Cedric Richmond, Senior Presidential Adviser:
Well, it’s a comprehensive strategy to deal with gun violence and violent crime in our neighborhoods.
We see that it’s a 30 percent strike since the last 18 months, when the pandemic started. And so what we’re going to do is really, really wrap around. So, we’re going to start with ATF, making sure that they’re working with local police departments to set up task forces to trace and track guns, make sure that we’re looking at the gun dealers that are selling guns to people who they know should not have them or that are reselling guns.
The attorney general announced a zero tolerance policy there. We’re also going to put money in cities, so that they can hire more police officers, so they can invest in technology, like gun detection programs, cameras, they can invest in mental health, substance abuse.
And then we’re going to put some money into really try to prevent people from going that route in the first place. So cities will be able to invest in summer jobs programs for their youth, invest in their recreation departments, their education departments.
And then the last thing we will do is make sure that we have been invested in the Department of Labor, putting money out there, so we can train and help educate formerly incarcerated people who are leaving incarceration, so that they can get jobs.
And we’re urging businesses and others to hire them. So we think that this comprehensive strategy — and one of the most important parts of the strategy is investing in community violence intervention. And that’s people who go in the community, go into the communities where the crimes are happening, where the victims are located, and make sure that they are dealing with retaliation, conflict resolution and making sure that they identify, because those are the trusted voices in the community.
And we know that that reduces crime.