Community violence intervention groups on Thursday announced an ambitious plan to raise $400 million through a public-private partnership to try to reduce the numbers of shootings and homicides in Chicago by 50% within five years.
At a South Shore Cultural Center event attended by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, leaders of the city’s business community and largest charitable foundations said the fundraising goal is roughly double the current spending on violence-prevention programs that serve the city’s most-violent neighborhoods.
The aim is to scale up those programs so they reach at least half of the estimated 20,000 people in Chicago considered at greatest risk of being shot.
The target of 50% fewer murders from last year would put the city at less than 400 — a total Chicago last saw in 1965, when there were 395 killings, according to the Chicago Police Department.
The Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities and Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago have raised $66 million from local foundations and corporate partners to invest in violence intervention programs. Major donors include Crown Family Philanthropies, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Pritzker Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust.
Organizers said they hope to raise more private dollars and seek more public funding to fill the gap.
The announcement comes about a month after Johnson announced the outlines of his “Peoples’ Plan for Public Safety,” which hinted at a boost in private philanthropic spending on top of already unprecedented spending by the city, state and county.
And it came a day after a Chicago Public Schools student was killed and two others were wounded in what police said they believe was a targeted attack just blocks from their North Side school. Last week, two high school students were gunned down outside their Loop school.
“If you’ve watched the news over the last couple of days, and I’m sure everybody here knows and is aware because of your boots on the ground, you know what’s happening,” said Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling. “Our young people are being murdered and losing their lives.”
But Snelling noted that the number of killings in Chicago was down during the second half of last year.
“One is too many,” he said. “So whatever we need to do to prevent the violence that we’re seeing, whatever we can do to protect our neighborhoods, to protect our children, let’s continue to do that.”
Johnson told the crowd of hundreds — many employed or volunteering with anti-violence groups — that Chicago’s strategy of intervention coupled with support from nonprofit, philanthropic, business, government and community organizations show “we’re all coming together to support this critical work.”
“Chicago is leading the way and showing the country what it looks like to invest in people, particularly those who lived the experiences in order to reduce violence and support those who are harmed and those who cause the harm,” Johnson said.
Arne Duncan, a former CPS chief executive officer and U.S. secretary of education, served on a steering committee for the violence intervention plan, in addition to his other work with the anti-violence organization he founded, Chicago CRED.
“We’re doing something that hasn’t been done in far too long,” Duncan said. “This is so critical for our children, our communities, our city.”
The plan announced Thursday mirrors the broad strokes of one offered by billionaire James Crown last June, three weeks before Crown was killed in a race car crash. He announced that business leaders from the Commercial Club of Chicago were committed to finding jobs for 10,000 Chicagoans from violent neighborhoods.
Duncan launched Chicago CRED in 2016 amid a surge in violence after the release of video of a Chicago police officer shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The following year, the Chicago Sports Alliance partnered with University of Chicago’s Crime Lab to boost funding for “community violence intervention” services.
In the years since, funding for such programs has increased dramatically from government sources, mostly money available through COVID-19 relief funds to address the pandemic-related spike in violent crime nationwide.
More than two dozen organizations offer a slate of services, targeting people deemed most at risk of becoming shooting victims or shooting others. Many use former gang members as outreach workers to recruit people to an intensive program of therapy, counseling and job training. The organizations have created a Metropolitan Peace Academy to provide more uniform training for staff.
City officials have estimated that about 300 outreach workers have recruited 2,000 people believed to be 10 times more likely to be shot than their neighbors in Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods.
