‘This is not luck. This is a systemic approach’: These major US cities are trying to curb violent crime — and it’s working

Strategies beyond traditional arrest-and-prosecution include social services, intervention by trusted community members and backing in part by federal funds.

Before he was the mayor, Brandon Scott was a regular at a barbershop here just steps from an intersection long notorious for illegal drugs. For decades, the small business – on Frederick Avenue in the city’s southwest Irvington area – gave neighbors a shelter from gangs and dealers, somewhere they could gather safely and talk about music, family and friends. That “barbershop was the only place they felt like they could come and talk to real people and not feel some sense of someone being ready to shoot or rob them,” Scott told CNN. In recent months, though, the refuge zone has expanded. The mayor’s office – through its revived Group Violence Reduction Strategy effort – in March led a takedown of the alleged drug trafficking organization that long had plagued the neighborhood and driven violence citywide, with 12 people indicted on drug and gun charges, Scott said at the time. The Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement had helped “answer … the community’s call” by investigating the alleged crime ring, Scott said. The mayor then issued a warning to anyone unwilling to accept that same office’s inverse, perhaps more important mission: to help deter violence in the first place.