
See supra note 16.
58.
See generally House Congressional Report on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill, 107th Cong. (2019).
59.
The Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence, Gun Violence in America: An Analysis of 2018 CDC Data (February2020).
60.
K.W.Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,”Stanford Law Review43 (1990): 1241.
61.
see also The Center for American Progress and the Movement Advancement Project, Unjust: How the Broken Criminal Justice System Fails LGBT People of Color (August2016).
62.
18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), (9).
63.
C.Barton, “Gun Reform Is on the Agenda. But Victims of Color Aren't,”The Trace, September17, 2019.
