CRIMINALS GETTING PAID TO NOT COMMIT CRIMES? PART ONE

AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN ACT DOLLARS ARE FUNDING FAILED VIOLENCE INTERVENTION PROGRAMS.

Mar 17, 2023

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AN EMBARRASSING RECORD OF FAILURES

Those advocating for either the Ceasefire, Advance Peace, or Cure Violence plans, bizarrely point to successes in cities where the homicide rates are the worst in the world, even the third world. Baltimore, St. Louis, Oakland, CA, Richmond CA, Chicago, and Detroit are trotted out as the successes they want to bring to your city.

Too often mislabeled as a public health crisis, many of these community violence intervention (CVI) programs have their funding routed through the department of health in areas like Chicago and Baltimore.

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In 2018, I saw firsthand how these programs are marketed and funded. To remove any suspense, they don’t work. They are marketed as gun violence injury and death prevention and while strategies vary, there usually common hallmarks included:

· Ambassadors or violence interrupters, usually convicted felons, former gang members who build rapport, who are often involved in corruption

· Call in meetings where suspects are confronted by representatives of community organizations offering services or the courts and police promising enhanced enforcement.

· Community walks against violence and shooting

If you are a violent criminal, and you live in the right jurisdiction, you may score a trip to Paris with a rival gang leader. Devone Boggan bristles when he hears people describe his program as paying criminals not to commit crimes. Yet, there is no other way to describe it.

“For Rohnell Robinson, the $1000-a-month stipend wasn't all. There were also educational trips abroad, chaperoned by Office of Neighborhood Safety staff. Robinson's been to London and Paris…and had to travel with someone from a rival neighborhood.”

He was the Director of Neighborhood Safety in the City of Richmond (California) during his experiment using taxpayer but mainly generous foundation money furnishing universal basic income stipends to gang members likely to shoot or be shot. (If you are wondering about the science behind this, it is a secret labeled technical assistance and it costs gullible local governments hundreds of thousands of dollars.) Boggan is the Founder and CEO of Advance Peace.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

Until recently, many of these programs offered assistance with solving gun violence exclusively with a three-year commitment of $500,000 or more per year. At that time, I was assisting command staff evaluating the Operation Ceasefire from PICO National Network, self-labeled as a Christian community organizing group that had among its priorities gun violence, mass incarceration, restoration of felon voting rights and other left of center causes including ‘ban the box.’ They rebranded as faithinaction.org and have adopted positions that are anti-incarceration, anti-law enforcement, pro-illegal alien, anti-voter authentication and, in their own words,

our capacity to engage large numbers of people through trusted community institutions, speak prophetically about the moral dimensions of political choices, and bring people together across race, class, religion, urban/suburban/rural, and region to make progress.

Executive board memberships of many of these specialized non-profits always included several CEOs and Executive Directors of foundations, trusts and endowments – that promised matching money on certain projects – including community violence initiatives. I was surprised to find out that Google.org, philanthropic arm of Alphabet had made a seven-figure seed donation to PICO in getting my city on board, especially since I was working closely with employees of PICO who never mentioned it.

How often, do tax-exempt organizations receive a matching grant without disclosing it to the jurisdiction they are working with? Hopefully never!

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HARM REDUCTION

Harm reduction models are only remarkable in their nearly perfect failure rate. To make the term relatable, clean needle programs are the longstanding program with a goal of keeping intravenous drug users from transmitting HIV. Recent examples are city funded sites in New York City where, again, drug users, can take doses (occasionally overdoses) of highly illegal illicit drugs, possibly tainted with Fentanyl, in the presence of trained workers who are able to administer Narcan.

Community partnerships are essential to the success of CVI programs. When I brought a victim services organization into the meetings, I was informed that their Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) funding prohibited participation in harm reduction models. That was wisdom I couldn’t argue with.

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YOUR AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN

Certain taxpayer funds are forbidden from being near harm reduction models while the American Rescue Plan purposely funds these worse-than-ineffective CVI programs. In June of 2021 President Biden implores communities to use these Coronavirus mitigation monies to fund outside non-profits who perpetuate a dangerous process that can only be described as gross mismanagement.

It is unfathomable how federal funding is toxic, with sound logical basis in one circumstance, and the most delegitimized circumstance is acceptable.

PART TWO, COMING SOON

Part two, hopefully, will begin in Boston, visit Cincinnati and end with visits to both High Point, NC and Hollywood, FL. My goal is to provide a 360 degree view of this issue. It may not be the next article. There are a couple of others in the pipeline.

Of note, the City of Orlando received 59 million dollars of American Rescue Fund Act money and has pledged three million dollars (although some reports quote 1.5 million dollars) to the Advance Peace program via their parks department. Check out the videos in the references to see how things are going in Oakland.

Please keep all of our frontline officers in your prayers!