Anti-violence program faces possible funding cut

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A program credited with helping keep Kansas City's homicide rate from being even higher last year could lose its city funding.

Aim4Peace, which pairs reformed criminals with people still in the street lifestyle to break the cycle of violence, is among the programs that a city finance committee has recommended be cut from the budget. The full city council is set to vote on the budget recommendations Thursday.

City officials have been working over the past few months to erase a shortfall that's now approaching $90 million. But Aim4Peace members say the $600,000 for their program comes from a health levy and not the city's general fund and shouldn't be considered part of the deficit.

Group members say theirs is the only violence prevention project in the city that uses a public health strategy to address root causes of violence and intervene in conflicts so they don't escalate and lead to more killings.

"What Aim4Peace is trying to do is allow Kansas City residents to take responsibility for their own community," said Patricia Williams, one of the program's seven street intervention workers or "violence interrupters."

"We're the answer to the city's prayers, for real," she said.

The program, launched in 2007, targets a core group of neighborhoods on Kansas City's east side, an economically and academically troubled area where many of the city's killings have occurred.

Kansas City had 126 killings in 2008. It was one of the city's deadliest years so far this decade.

Police and community members say Aim4Peace was among the programs that helped curb the violence toward the end of the year and prevented the homicide count from possibly being worse.

Aim4Peace resolved 22 conflicts last year that could have ended in violence and cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care and law enforcement expenses, said program manager Tracie McClendon-Cole.

She said what sets Aim4Peace apart from other community organizations is its ability to reach "high-risk individuals" before they resort to violence and to help them get out of the street lifestyle.

The University of Kansas' Work Group for Community Health and Development, which recently released its evaluation of Aim4Peace, said it's too early to determine the program's effect on the homicide rate. However, the evaluation group said, preliminary data "suggests that Aim4Peace may be beginning to contribute to community changes that will support improved rates of homicides and aggravated assaults over time."

Kansas City Councilwoman Jan Marcason, the vice chairwoman of the finance committee that's proposing the Aim4Peace funding cut, said the recommendation "has nothing to do with the quality of the program."

"We had to cut just about every program that wasn't a basic city service," Marcason said. "These cuts were not made lightly. We agonized over them."

She said one option might be to have a nonprofit organization that also specializes in violence prevention take control of Aim4Peace.

McClendon-Cole said having a nonprofit group operate the program would send a message to citizens that the city no longer wants to invest in inner-city violence prevention.

"It is the city's responsibility to show faith and to show hope to its community," she said.

Kansas City Police Maj. Anthony Ell said programs that operate similarly to Aim4Peace, including CeaseFire in Chicago, have proven to be effective in reducing violence and should not be cut.

"We know the police are not the single answer to this problem," Ell said. "You can't keep throwing law enforcement resources at this problem with a lock-them-up approach. That has a short-term impact. But if you want to have longer-term impact, you have to have programs trying to target those high-risk individuals and change their lifestyle."