Providence Pathway To End Gun Violence Advisory Council, Wednesday, 5/8/2024 - 1:00PM

The meeting to order for the pathway to end gun violence advisory committee, and then I've been calling the

clerk to do roll call.

Chairperson Sanchez is absent. Co chair Corey Jones?

Here.

Co chair Diane Garnington is absent. Tatudo Madagarhira,

here.

Adams Williams?

Yes. Correct.

Detective David Perez?

Here.

Michael Stevens?

Here.

Jill Van Lefton? Absent. James Monteiro?

Present.

Lisa Pinawan?

Present.

Juan Clatter is absent. Michael

Oden.

Here.

DJ Fox.

Here.

May present for absent. You have a form.

Awesome. So we could take some time to review the minutes from the last meeting. And then once we fill that and we've reviewed them, someone can call the motion to pass the the minutes from last meetings.

I made a motion.

Okay.

You have a second?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye. Aye.

All opposed? Alright. Looks like we have passed the meetings from the last minute. So now I wanna open the floor to our presenters. Is that alright for me to do,

Clerk? Clerk.

Our open discussion.

So we're on area number two now?

Yes. That's fine.

Yeah. So is that Mike and Michael Stevens?

Whichever one he I've got I've got a slideshow. I can talk through some of the programming that we're doing, the opportunities that exists. So, yeah, I'll I'll make it go work.

Yeah. So Mike's up, and then we'll have Mike Stevens go next meeting.

Alright. So my name is Mike Hogan. I'm the

director of the Public Safety Grant Administration office.

I'm

also the governor's criminal justice policy board. We've been very active over the last year and a half to two years. We we had some vacancies on our board that have been built by the governor, including the chairperson. And since we got our new chairperson, we've been we've been very busy, particularly in the area of planning, strategic planning around criminal justice, but also because we've had several new grant programs pop up in the last couple of years, some from... So the next one, you can go to next one.

Particularly because of the coronavirus, but also because of the bipartisan Safer Communities Act that passed in 2022. So what I'd like to talk about here a little bit is some of the grant programs that we have in our office where programs and activities connect back to community violence intervention, some of the topics that we're talking about, and also talk about some of the other great funding opportunities. Last week, we talked about community violence intervention prevention initiative, but there are some other ones out there that that connect back to the. Yep. Next slide.

A little bit of background on our office. It actually goes back in 1969. It was known as the the, the Governor's Justice Commission for a long time. In 2008, kinda got reorganized into the Department of Public Safety, sort of the Rhode Island State Police, like central management office, and we're very difficult to find on an org chart. But the statute that established the office back in 1969 still stands, and it gives a lot of power to the office about coordinating in particular between state agencies around the response to criminal justice issues in the state of Morocco.

At least some of the grants that we have open right now. So we get a lot of formula grants that come in every single year, juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, violence against women programming. There's some programming that enhances the forensic sciences at the crime lab, funding specifically for the crime lab and the medical examiner's office. Criminal history improvement program as well about criminal history records that are sort of the backbone of background checks, the FBI background checks, and prevent people from getting financed, dangerous individual rating laws. So...

Thanks. Projects in neighborhoods, know, is is something that's gonna sound familiar to a lot of the folks in the room. We've had some successful projects in neighborhoods initiatives here in Providence. And the last several years, this funding has fluctuated dramatically. A long time ago, we did the project in in in the neighborhood.

I believe it was a million, million and $0.5. Right now, Rhode Island gets about $80,000 a year in the project safe neighborhood's funding. And as you can imagine, it's very difficult to do much of anything with that kind of money. We've done our best to spread it around, but recognize a couple of the issues that that that sort of come out of having successful initiatives like like like neighborhood disruptions and stuff like that and and its displacement. And, really, what we're doing now with the Project Safe Neighborhoods brand is recognizing that some of the violence that happens in the cities are interconnected, that is not necessarily neighborhood based anymore.

A lot of this stuff is happening on social media. A of the, you know, a lot of this is out on the Internet now. That's what we're hearing in the training school, department of corrections. But we're trying to recognize, particularly at a tactical level, not just having the chiefs in the room to agree that there are problems, but having, like, detectors in the room, sharing information, working with the federal task forces, really getting down to connecting guns, following the guns. Right?

It's really about the national ballistic database and following information about the gun, sharing information about the guns and tying guns to individuals, not necessarily just the individuals and not just individuals. It's a focused deterrent approach. We've had some meetings where we have officers from Providence, McConnell, and Central Falls come together and talk about their shooters and talk about their targets, the violent individuals in their communities, and sure enough,

the same name appears on several of them.

It's kinda bored out of the idea that were shootings outside of the district courthouse here in Providence, but the individuals who were shooting were from talking. Yeah. Here we have the Central Fall. So same thing at the mall. Right?