Florida Gang Reduction Strategy 2008 - 2012

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Resources
On September 26–28, 2007, the Department of
Justice (DOJ) sponsored the Project Safe Neighborhoods
Anti-Gang Training pilot in Dover, Delaware.
Approximately 160 law enforcement agents and
criminal justice practitioners attended the training,
which presented the gang expertise of DOJ law
enforcement and criminal justice professionals in
a comprehensive curriculum. Intervention, prevention,
suppression and re-entry strategies were
presented, as well as a briefing on national and
regional gang trends, a community gang problem
assessment, and tips for working with cooperating
witnesses and confidential informants.
Due to the success of the pilot program and
the positive feedback and suggestions received
from attendees, twelve Anti-Gang Training sessions
will be offered in 2008 at various locations
throughout the country. In response to popular
demand, the 2008 training programs will feature
a separate track for gang prevention and intervention
personnel. Visit http://www.iir.com/psnagt/
for more information and to view the courses that
are offered, or download the promotional flier.
More information about Project Safe Neighborhoods
is available on their website at:
http://www.psn.gov.
Boston Gun Project (Operation
Ceasefire)
The Boston Gun Project is a suppression program
that targets youth and adult gang members in a
multiagency effort. It is based on an analysis of
homicide among Boston’s youth (age 21 and under)
that determined that this violence is gang centered,
neighborhood based, and concentrated in a small
number of repeat-offending, gang-involved youth.
The program was initiated in individual neighborhoods
with an explicit communication campaign.
This campaign begins with an orientation for
community groups and is then often carried out
face-to-face with gang members, who are given the
message that gang violence has provoked a zero
tolerance approach and that only an end to gang
violence will stop new gang-focused suppression
activities. The long sentences that offenders receive
Florida Gang Reduction Strategy
are publicized in high-crime neighborhoods. The
program components described above build upon
and integrate the efforts of grassroots organizations
and the faith-based community.
A multiagency, coordinated task force of 45
full-time Boston police officers and others from
outside agencies suppresses youth and adult gang
violence and gun use. Suppression tactics include
“pulling levers” to impose costs on offenders related
to their chronic offending by serving warrants,
enforcing probation restrictions, and deploying
Federal enforcement powers.
Under another component of the program—Operation
Night Light—police and probation officers,
working in teams, make nightly visits to the homes
of youth on probation to ensure that they are complying
with the terms and conditions of their probation.
This helps target tough enforcement efforts
against gang leaders. City “streetworkers” (gang
prevention and mediation specialists) also work in
tandem with police and probation officers, helping
resolve conflicts and linking youth who want help
with needed services.
Simultaneously, the Boston Gun Project seeks to
interrupt the self-sustaining cycle of fear, weapon
use, and violence that appears to be driving youth
violence in the city by reducing use of guns with
a “coerced use-reduction” strategy and reducing
access to firearms. To carry out this deterrence
strategy, gang mediation specialists are deployed
to gang hotspots, which are generally already
known through mapping that shows gang overlap,
intergang conflicts, and gun-related crime. Heightened
surveillance for shootings, assaults, and
other selected incidents triggers deployment of
interagency crisis intervention teams with “swift
and comprehensive attention.” After this “calming”
operation, patrol officers continue to monitor
the hotspot for reoccurrence of gun violence.
The strategy that reduces access to firearms, using
gun-tracing capabilities of the Boston Police
Department and ATF, seeks to disrupt the illicit
gun market. The rationale supporting the supplyreduction
strategy is that disruption of the illicit