Portsmouth is taking a new approach to gun violence, with city officials looking at crime as a public health emergency
The city’s Crime and Gun Violence Prevention Commission recommended moving forward with the approach Monday night
James Cullen, chair of the commission, said the strategy is designed to bring together the people and agencies that could help identify and address the conditions that lead to crime
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“We know what doing it the way we’ve always done it looks like,” Cullen said
The initiative is called Project Impact, which stands for Inter-Agency Multi-Disciplinary Prevention Analysis and Community Transformation. It would bring city departments and partner agencies together within 24 hours of certain shootings
Cullen said the approach is similar to the incident command systems used by organizations such as the Coast Guard and U.S. Wildland Fire Service during emergencies
“If a shooting occurs at 3 a.m., I want all those different stakeholders out there at 3 a.m. examining that crime scene. 3 a.m. the following night. Not looking at it during the daytime. Looking at it in the exact same conditions that caused it,” he explained
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The commission is proposing that Project Impact be activated for shootings at businesses or shootings that result in an injury or fatality
“And each of those situations may have a different formula of who responds,” Cullen said
The agencies involved could include the fire marshal, code enforcement, the health department and Portsmouth Public Schools. Cullen said the goal is to combine data from across the city and other agencies to look for trends and commonalities between victims and perpetrators
The initiative would use data analysis in a new way, with the goal of finding what Cullen described as “unknown unknowns.”
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Cullen said the goal is to have 90% of a solution within seven days. He also said the approach focuses on a small group of people responsible for a large share of crime
“It is less than 1% of the population, and this is true in almost any city, that causes 99% of the problem. So, there’s approximately 500 people causing any of the problems that we have. Our goal is to try to figure out how to get those 500 people to not do those types of things.”
According to Cullen, Project Impact wouldn’t require any upfront funding since it’s using current city employees and re
The commission voted to move forward with the initiative. Cullen said he is optimistic the new approach will work
The proposal includes a partnership with Old Dominion University’s Center for Mission Engineering, which helps improve how complex systems are designed and work together to achieve specific goals
