(Photo shows my then-four-year-old daughter next to a bullet hole in the front window of our South Seattle home. Taken in 2016.)

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A little over a year ago, our south Seattle home was rained with bullets. Two of those bullets entered the room where my daughter and I had been eating dinner; one through the door jamb and the other through the window. Our neighbors' house was also hit with gunfire. Luckily, none of us were hurt. (This shooting was gang-related and had nothing to do with us personally.)

Less than a year later, a middle aged mom was gunned down in the street two blocks from us, in front of her house and family, on her way home from work at 8 o'clock in the evening.

I wish I could say these were isolated incidents, but stories like these are all too commonplace in our community. Far too many people's lives have been hurt by the epidemic of violence in our neighborhoods. 

This madness must end. The police are doing their best, but they can only intervene after acts of violence have already taken place. We need stop it before it happens - and we can.

Cure Violence in Our Community (Seattle, WA)

We, the undersigned residents of Seattle, respectfully ask that the City of Seattle include a provision in its budget for a health and community-based violence intervention program based on the Cure Violence model as soon as possible.

Seattle’s South Precinct has 40% of the shots fired incidents in Seattle (1) and more than twice as many as any other individual precinct. While the Seattle Police have increased patrols and designated a special unit to respond to shooting incidents, the fact is that police can improve their response time to shooting incidents, but no matter how hard they try, they lack the tools to prevent these events from happening in the first place.

In contrast, the Cure Violence model does just that, and has been shown to decrease shooting incidents up to 70% (2). Furthermore, this type of program can be implemented for as little as $500,000 annually (contrasted with over $5,000,000.00 spent on Seattle's SYVPI program in 2015). When you consider that Seattle has had an annual average of 363 shots fired incidents and 67 shootings involving death or injury over the last two years (1) (with the majority of those concentrated in a few neighborhoods including Rainier Beach, Brighton and South Park) this seems a small price to pay, and well worth it for the peace of mind of our residents and business owners.

Cure Violence was developed by Dr. Gary Slutkin, MD, (Professor of Epidemiology, University of Illinois) and treats violence as a contagious disease. It addresses inner city gang violence by recruiting ex-gang members to go out into their communities and "interrupt" conflicts as they are brewing, taking the involved parties aside and simply talking to them. Programs have been implemented in Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, Buffalo, Kansas City and many other American cities, and Cure Violence 's successful approach to mitigating street warfare is the subject of the Frontline documentary, "The Interrupters".

The Cure Violence model utilizes trusted intervention workers who are hired for their credibility with and access to those most likely to commit violence. To maintain open lines of communication with a population that is often hesitant to trust police, it is important that intervention staff operate and are seen as separate from police, although there are many ways in which the model works in partnership with the police as part of an overall approach to stopping violence.

Please make our safety and our children’s safety a priority by including a Cure Violence-based violence intervention program in our city budget.

<a href="http://www.cureviolence.org" rel="nofollow">www.cureviolence.org</a>

1. Crime Statistics taken from Seattle Police Department Records: <a href="https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/Police/SeaStat/SEASTAT_2017JAN18_YEAR_END_FINAL.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/Police/SeaStat/SEASTAT_2017JAN18_YEAR_END_FINAL.pdf</a>

2. Cure Violence case studies data: <a href="http://cureviolence.org/results/scientific-evaluations/" rel="nofollow">http://cureviolence.org/results/scientific-evaluations/</a>

Please sign this petition to Mayor Edward Murray and Seattle City Council, asking them to include a provision in our city budget for a new, evidence-based solution to inner city violence.

Thank you,

Charlotte Thistle

Seattle, WA, 98118