Search

A
A+
A++

I-Team

Digg |

Facebook |

Stumble It! |

del.icio.us |

Fark
E-mail | Print

Dec 20, 2007 9:44 pm US/Eastern

Cities Question Gang Prevention Fund Distribution

Reporting
Kathy Curran

BOSTON (WBZ) ― There are questions about an anti-crime initiative designed to help keep your community safe. The Senator Charles Shannon grant provides cities and towns money for gang prevention. But the state gave communities the same amount of grant money this year as last year and officials went against recommendations for change.

It's an urban battle with Worcester police pitted against 1,000 gang members and 28 different gangs in a city that has seen its share of murders this year.

Worcester police Chief Gary Gemme said, "We're still seeing gun violence and homicides like any urban area. We've had six homicides, three by means of a firearm."

Guns, gangs and the rising tide of violence are a constant struggle from Worcester to Boston and Fall River. The Senator Charles Shannon grant provides state funds for gang prevention and helps get gang members off the streets in more than two dozen communities.

"The Shannon grant was an opportunity for the city of Worcester to make an impact on gangs and gang-related activity," Gemme said.

Fall River police Chief John Souza said, "It's a grant that you wouldn't expect level funding to be applied in."

But that's exactly what happened. Level funding was applied pretty much across the board. The office of grants and research reviewed all of the applications and, according to documents obtained by the I-Team, recommended change. There were decreases in funding for Boston, Salem and the metropolitan area planning council. There were increases in the high-risk cities of Fall River, Lynn and Worcester, just to name a few. But when those changes made it to the Office of Public Safety, none were applied and many feel they were ignored.

Gemme says it's absolutely disheartening.

In Worcester, an award of $700,000 was recommended. In the end, the city that was rated a high-risk community with a strong application received the same amount they got in 2006, which was $510,000.

In Fall River, Souza said, "They wanted to give us an 18 percent increase but we were level funded."

It's the same story, different amounts of money.

Souza added, "To level fund something like that is assuming issues, problems and programs and approaches are the same and they're not going to be the same. There may be more of a need or less of a need."

The Worcester chief said, "They really didn't take the time to evaluate our performance, our track record and the quality of our application."

"It does seem like the recommendations were ignored?" WBZ's Kathy Curran asked Kevin Burke, the State Secretary of Public Safety.

"Oh, they weren't all ignored, it was important to go through them," Burke said.

The head of the Executive Office of Public Safety said because this was only the second year of funding they didn't want to make a "snapshot" judgment on the performance of the different programs and need.

"I think a very clear message is we wanted to make sure the existing programs were given a fair period to be evaluated, and we think that has occurred or will have occurred by the time we get to the next round of applications," Burke said.

Many are disheartened by this year's process because there was a lot of time and effort put into the applications. Some cities and towns even hired grant writers. Then the Office of Grants and Research spent weeks going over all of the information. Burke says more time will give the state more information to do a thorough evaluation next year.

This year the Shannon grant provided $11 million for gang prevention to cities and towns. The state hopes it can increase funding next year.

From Our Partners

You need the latest Flash player to view video content.
Click here to download.

Click here to bypass this detection if you already have the latest Flash Player.

: CBS

Search

I-Team

Close WindowE-mail This Page

Cities Question Gang Prevention Fund Distribution

From Our Partners

Close

I-Team

Top News Stories