By Jessica Mofield, Vice President of Policy and Community Engagement
Gun violence has become an all-too-common reality in American society. According to the Gun Violence Archive, the U.S. has already experienced more than 300 mass shootings, 11,456 reported homicides, and 20,909 reported firearm injuries in 2025 — and the year isn’t even over yet.
The places where we should be safest — schools, campuses, and churches— are anything but. In recent weeks, shootings in Colorado, Minnesota, and Michigan have devastated communities. My alma mater, Virginia State University, along with Hampton, Bethune-Cookman, and Alabama State, went on lockdown after receiving bomb threats. The threats followed the high-profile assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah, which ignited a wave of racially-charged backlash against historically Black institutions.
In our nation’s capital, armed federal agents patrol neighborhoods in the name of “restoring order.” Even under the watch of the National Guard, families aren’t safe because political theater and state violence have never kept communities whole. And now, after deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., the Trump administration has threatened to send troops to Baltimore, Chicago, Memphis, New Orleans, Portland, and Oakland. With the exception of Portland, these cities share one common thread:: they are led by Black mayors.
The truth is communities are made unsafe by policies, not because they are inherently unsafe. When the leadership and institutions of Black communities are targeted instead of supported, it undermines the very systems that make safety possible. Divestment in jobs , schools, healthcare access, and community programs widens the inequities that drive gun violence. And with the federal administration currently imposing massive layoffs and agency cuts, they have also erodsed the capacity to build lasting safety from the top down.
At a time when investments in safety should be deepened, they are instead being eviscerated. Recently, Congress slashed Medicaid by $1 billion, leaving entire regions, especially rural communities, without mental health or emergency psychiatric care. The Department of Justice pulled back more than $800 million in funding for community-led gun violence interventions, and funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). These programs serve as a lifeline for many community violence intervention (CVI) programs, but funding is now set to expire by 2026. With government funding for safety initiatives cut, neighbors and advocates are left to face rising threats with fewer dollars amid an increasingly hostile political climate.
Communities Continue to Keep Each Other Safe
Before federal grants for community violence intervention and prevention initiatives (CVIPI) existed, families and neighbors organized watch groups to deter crime on their own blocks. Before violence interrupters had titles, teachers and elders stepped in to mediate. Before public health approaches adopted the CVIPI framework, churches, youth groups, and neighborhood associations had been practicing the concept in real time. Alongside them, movements like the Black Panthers and Young Lords modeled safety as resources for communities by delivering food programs, healthcare, and defending the dignity of communities when no one else would.
Today, the will to build public safety remains, but the political attacks against solutions that actually work have only grown.
The Trump administration’s “restoring order” agenda doubles down on failed tactics to reduce community gun violence. The president has called for more policing, increased federal deployments, and harsher punishments as a show of his political hold on the nation. But even under immense pressure, leaders like Baltimore’s Mayor Brandon Scott and Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson are proving an important fact: investment in local communities, and particularly in CVIPI, reduces violent crime.
Nationally, a significant trend has been observed that disputes the current administration’s narrative on crime. Crime analyst Jeff Asher notes that the U.S. is on track to record its lowest murder rate ever. Murder has only been reliably tracked since 1960, but reaching a historic low just five years after the largest one-year spike on record would be extraordinary. Early estimates from the Real-Time Crime Index, a tool that aggregates preliminary monthly crime data from local police departments, suggest that to-date, murders are down roughly 20% this year.
Achieving a True Sense of Safety
While this new data indicates a decrease in violent crime, it does not necessarily mean communities feel safer. National numbers don’t capture whether families feel secure walking home at night, whether frontline workers are supported, or whether communities trust their public safety institutions. That’s why investment in community-led approaches remains crucial, even in a moment of “historic lows.”
If researchers, funders, and policymakers are serious about improving public safety, the path to achieving this must include supporting holistic evaluations of CVIPI. Comprehensive CVIPI evaluations are critical to increasing investment and political support for these programs.
As Damion Jadonne Walker, Founder and Executive Director of Cognitive Justice International, reminds us:
“Evaluation isn’t just about data, it’s about dignity. When communities most impacted by violence help define what success looks like, evaluation becomes a tool for healing and accountability. To sustain CVI, we must invest in culturally competent evaluation that uplifts community voice, measures real transformation, and secures long-term trust between residents, practitioners, and policymakers.”
Emily Rogers, Research Project Manager at The Council of State Governments Justice Center, echoes this sentiment:
“Evaluation is important, not just for showing results and keeping violence intervention and prevention programs going, but also for helping different agencies work better together by understanding what really works. Now’s the time to use evaluation approaches that focus on the experiences of participants and staff and give communities the information they need to make programs more effective.”
These perspectives underscore that evaluation isn’t just a bureaucratic exercise, it’s a bridge between data and lived experience. It ensures that what’s measured reflects what matters most — the people living this work every day.
The Center for Policing Equity’s (CPE) Closing the Gap report outlines urgent next steps to improve the evaluation of community-led gun violence interventions:
- Develop robust evaluation frameworks that include community voice: Go beyond crime stats to measure trust, healing, and conflict resolution.
- Select culturally competent evaluators: Those measuring success must understand the lived realities of the communities most affected.
- Center the expertise of Violence Intervention Specialists (VIPs): These frontline workers are the backbone of CVI. They deserve pay, protections, and power equal to their impact.
- Leverage cross-sector collaboration: Pair CVI efforts with housing, healthcare, education, and workforce development.
- Secure long-term, diversified funding: With ARPA dollars set to run out by 2026, programs need multi-year investments to survive political pressure and sustain progress.
Safety cannot only be defined by the absence of crime. Real safety is the presence of trust, access to resources, and freedom. Communities have known this and practiced it for generations. The real question now is whether funders and policymakers will have the courage to recognize it, sustain it, and scale it before more lives are lost and before politics or statistics erase progress.
The American tradition doesn’t have to be violence; it can be community care. We cannot waver in our investment in public safety solutions that work.