We'll go over a lot of the accomplishments that we've had.
We have a slide deck that'll be playing behind us, Lee.
We good?
Awesome.
So over the past year, we've been able to do a lot of work.
We've worked hand-in-hand with police and first responders,
establishing a full force of government, holistic community-led approach.
When we launched this work, we made the commitment to transparency
and building together with community.
Today's meeting, report out on our work from 2024
and a look ahead to 2025 as a part of that commitment.
We'll do an overview of some of the work that we've done and what we've seen.
Obviously, you all know we have a two-pronged approach, a people-based, which interrupts violence in protecting victims and survivors as well as youth and adults of highest promise,
and our place-based work, which focuses on eradicating root causes of harm in communities that need us the most.
In order to build this work out, we set the foundation of hundreds of meetings with experts and researchers, funders, business, government, faith, community leaders, and a lot of folks in this room.
We've engaged in challenging conversations with communities, discussed where government has barriers, where government needed to step out of the way and change our approach.
You know, I want to take some time to really thank our community conveners who are going to play a pivotal role in making sure our work is incredible going forward.
So that's a big thank you to Teamwork Inglewood, Beyond the Ball, the Westside NAACP, and Youth Guidance.
You'll see all of them in the room.
So within our nine people-in-place-based pillars, we identified 20 priorities, establishing cross-governmental teams,
and we identified and announced communities in our first wave.
We had 10 block groups across West Garfield Park, Little Village, Austin,
and obviously right here in Englewood.
We know that we can't address decades of disinvestments and violence overnight,
but we're excited to talk about some of the progress that we've made.
Hopefully you all have already seen in 2024 Chicago had a reduction in homicides,
shooting incidents, and shooting victims, the lowest level since 2019.
now y'all should have been clapping for that
that's something as a city
we should all be proud of
because a lot of that work
obviously happens in collaboration
citywide homicides are down 8%
shooting hands to death are down 7%
and robberies are down 25%
since the Chicago Police Department
launched a robbery task force
back in May of 2024
but we'll get specific right here in Englewood
I think I saw Commander Quartz earlier
Yeah, what's up, brother?
So Commander Lewis-Courts has been doing some incredible work right here in Englewood in the 7th District,
where Englewood, in his district, they've seen a 30% reduction in homicides right here,
under his leadership and under his partnership.
So obviously we want to thank Commander Courts and all of the officers in the 7th District
and all of the community members right here in Englewood who work hand-in-hand with him.
But we know numbers don't ever tell the full story.
The 8% decrease in homicides means there were over 50 people in comparison that were not killed last year.
That's 50 people that get to spend time with their families, 50 people that get to.
build memories, 50 people that continue to grow and live out their dreams here in the city of Chicago.
So we're proud of the progress that happened in 2024 and the hard work and collaboration that it represents.
But still, every homicide and shooting is too many, so we must continue that downward trajectory.
Over the past year, in addition to advancing the People's Plan for Community Safety,
and also finding ways to develop new city departments to collaborate with each other,
finding new ways for our departments to collaborate with each other.
I'll give a couple of those highlights, and I'm smiling because these things have been pretty exciting, right?
So in the fall, we began working with OEMC, the Office of Emergency Management Communications.
A lot of our hospital partners, Rush, the University of Chicago,
a lot of our street outreach partners to really look at an initiative called Hands on Chicago,
where we taught over 400 young people and adults in different parts of the city
how to apply CPR, how to stop the bleeding, and how to potentially save a life.
Because when we talk about the work that we do to save lives,
we know it takes all of us working together.
We also partnered with hospitals and CBOs for the city's first ever investment
in hospital-based violence prevention.
We've seen this work.
We know that there are some folks who have been doing this historically,
some folks right here on the front row who have been doing that work historically for years.
But this was the city's first time actually making an investment in hospital-based violence intervention.
That was under the leadership of Mayor Brandon Johnson.
So we consistently try to find ways.
Hey, I like that.
See, that's leadership.
Clap it up now.
We consistently look for ways to help curtail violence and help continue to invest in people.
We also released an RFP last year.
And, again, we talked about our awardees.
And something else we did last summer was a series.
And I know a lot of you all were there, and I hope you all are ready for this summer when we do it again.
You can be a part of that planning process.
Take back the block.
You know, this is something we started last summer where the mayor held a series of activations across the city
so we could go into communities that were impacted by violence, impacted by a lack of investment,
and really spend time hand-in-hand in those communities, cleaning four-block radius, infrastructure repairs,
and really showing up in those communities.
Our Commissioner of Streets and Sanitation is here,
and in one of the blocks that we did to take back the block in that area,
we removed four tons of trash in the Austin community.
That says a couple of things, right?
Obviously, there was a lot of work to remove that.
The bigger question, Cole, is why did we get to a place of four tons of trash?
We can have that conversation later on, man.
But more importantly, right, that work and partnership to make sure we continue to show it up for the people of Chicago
is something that we're all proud of.
And as a part of our work to continue to address root causes, we also showed up right here in Englewood through our Economic Opportunity and Global Mobility pillar, which is led by Amber Wilson.
Right here in this room, a few weeks ago, we held a hiring fair along with the Shot Cook Workforce Partnership in St. Sabina, where we had over 1,000 people in this room and 140 people were hired on the spot.
right here in Inglewood.
And look, y'all, we did that in the midst of a hiring freeze, right?
So we were able to work with businesses right here in the community
to come in and hire people in need in real time.
Now, we're going to continue that momentum this year
because we're going to do more hiring fairs, not job fairs.
We don't do job fairs.
We do hiring fairs.
So people walk away with jobs and opportunities to really continue to flourish.
We're going to continue that momentum this year.
And as we move into this one, I'm happy to really invite up some of our partners from the CSCC, the Community Safety Coordination Center, as they've been hand-in-hand, pretty much our operations arms of making sure our work builds and continues to go.
I bring up Desiree Kettler, and we'll also bring up Stephanie Harris to talk about our rapid response work and our victim services work.
As we talk more about our victim services work, and before I bring them up, I do want to acknowledge a loss to our city and our victim services space with this past week the passing of Bertha Purnell.
Bertha was instrumental in really building out what the work looked like for our victim services work.
Anybody who knew Bertha knew she was a giant in this work, and she was so important to victims and advocates.
And she not only talked the talk, but she lived it and she walked with it every day.
So we'll continue to dedicate our work to every victim and every leader,
and we'll have the CSCC come up and talk a bit about the work that they've done
in building our rapid responses this year.
So Desiree, Stephanie, come on up.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you, and good afternoon.
Good afternoon. My name is Desiree Kettler and I lead the operations for the Community Safety Coordination Center.
The CSCC was established under the Chicago Department of Public Health in August of 2021.
And in partnership with the Mayor's Office of Community Safety, we are committed to a community-driven approach to violence prevention and reduction.
One that is hyper-local, data-driven, and evidence-based.
We work across silos with health care, social services, restorative justice partners, educators, CVI, and street outreach, faith groups, businesses, city departments, block clubs, and more to ensure that resources are coordinated and community voices are at the center of our efforts.
In 2024, the CSCC made significant progress in supporting communities, creating safe spaces, and coordinating city resources.
Through the Emergency Supplemental Victims Fund, we distributed over $600,000 to help gun violence victims ease financial burdens and trauma.
Our Cycle Breakers campaign reached 1.1 million young people, inspiring them to break cycles of violence in their communities.
And we funded 556 safe space activations in collaboration with community organizations and block clubs,
while identifying and addressing nearly 300 critical safety concerns across neighborhoods.
At our violence prevention tables, 88 organizations participated in 174 meetings
through our community activation networks, engaging over 1,300 residents on the south and the west side.
One major highlight of 2024 was the launch of the Incident Response Protocol pilot,
which operated from March through early September of last year.
This pilot was designed to rapidly mobilize government resources after critical incidents,
whether they were mass shootings, youth homicides, or other tragedies.
During this pilot, we responded to 40 qualifying incidents across 22 communities,
including 12 mass shootings and 24 youth homicides.
One example of our coordinated efforts was the response to the mass shooting on the near west side,
near the Ablohomes, over the 4th of July weekend.
Within 48 hours, we collaborated with CPD in the Park District to establish an emergency assistance center,
providing residents with wraparound services and access to essential resources during an incredibly challenging time.
Following the emergency assistance center, we partnered with MOCS to launch the Take Back the Block initiative
that Deputy Mayor just talked about near the ABLA Homes.
This effort is part of a citywide plan to create pro-social opportunities, enhance infrastructure,
and connect communities directly with local government services.
The work did not stop there.
Members of the CSCC have continued to meet with residents to address ongoing concerns,
provide resources, and collaborate on long-term solutions to improve safety and strengthen community trust.
The CSCC's work underscores the power of collaboration between government and communities
to build safer neighborhoods and a brighter future for all Chicagoans.
I'll now turn it over to Stephanie Harris, who leads our victim services work.
Thank you, everyone. Good afternoon.
It is so wonderful to be here and to see all of your faces, some familiar faces,
and some folks I've been calling family for quite some time.
So this is a great space to be in.
I also want to thank you, Garion, for acknowledging Bertha Purnell,
and I think it's very resonant to what I'm here to talk about, which is the victim advocate training.
the city's first ever victim advocate training pilot that we launched with so many stakeholders in the space,
whether they be victim advocates, gun violence survivors, including Ms. Bertha Purnell,
who served in a number of organizations and is just a fierce advocate,
just serving community and fighting for survivors of gun violence.
And so met over several months with not only Ms. Bertha, but just several other stakeholders
to really co-create a trauma-informed victim advocate training
so that every single victim advocate operating in the city of Chicago
responding to incidents of violence has access to the same type of trauma-informed training.
Not to say that there won't be access to other types of training
that they have through their different organizations and other opportunities,
but we work with a number of stakeholders who provide that training.
We work with a number of folks at community level and city, the city level, to really co-create this trauma-informed training, getting lots of feedback.
We are still in that process.
We were able to run a very successful pilot through, in part, due to a partnership with city colleges.
And so we were in Malcolm X College over November and December of last year, and we piloted with just a small court group of victim advocates.
and right now we're synthesizing
evaluations we are going running back to the drawing board we are looking to look
at ways that we can enhance the curriculum I'm really pulling on and not
really really not reinventing the wheel at all but really pulling on many of
the many of the folks who are trained many of the people in this room right
pulling on Chicago survivors work very closely with Metropolitan Peace Academy
work very closely with Catherine Bocanegra with UIC work very closely
with NAMI Chicago and so many others, and just really coming together to really envision
what is needed to set victim advocates up so that they show up in the right space and
that they show up in a way that survivors of gun violence truly deserve, and then also
making sure that organizations, whether they are a large organization, whether they're
a small organization, whether they're a grassroots organization that may not always have
have the opportunities to gain some access to training, making sure that every single victim advocate in this city that is responding to incidents of violence is able to get access to this trauma-informed training.
We're taking it a step further. We're also working with city colleges to look at a pathway. How would it look to create a credential?
A credential for victim advocates. So a certificate. We want to start with looking at a certificate program.
Is there a way where we can co-create a certificate program where anyone who wants to enter the world of victim advocacy,
maybe they are looking for a career change, maybe they unfortunately come from a lived experience and want to get in the victim advocacy space.
We're building out pathways so that they can get not only that training, which is open to any victim advocate in the city of Chicago,
which will be open to any victim advocate in the city of Chicago, but also to be able to gain a credential through city colleges.
So we're currently exploring that pathway in 2025, and we're really, really excited about what's to come with that.
And so open to any feedback, suggestions right now.
Again, we are in the evaluation.
We're in a piloting phase, so it's not rolled out to the larger community.
But the goal is to make sure that every single victim advocate that is responding to incidents of violence in the city of Chicago
have access to this training on top of whatever other trainings they may have access to.
So really excited about what's to come.
And in addition to that, we're also, through the People's Plan, able to have conversations around victim services coordination,
which is really, it really does go into a training, it's a training tool.
Because think about if there is a single incident of violence and give a community area, let's say Inglewood,
how many victim services organizations or victim services teams are responding?
Is it we need to work with people to ensure that they are coordinating with one another?
And the city, we're really wanting to work alongside with organizations in every community area to really co-create what does a guide look like?
So we started off with a small pilot, started off in South Lawndale, which is one of the four block groups that is part of the People's Plan.
And we wanted to talk through what are some of the best practices that their teams have done in terms of coordination,
what has worked, what has not worked, and being able to create a model and a guide,
and also wanting to hear from other organizations in other community areas about what is working, what is not working,
and what are best practices for how victim services teams should be working together
so that we ensure that when an incident of violence happens and that mom just lost her baby, for instance,
That she is not getting the same messages from multiple organizations, but that there is one accord in terms of coordination and making sure that everyone, one, is communicating and is on the same page.
Because at the end of the day, while many people represent different organizations, I believe every single victim advocate, every single organization has a heart for community and really wants to make a difference.
And so this is really what we are working to co-create.
So just really, really excited about what's to come in the role of victim services, victim services coordination,
and just really excited to be in this journey along with you all.
Thank you all so much.
And I will now introduce Mr. John Jones.
Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone.
If you ever need a motivation speech, I recommend you give Stephanie about 10 minutes of your time.
And I promise you, I think Chicago Bears should hit her up to give a motivational speech.
Thank you as an honor and privilege to work alongside them. My name is John Jones
I am the rapid response lead for the community
Safety Coordination Center, but I also have the honor and privilege of serving as the overseer for
the Community Environment Pillar. So today we're here to kind of give you a recap of 2024,
also share some goals to 2025. So regarding 2024, we have three specific initiatives within the
Community Environment Pillar. One, vacant lots and buildings, two, safe space access, and three,
3-1-1 infrastructure. But today we're going to highlight two of those, one being 3-1-1
infrastructure. So we're going to start there. So raise your hand if you're familiar with the 3-1-1 app.
Okay, beautiful. Beautiful. I didn't see every hand raised, so that's good to know because beginning with 2024, we identified the two things that we really need to focus on is to, one, ensure our 311 requests from our community members are being fulfilled, but also the community is being informed of how to utilize 311, what can be put in 311, and the behind-the-scenes steps to kind of accomplish those specific requests.
So in the beginning of the year, we met with 3-1-1 then Director Audrey Mathis and her assistant Jason Ressa.
We had conversations, okay, give us the breakdown.
3-1-1 requests, for me, what does that look like when I submit a request, what do you receive, and what departments, what do they receive on their end?
So from there, we understood that we had to really focus on our infrastructure requests.
This includes your street light repairs, your vacant lot cleanups, and other specific requests.
So we really pulled a team together of departments that included street sanitation, Department of Transportation, Department of Water Management, Department of Buildings, and the 3-1-1 team.
So from there, we came together every two weeks.
Okay, how can we as a team, as a city, kind of come together, coordinate these specific requests to ensure that these requests are being fulfilled?
The first idea that came to mind was implementing a tag that was very specific to any 3-1-1 request within our four community areas.
So, again, South Lawndale, Garfield Park, Inglewood, and Austin.
So, with that, every single request within 2024 from those four community areas now have a very specific tag that we call the PPCS, People's Plan for Community Safety.
And the goal of that was to then meet with these department leaders in each department every month and then go over, okay, here are the requests for this community area.
Where are we standing at?
Okay, we see this request is open.
For example, CDOT, where are we looking at?
And then Donna from CDOT would then share, okay, it just needs to be closed, or here's the process, here's the next step.
So then that we can go back to the community in our end and say, hey, we received that request, here's where we're at.
But also we understood that, you know, community itself, we will be in multiple community meetings,
especially with the Community Safety Coordination Center, where we're meeting with community every week, almost every day.
And we would hear back, hey, we submitted this request or, you know, 3-1-1 sounds cool, but can you just make sure it gets done?
So then the opportunity arose for us to really begin to strategize, okay, what does a community engagement strategy for 3-1-1 look like?
So for that, we then created a 3-1-ambassador program called the 3-1-ambassadors.
We launched our first cohort this year where we identified four to five individuals from each of those community areas utilizing our community-based organizations.
and then had a specific training on 3-1-1 and also provided them to have provided the opportunity for them to see the behind the scenes as well
for the purpose of when they go back into the community areas, because I won't be in all four community areas.
We all won't be in all four community areas, but you as a leader will be in your community area way more than I would ever be.
So there's an opportunity for someone to say, hey, this streetlight is out or, man, these bushes haven't been trimmed in over two months.
You, as someone who is trained in this 3-on-1 cohort, can now say, oh, let me educate you because I have been educated by the city on how to utilize this.
So that empowerment piece given to the community.
But also it provides that accountability, too, because then they can come to us or I'll get a phone call saying, hey, John, I'll show this person how to submit a request since the request has not been fulfilled yet.
Okay, let's get back to it.
Let's meet with this department and figure out the way to do that.
So with those two main strategies, I believe we fulfilled over 5,000 requests within our 10 block groups, within our four community areas.
So 5,000 requests has been fulfilled.
So those include your – and, again, that's a huge shout-out to our departments, our infrastructure departments,
street sanitation, CDOT, water management buildings, who were very proactive.
And, okay, if we would reach out, they would get on it immediately.
So a huge thank you to those departments who played a very pivotal role in that.
So, you know, for 2025, the goal is, OK, now we know and now we learn something.
Let's grow it. So the goal is we want to launch a very official program where we look to train over around 100 ambassadors for the year.
And again, the goal is to utilize community in those in those meetings.
So we want to go to community and say, OK, what organizations can we utilize in this?
this time please bring us four to five people after the first cohort we already identified
multiple people from all these four community areas who were saying hey i heard about this
can can we get in so we do have a list going and we're very excited to hear about that so big
things to come in 2025 especially for those who are putting your through one request in on daily
purpose we thank you for that moving forward to our safe space access so the goal for the safe
space access initiative is how do we as a city coordinate a pathway for a community to
efficiently and quickly access some of these spaces within our own realm. So we're thinking
about your libraries, your parks, your public school facilities. So for that, at the beginning
of 2024, we then met up with Chicago Park District, met with leaders from Chicago Public Schools,
their facilities team, and then also met with our leadership from the Chicago Public Libraries.
And then from there, we worked with them, okay, what can we do for a community to provide more and efficient accessibility, but also can we, like, be innovative in our approach for a community to utilize these spaces?
So one thing that we did specifically within Garfield Park, the Legler Library, Chicago Public Library system, they did extend hours on multiple weekends in the month of July for community-based organizations to utilize those spaces.
If you've ever been to Legler Library, you understand they have a studio, they have 3D printing, and they have other opportunities for young people specifically to really utilize those tools in that specific facility.
So a huge shout-out to Chicago Public Library.
But we also want to identify our community-based organizations who we work with to then provide activations in our block groups or in the media area.
So your teamwork, Englewood, your TA-98 in South Londo, your Street Priest in Garfield Park, and then also your Build Chicago in Austin.
All these organizations, plus others, had led 19 state-based activations within our block groups in the immediate area.
So these block groups that we identified as a city that were raising concerns, we now have provided activations and flooded those activations with resources to then provide that to the community.
And the goal of that is, okay, 19 for me is a cool number, but I think we can do more.
So how do we be more intentional in this next year of now understanding what last year looked like?
How can we meet with organizations, grow our reach within other organizations to double that number?
Where we're having activations maybe throughout the whole entire summer once a week or in the holiday season,
how can we be more intentional in our planning for that?
And that is our focus for 2025 is to grow that number because I want to come back next year and say,
hey we doubled that number and some so um regarding the community environment pillar
there's a lot of progress that was made there's still a lot of work to be done for sure um this
is just the beginning but again like my colleague stephanie said if you have any uh feedback you
want to share with me i'll be after the meeting but we'll love to to hear from you get your
thoughts on it especially as we want this to be community led so thank you all i'm gonna bring
up my colleague ali lichterman on the stage today and uh thank you for your time thanks john i'm
I'm a senior policy advisor in the Mayor's Office of Community Safety, and I've had the pleasure of leading the student re-engagement initiative team over the last year, alongside my co-leads, Tony Copeland, CPS Director of Student Supports and Violence Prevention, and Crystal Fields, CPS Director of Stabilizations and Transitions, who I'm going to make you all clap for.
We know that disengagement from school can result in higher levels of young people becoming victims of violence,
experiencing mental health issues, increased substance usage, economic disparities,
as well as impacts to graduation, attendance, and expulsion rates.
Meanwhile, reengagement with the path best suited to a young person can do just the opposite,
really help them build towards healthy and consistent engagement with their community and success in school,
whatever pathway is best for them for graduation, professional success, and beyond.
So our goal was to increase re-engagement in the education system
and expand wraparound services for our city's most disengaged young people
to enable them to re-engage with our education system
or their career pathway that best serves them.
To do this, we started by analyzing the work that's already been done
through CPS's Back to Our Future program.
We brought together partners from across city departments and sister agencies
from Chicago Public Schools, Family and Support Services, and City Colleges,
as well as our partners at the Illinois Department of Human Services,
Social Research Organization, NORC, and Philanthropy.
The team analyzed the original Back to Our Future, or B2OF, program model.
which served disengaged 14- to 21-year-olds through partners at community-based organizations.
These orgs would provide mentorship, mental health, and behavioral support,
and eventually reconnect to an educational pathway.
Our teams also interviewed youth participants as well as their adult facilitators directly
and combed through all sorts of relevant research to make sure we left no stone unturned.
And what we found was that we needed a stronger, more layered administrative structure
that included an anchor organization operating between CPS and providers to really support those CBOs.
This is an incredibly intense program that takes a lot of time and funds, as it should,
and we need to make sure that we are investing in our CBOs in a manner that lifts up both youth and the adults who serve them
and is helping the city and our partners build capacity.
We also realized that we needed to take a true full force of government approach,
including partners across offices at CPS, other city departments, levels of government,
research partners, and philanthropy from program development all the way through implementation to be successful.
So by the end of 2024, we were able to release a funded request for proposal through CPS
together with our partners at the state for this anchor organization
and now have closed that application and will be hopefully excited to share news on that soon.
Additionally, we have the bones for a reworked, research-driven program model,
have defined our target population, and established a funding pathway for our first year.
In 2025, we are very excited to relaunch the program
and serve 250 youth across our People's Plan for Community Safety focus areas.
And I just want to give a huge, huge shout-out and thank you to all of our initiative team members,
the IDH Office of Firearm Violence Prevention,
and I look forward to seeing the incredible impact Back to Our Future 2.0 has in 2025 and beyond.
So with that, we will throw it back to Deputy Mayor of Community Safety, Gary Ann Gatewood.
It's a cool QR code on the back of the screen behind us.
We've been talking about, and we gave you all a lot of information,
but here's an actual hard copy of our year report.
You'll be able to scan the QR code, takes you right to our website.
We do have a few hard copies here in person.
This is something that, you know, our first deputy of agency operations, Lydia Swanson, has been working on countless hours.
We do believe in the union, except she's only been working on doing work hours.
So Lydia's been doing incredible work on that.
Now, I do have the pleasure of bringing up the leader of our great city, Mayor Brandon Johnson,
to share a few words about what we've been doing as a city and where we go from here.
So please, I'll give it up for Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Thank you to our deputy mayor, Gary Gatewood, for your leadership.
and it is such an honor to be able to serve this wonderful city
and have the best-looking staff in the history of Chicago politics.
That's usually where people cheer and throw great confetti in the air.
Doesn't it feel good to actually have an administration that believes in style and class and substance?
So thank you.
Good-looking group.
John and Allie and Stephanie and the entire team,
you all are doing a remarkable job showing up for the people of Chicago.
You know, I do want to thank everyone for joining us for this important quarterly update for the People's Plan for Community Safety.
This is still the number one issue that people are concerned about in Chicago.
It's crucial that the residents of Chicago become a part of the solutions to create peace and safety in all of our communities.
So I do truly appreciate all of you taking time to participate in these conversations.
I believe that our shared vision for safer communities and for more resilient and equitable communities is one to behold.
These quarterly meetings are a way of keeping us updated,
but it also challenges my administration to talk about the progress and the achievements that we are making,
but also the adjustments that are necessary.
As some of you might know, this is obviously very personal to all of us in this room,
But personal to me, as a resident, proud resident of the Austin neighborhood on the west side of Chicago,
we have certainly seen our share of disinvestment and challenges,
much like what I know Alder Stephanie Coleman has been on the forefront discussing
and leading as it relates to the beloved community of Inglewood.
These are beautiful communities, and we're proud to call these communities our home.
But unfortunately, in many of our communities throughout the city of Chicago,
we struggle with higher rates of
violence. And these challenges can seem daunting, and it could even feel overwhelming.
You know, over the past, you know, 20 months since I've been mayor, the loss of life and
the heartbreak that we experience over and over and over again in our city, it's tragic.
And the entire city feels the burden and the weight of these losses. But we have to honor
of those losses by moving forward with tremendous purpose, by convening here to build a better
city and better homes for all of us. Because these problems of violence that we've experienced
over years, they're not going to be resolved overnight. But thankfully, we are amongst
company that believe in real solutions. The People's Plan for Community Safety is our
roadmap. A roadmap to build towards
short-term, immediate responses, but also a long-term
vision for solutions that will ultimately bring healing to our city
and strengthen our communities, and of course starting in communities like West Garfield Park
and Englewood, Little Village, and of course in my neighborhood, the Austin
community. This plan also establishes the citywide partnerships that are so
necessary, including those from the community, particularly
our violence intervention groups, street outreach workers, our faith community
businesses, youth serving organizations, and so many others.
And throughout this plan, we are certainly focused on place and people.
But more importantly than just place and people, it's what you're
showing up with. It's those investments, because it's the investments that ultimately
provide the type of healing and support that every single resident throughout our communities
deserve, and they're long overdue. I often talk about the unique
aspect of this plan where we are hyper-focused
on not just the communities that are experiencing high rates of violence, but on the very
blocks and streets where it's most prevalent. The solutions to combating
violence are not just a one-size-fit-all. We must deploy
different resources and funds as well as particular strategic
interventions that will be
prominent for the community in which we are serving. It's building blocks,
encouraging people to stay involved, but we have to do it together.
And that's why the full force of government is my mantra of how we build a sustained effort to create safer communities.
I'm grateful that we have many city department leaders that are here today
because it truly will take the full force of government to transform our neighborhoods.
And with that in mind, I'm excited tonight, though, to be able to highlight, again,
and the organizations that are playing an incredible role.
You already heard them express today, these community conveners,
because that is really the heart of the work of this plan,
is making sure that the organizations that are tied and tethered to these communities
are part of the convening of the communities to build the safe communities that we desire.
These are community anchors that will work with agencies and with my administration to fulfill this plan.
And so I'm grateful that all of you all have made your life's commitment to this work.
You know, in closing, as we have these discussions today and beyond,
there are a number of forces that have decided that their animus as well as their greed
that has been directed towards the city of Chicago for a very long time,
that they are hoping that the divisive nature that exists in our politics today
prevent us from accomplishing our goal.
But I know one thing about Chicago. We take it personal when people attack our city. And we should. And I come from a family of 10. Trust me, I don't get along with most of those jokers that came from my mother and father.
But I know one thing for sure, if you say something about one of them, now I might have problems with folks and y'all might have problems with me, but as a city, the people who are on the outside who don't know what it takes to live in this city and thrive in this city, they can close their mouths.
And the best way we can do it is demonstrating our collective work together to build a more inclusive economy for everyone.
God bless you all. Thank you.
Can we please give our mayor a hand of applause again for those incredible remarks?
Many of you have heard a lot about the community conveners.
I'm going to go a little bit deeper today just to explain the importance and significance of why the individuals that are going to be leading in our communities were selected.
But before I do that,
I want to thank Mayor Brandon Johnson for trusting Deputy Mayor Gary Gaywood and the Office of Community Safety to do this work.
I also want to thank Commissioner E. Gay and the Department of Public Health's Office of Violence Prevention
for collaborating with the Office of Community Safety to make this impactful investment.
Many of you know that this work is not easy, so when we have to do interdepartmental cross-collaboration,
it's important that we all come to the table and work through the kinks.
The Community Convener's RFP was created to put intentional dollars into a community-based organization that will collaborate with other community and faith-based organizations, business leaders, and residents to bring a hyper-local perspective to the city's community safety strategies.
These organizations will operate as accountability partners to the whole of government, ensuring that the city is intentionally utilizing its resources to properly support and the development of these communities.
For too long, we have placed the burden of creating and maintaining safety on our city's first responder departments and agencies.
Establishing a better, stronger, safer city means that we have to create a multilayered response,
a response that is designed and implemented with community.
We need to continue to collectively, as government, community-based organizations, faith leaders, and residents,
define what safety means for Chicago and what role each of us play.
Government must continue to engage in challenging dialogues and work directly with community leaders and residents
to understand what their specific neighborhoods need to be successful in.
This administration has modeled what it means to show up, to listen, to understand, and not to just respond.
Through these intentional approaches, we are working to establish trust, build civic education, and increase civic participation.
Please welcome me one more time in congratulating our award recipients for our following community areas.
Teamwork Englewood for Greater Englewood, Beyond the Ball for South Lyndale, Youth's Guidance for West Garfield, and last but not least, Westside NAACP for Austin.
And I can tell you we are ecstatic to be working with these organizations as they have already done a lot of transformative work.
It means a lot being able to come to the table to collaborate with them.
I'd like now to bring to the podium Cecile D'Amelio, Executive Director for Teamwork Inglewood,
to share a little bit more about their organization and their goals for the work ahead with the city.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Okay, I'm a little casual for today.
I forgot how fancy these events could be.
But as Mayor Johnson was sharing, you know, surviving in Chicago is a tough task at times.
And when I saw that snow at 6 in the morning, I said, Tim's jeans, sweatshirt, boys, brush your teeth.
Okay?
Actually, I'm really appreciative that we'll be able to talk a little bit about the journey around Englewood public safety work,
especially through the lens of quality of life work and public safety convening.
And the Englewood quality of life plan is in its second rendition here in Greater Englewood.
And I've always been attracted to quality of life plans because it's community voices being articulated in a thorough plan
that then the community is now accountable to help facilitate.
For the second plan that started in 2016, I was a volunteer in the process.
And in addition to being the executive director, I also live in Greater Englewood.
I raised my family here.
So I was volunteering in the prioritization of what will be the working goals and the working spaces.
And as you see from the slide, there's five working groups, public safety, jobs and economic development, health and wellness, education and youth, and housing and public spaces.
And to be clear, residents chose these as our top priorities in the planning process.
The strategies that were selected, strategies, again, that the people selected and that community groups, residents, and stakeholders have been working together to implement.
As it comes to the public safety work, in addition to the residents coming together to create those strategies in 2016,
we also had an opportunity with a Department of Justice burn grant to do deeper work in our public safety work
and actually do even more community engagement from about 2017 to about end of 2018.
And there were a number of community groups and residents that were really key in helping us to do lots of focus groups, town hall meetings.
surveys, and some of those include Resident Association for Greater Inglewood, Dr. Troy
Hardin at Northeastern Illinois University, and then Mr. Faytale Perkins, who's in the
audience, who was the staff member who helped with the coordination of this initiative and
continues to do great work in public safety with Think Outside the Block.
Some of those call-outs in the strategies were public space activation in hotspots.
So as we think about how this is being institutionalized as part of the public safety plan,
I want to be very clear that that was grassroots community wisdom across the city in communities like Englewood
who called out the need for resource saturation in hotspots in our community
and to identify the environmental issues like vacant lots, like vacant buildings,
like poor lighting and infrastructure that complements crime to be able to exist in these hotspots.
Again, this is grassroots community wisdom leading the strategy with their lived experiences.
When we talk about public spaces, we have to be honest about those who are being directly impacted
and honor their lived experiences and ensure that it's their community wisdom
and their strategy selection that is guiding the work.
And I'm proud of the work that I saw unfold here in Greater Englewood with the Time 2136 Project,
with the work of the Inglewood Quality of Life Plan
and how it's been able to influence city thinking around what does it look like to do public safety work
in addition to violence prevention intervention, environmental design work,
as well as resource saturation in public spaces, as well as hotspots.
In addition, the call out from the first plan to continue to support returning citizens was also key.
And you see that work also increase in the community from 2016 on in that plan in our public safety work,
expanding job training and placement for returning citizens and providing as much holistic care as possible
to ensure that they're returning to our communities in a safe and proud space, right?
And lastly, another identification around support is also looking for women-headed households
and how critical it is that things that address them that are unique, like domestic violence,
which is a serious issue here in Greater Inglewood, that we were working with partners to support that.
Again, listening to community wisdom, allowing lived experience to chart our path, and then getting the work done.
So we could go to the next slide.
Yes.
Oh, the clicker's with me.
Well, why didn't anybody do this?
Wait.
Here you go.
So getting deeper into the public safety work and the framework that we had, again,
the community wisdom in 2017 and 2018 called out public space activation, saturation of resources in these hotspots.
I'll give a real short story.
Moran Park is the adopted park of the community because of so many struggles that the park had at one time.
And when you actually overlay the census data track on BEAT 712 and even BEAT 725,
you see the lowest income census tracts of Greater Englewood, so think about that.
In a community that has a medium income of about $27,000, there are lower census tracts than that.
And you can put public safety hotspots overlaying with those census tracts
and see why we need to create strategic economic and community development resources in those hotspots.
In 2024, we continued the work in B-712, in B-725, which again were the two police beats that community residents and data showed are the spaces that we needed to give.
I call it TLC, okay?
We continued our work at the We Grow campus on 64th and Honoree.
And then what we continued to do, which was a combination, you all, of education and youth call-out in our EQLI,
as well as public safety is help fundraise for youth programming inside of key hotspots in our community,
supporting quality youth providers to continue to do work, hire more young people, right, do more stipends,
pilot a new job training program over the summer.
We've done this for about four to five years because one of the things that's important to think about for public safety
is out-of-school time, after-school programming, and summer-based programming is critical.
and not just for 16 and up, which is what the data was showing.
Who is taking care of 6th, 7th, and 8th graders when you have that park district gap
was one of the ways we were doing the specific funding,
and we continued that work last year in key hotspots with key program providers.
I'm going to talk probably the most about this second point on the slide,
which is our Englewood STEM work.
So Englewood STEM High School gets a lot of bad rep,
and I want to clarify it's an amazing school with amazing people doing good work,
and we've got to shout out to that.
The understanding is that we don't have a lot of wraparound services for high schools in general,
and it's especially critical for communities that may have more needs.
So what we did once we found out we were the convener back in the fall,
it started to work with the local school and said, how can we support you?
Because at the end of the day, and I think this is important to note around public safety
and where we can find families, where we can find residents,
It's schools are anchors, no matter what we say about them, right?
And we saw that Englewood STEM was a great place for us to not only service the hundreds of young people from Englewood that go to that school, but also all of the families.
So we are hoping to continue to work with the public safety convening and be able to support out-of-school time, wraparound supports,
and create intentional connection with outside providers in the school
in the ways that we can do that.
Because this community wants to love on Englewood,
but we know there's protocols for how to do things in Chicago public schools.
We want to help eliminate those boundaries and bring people in.
Okay, I'm shutting up. Bye.
Okay, almost done.
All right, sorry.
Took too long.
My bad.
I had Tim's on.
I feel unstoppable right now.
Lastly, the work of the pop court on 63rd and Justine.
And I'll actually just close with this, and this will be my last point.
So when the recovery dollars started to come down in the last couple of years,
it's important that we were able to use our quality of life plan,
our public safety data from the community, and be able to grab resources that fit the plan.
And that is so important, and I'm grateful that we had that wisdom
and were able to say 63rd and Justine is in Beat 725.
63rd and Ashland was identified by the community as a hotspot.
Let's go after that grant.
Well, actually, Manny kind of forced me, but anyways, I saw the vision, Manny.
And we said, you know what, we could actually take this resource and bring it to 63rd and Justine
right down the street from 63rd and Ashland and be able to bring public space activation
and saturation of resources right in a hotspot that the community is saying that we need to address
as well as the data.
And that's it, y'all.
I'm very appreciative of being able to show a little bit about the work that we do.
I also want to shout out all the Inglewood partners that do amazing work in this community.
If I start naming folks, I might miss, but I'll try it anyway.
I see the Resurrection Project.
I see PAL, the Restorative Project.
I see, what do I see?
Of course, I said Think Outside the Block, Target Area, Public Equity, Inglewood Heroes.
And fidelity and integrity, I see you all as well.
I just want to say that one of the great things about doing work in Englewood, to Mayor Johnson's point,
we are trying to figure out how to do collective work, but y'all can't talk about us, okay?
So we'll stand up if you mess with anybody in Englewood, okay?
All right, have a good one.
Thank you.
Thank you, Cecile.
I'm sure you all can see why we're so excited to work with our community conveners
and all of the work that's happening around the city.
We appreciate the time you all have spent with us today.
Spend some time with our community conveners at the tables around the rooms.
Learn more about their work.
Learn more about how we'll be working together going forward.
Thank you all so much.
Looking forward to the next steps in this.
And we appreciate your time.
So thank you very much, y'all.