Speaker 3: Thank you. We're going to go ahead and move on to item 25, please.
Speaker 0: Communication from Council Member Richardson. Vice Mayor Andrew's Council Member Yanga. Councilman Austin. Recommendation to request City Manager to explore the creation of the Long Beach Violence Interruption Strategy.
Speaker 3: This is an item by Councilman Richardson.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So last week, Long Beach experienced an uptick in violence which revolt resulted in several shootings, including three of which occurred in the North Long Beach community. They were really across the city. And it's. You know, every every year around this time.
Speaker 3: Actually. Carlton Richardson Yeah, I mean, I said it was supposed to be item 25. That's what I read.
Speaker 2: You know, that's when I'm okay.
Speaker 3: For some reason it's saying 23 or so. We're doing 25 right to balance and reps and strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's what the clerk just read.
Speaker 3: That for some reason, my my notes are different. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay, so. So every year around May or June, we see an uptick. That's that's just a difficult reality that the early summer months, we see the same thing every year. If you go back five years, six years, these are some of our most violent months. It also happens to be the month where you get out of school and summer starts. And we typically respond by flooding all of our communication channels and all of our communities with youth resource, whether it's hundreds of youth jobs to Be Safe program and a lot of youth engagement this year, we have certain challenges and limitations with respect to the stay at home order, the safer at home order and COVID 19. It's. But this is not a new issue for our city. Our city has dealt with issues of violence. And we've we we've made attempts at engaging in violence prevention at different times in our history. We have a world class violence prevention plan that tries to better understand, address root causes of violence. The challenges we have, despite every every year, the same you know, the same thing happens. We haven't made the types of investments necessary to really change the narrative and break the cycle by truly investing in our violence prevention plan this year. Given the dynamics we have with the limitations on youth sports, the limitations on on the resources we can we can deploy, we have to be creative in how we engage community based organizations, community influencers, former gang members, the folks who who know our communities have influence within our communities and engage them in the broader strategy of interrupting violence and engaging what we are able to do with respect to our community at this time. So we know that we last week announced the Youth Ambassador Fund. We know that we're finding creative ways to invest our COVID 19 resources. I think what we should be doing is figuring out creative ways for staff to leverage those things and work with community partners to truly target the areas where we know violence is taking place and and make sure that everything we do is in alignment with best practices, in alignment with violence, intervention funds, prevention strategies. Now in the medium term, they say that this isn't something that we haven't focused on. The fact I'm really supportive of the grant and that the Health Department is put forward to implement a coordinated violence and violence interruption response system to address gun violence referred to as the Long Beach Gun Violence Response Scheme. If we're able to get that grant, there's a lot of things that we can do. And we're also we also know that we're looking at recommendations tonight and the weeks to come with the framework for reconciliation, on ways to invest in violence prevention upstream upstream strategies. But today we have a violence problem, and we need to do what we can today to be creative and invest in violence. Interruption. And that's that's the impetus of this of this item. I know that there are other ideas and suggestions from council members who have spoken publicly and also town halls. Consider this this this item an opportunity for you to also weigh in on the things that you'd like to see in terms of creative solutions to to invest into violence, interruption strategies to make sure that this this is not become a bloody summer and that we do what we can right now to change the course of the direction, the some extent that said thank you and I'm proud to make this motion.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Councilor Price. Mayor Andrews.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Thank you, ma'am. First of all, I'd like to thank Councilman Burgess you for bringing this item forward, because I think everyone has kind of been noticing our press and everything else about the various incidents has happened, you know, in his area in Miami also, but unfortunately, in central Illinois, which has been hit the hardest with these senseless acts of violence. You know, the stabbing of a homeless individual in District one was also a very unfortunate event. And we need to do more. You know, I think of the neighbor and people who live in our communities. We are our best advocate and our eyes and ears. And we just cannot sit back and just see things and that say something about it. Tomorrow, along with my councilwoman, Cindy House will be hosting a town hall meeting with both West and South commanders to discuss the recent crime incidents. We need to continue to engage our communities and non profit partners. We need to create a plan that keeps our youth active and a preemptive preventive measures so they are not get into the wrong direction. Because remember, I always said, you know, attacked kid is a good kid and that's what we're trying to do. And that's the same thing I talk about. You know, a job can stop a bullet. And this is where I think we have to really be proactive when it comes to a situation like we have today. I am supportive of this item for various reasons, but after 12 years of this exact cell phone funding, it's done with youth employment program for district youth. I know that if we create a problem at large in our communities, we can make a difference. I mean, the success stories of youth who have participated in our workshop in a partnership and many have fun. I don't really say on permanent employment at great partners like Warehouse Shoe Sells, Starbucks and Memorial Medical Had Medical Center. And I'm just looking forward to report back with this because I know what it takes right now. But what we have to do, we must get involved because at this time is one of our worst times. We talk about violence. We are apt to be the ones who truly be proactive when it comes to that. And thank you again, Councilman Richardson, for bringing this forward. Thank you again.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Council member Austin.
Speaker 2: I thank you, Mr. Mayor. I also want to thank Councilmember Richardson and the co-founders of this agenda item. I found out in support of this idea because I agree that the city should be doing more and being more innovative in addressing violence in my city. Obviously, I'm very concerned over the last couple of weeks, you know, the uptick in violence didn't necessarily have to happen in my district. They're happening in our city, too, that we all share and that we are all responsible for the city council members and citizens of the great city of Long Beach. We should all be concerned. Any lives lost in our city to to violence, to gun violence is really something that we all should be concerned about and also be working to to eliminate. And I'll just say, we have not done enough over the years to do this. And even though, you know, Governor Richardson recognized that this is some of the proposed items or strategies here are not new strategies with the efforts that we have put forth every year during the summer months, we want to make sure that our youth are programed in parks. You know, we have our own BFA program that that has been, I think, very successful for a few years, several years now. But it's always a struggle to find, right, you know. COUNCILMEMBER And you mentioned the youth employment. That is a strategy that we should be committed to, not this year, but every year and 365 days of the year, because we know that it's going to produce outcome. This is an investment in human infrastructure. I am supportive of this specifically, and I'm really interested in, you know, building capacity for peace, gang intervention, prevention with on the ground engagement. It has to be grassroots and yes, it has to be considered a part of our public safety continuum as we move forward. And I'm not sure if the staff will be able to give us the answers that will be able to have the answers in, you know, a week or two weeks on how to get this done. But we should be, as we talk about a man down the strategy, we should be putting all of our efforts toward building capacity for for individuals in the community, on the ground, at the grassroots level to help us maintain that peace. And I think there are efforts, there are models out there that that certainly can can help make a difference in many areas of our city. There were and I just want to say, I don't think as a city, we should ever get desensitized to any individuals losing their lives, particularly to violence. And, you know, I don't know all of the victims of violence over the last week, but we should be saying in their names as well, we should know their names as well. And we should be honoring their families and their lives as much as we can. And I thought so I'm very excited to start on to this item, to provide the direction and to hopefully make a difference in our community. There are a few points here that I want to get some clarification on. I'm supportive of this item. I want to hear from my colleagues as well, and I'll come back to those points if they're not addressed. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Councilmember. Next up here, I have. Is Councilmember Yaw Ranga then councilwoman and has.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mary. And I basically want to agree with all the comments made so far about my colleagues. The one concern that I have, if there is one, is that we should really be here talking about this, especially using some funding that might eventually go away. In previous, we could go back five, ten, 20, 30 years. It's always been a problem. We've always had this issue with with the uptick in crime right around the beginning of summer and through this and throughout the summer. And we had programs that would used to to deal with those. We had the DARE program. If you if we all remember, I know I'm dating myself, but I'm going to go down memory lane for a little bit. We had the DARE program, we had the PAL program, the Police Athletic League. We had Summer. You can plan a program which I participated in way back in the day. And unfortunately, because over the years we've had budget challenges. You know, we look at these types of programs as easy, easy cuts. And we've paid the price over the years. We've paid the price also with community based organizations who are very important to receiving some of these funds and providing the services to our youth to keep them off the streets. And as the always said, you know, keeping our kids tired and keeping them safe. And keeping them good. So what I'm looking for, I mean, I'm totally supportive of this, the governance of this. I have no question about that. I signed on to and I want to thank Cosmo Richardson for including me in this interview. That is very important. But I'm looking at sustainability. Once we we get down this path, I think we need to sustain it. And I think we made a mistake or this council's made a mistake in the past by cutting these programs off. And what we done is that we cut off our kids. We cut up our. We cut off our. Our disenfranchized and disadvantaged communities. By not sustaining programs such as these lunch programs, camping programs, programs that that keep kids busy during the summer summer camp programs. So I hope that once we once we get going and we are able to get some of these programs back back on cue with us, that we are able to sustain them even after and beyond this summer and hopefully in the summers to come. So thank you again for including me on this. RICHARDSON And and and I want to just go ahead and throw in my supporters and thank you.
Speaker 3: Councilman. And has. Councilman's in Dallas.
Speaker 1: In a big speech, and I didn't realize that was on me. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Councilmember Richardson, for bringing this up and bringing this item forward. I. I know that there's been a horrendous amount of violence in our city in the last couple of weeks. And particularly in my district, there have been many, many shootings. And, you know, it's it's we need to do something about it. It's just disheartening. I know that a lot of us have also know about an incident that happened last week or so with, um, with one of our very beloved food vendors, Mr. Fernandez, who, you know , earns his living by selling his delicious that lotus and blessed by those meaning his corn and shaved ice. He is a very beloved corn person, corn guy in our district. And he was beaten and robbed. And the images of a video that was caught was horrendous. So I can just imagine what he had to go through. And, you know, a lot of these crimes are done on people who are very vulnerable like him. He's an older man. And, you know, he did he most likely didn't have that much cash on him. But I sometimes the violence, it's not about money. It's just about doing the the crimes. And so I think that that's very important. Another one was the case of Vanessa Guillen in in Texas, where she was a person that proudly served our nation. And she was bludgeoned to death, you know, sexually harassed and and killed and left for dead. And those things, you know, those are the things that we know about. And then there's so many unsolved crimes out there. So I really, really am happy about bringing this item forward. And we definitely need to be proactive on not only solving the crime scene that's out there, but also in the preventive stage. So I want to thank Central specially for helping out our one of our residents that Mr. Fernandez El and just making him feel so supported by all of our community. So, you know, it's it's senseless acts like that that really break your heart. So thank you again, Councilmember Richardson, for this item.
Speaker 3: That's our Pierce.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Mayor, and thank you to Councilmember Richardson and all the councilmembers that brought this forward. I really want to. Say how heartbreaking it is for we have this violence and some of it's been my district. My district also has the shooting that happened this year on the seventh Street. And so we know that this is not just a moment today that we experience this, but that it's something that we constantly are struggling with. Interrupting violence, to me, means that we have to make sure that we're increasing the number of social workers that are doing the work in our community. It means we have to increase increased trauma services. I'm really proud that the city has developed a training for trauma informed services that hopefully not only this council and our staff but the rest of the city will receive soon. I understand from our health department that right before COVID hit, they were ready to start doing those trainings. I know what happened with our health department. I hope that those trainings can definitely be incorporated in centered in any of the interrupting violence work that we do when we talk about this moment around Black Lives Matter and seeing violence that's happening in our community with different, different groups and community groups. It's not one incident. And I want to make sure that as we're reporting out of the city and we're talking about the these moments, social media can really pop off and make it seem like they're isolated incidents. But recognizing that this is part of a bigger issue and that there are opportunities for people to become involved, to reduce that violence, to interrupt that violence. I know there are a lot of groups that have been involved with our violence prevention plan. I know our violence prevention plan has not been fully funded, but I also know that it's time for us to make sure that we're working with other groups. That we're working with other organizations. I don't I don't know enough about a lot of these organizations that I'm just now learning about, but it's inspiring to hear of groups . I think there's one that's homies organized against oppression. That is a group that's been doing work. I know there are some Latino organizations that are out there that are trying to do additional work just in the community, not centered even around getting grants or dollars. And those are really the people that I'd love to see have an opportunity to partner with the city and make sure that they're partnering communities where we're seeing some of this violence. I really appreciate this item and want to just echo, I think, what so many people are feeling right now, which is that this is the moment that demonstrates to us that we can do better in our schools and our colleges with our job pipeline. But particularly the one area is really around supporting people that have been through trauma because we've gone we know people have gone through 400 years of trauma and that sometimes that that boils up like this moment today. So thank you all the council members for bringing this forward. Appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Councilman Austin.
Speaker 2: Councilman Austin under your personal. Thank you. So I did want to just. Go to the specifics of the item. And on a couple of points before I have a couple other statements, but direct outreach to neighborhood leaders in the most impacted communities. And again, I signed on to this with the spirit of this 100%. I just want to make sure we have some clarity on what that actually means. And are we seeing outreach to neighborhood leaders in the most impacted communities, or do you want to look at the most impacted communities and have them direct outreach in those communities ? And I guess that's a question for the maker of the motion. Councilman, do me a favor. Can you clarify what what the distinction between the two things you said I didn't really understand? Well, what is the outreach to? It says direct outreach to neighborhood leaders in most impacted communities. And I'm asking if we are looking to have direct staff, to have direct outreach in those communities, or are we looking for specific leaders? And how do we identify who those individuals are? Oh, yeah. Okay. Thank you. I understand. Yeah. I'm not calling out any specific leaders. I just think that the way that I mentioned neighborhood influencers, community groups that have influence within those communities, a number of organizations have been called out already. Obviously, we know that, you know, when, for example, we had a tragic shooting of a vigil, people were mourning. Young lady named Dana was killed. It was a drive by was very traumatic to the neighborhood. There are organizations with direct connections to direct relationships to the families and the neighborhoods we should those are the types of folks we should be engaged with to make sure that we're you know, we're not we're not simply just, you know, parking a van right now. There's a van parked there with the eye in the sky that we're taking an additional step to actually go a little bit deeper into the neighborhoods that may look different in every neighborhood. I don't think I have a prescriptive list of, let's say, neighborhood associations, but I think, you know, our balance prevention team can go back to, you know, what they've known from the three days of the grit days and some of those things and count on some of those leaders. I hope that clarifies. It may be coaches, it may be community based organizations. It may be churches who will engage with those local neighborhood groups. Well, I guess the point that I want to emphasize is that, again, I want I want to see this on the ground as grass roots as possible to employ that type of support if we're going to really impact. Safe neighborhoods in our city. And then the second one, how common was the coordination of violence prevention strategy to existing engagement efforts, including contact tracing for COVID 19 and outreach? What was your vision there for the idea? So the idea there is we may not be able to do all the things we can do traditionally if it weren't a fiscal crisis to work on COVID 19. But we know that significant outreach is about. We know that we have resources to go out and do good outreach. Contact tracing, we have to build capacity for that. So it was an example of me listing the types of things we can invest in today. How do we target some of those things to be in alignment with the right prevention strategy in a violence interruption strategy? So for example, how many people from local if people are going to be tracing down contracting contact tracing in neighborhoods? Can we hire local youth to do that? And we hire local community organizations to help with that. They have credibility in the community so that while they're engaging around COVID, while they're engaging our senses, they can also engage around conversations about peace and inter-racial relations and diversion and give young people an opportunity to get a job doing some of that work. So for that, the concept there is sort of aligning going with our violence interruption prevention strategy. And then lastly, just want to just make sure that we're clear the deployment of a summer youth program, employment program. Now, don't we already have a summer youth program, employment program through Pacific Gateway, sir? But there are some opportunities right now above and beyond that. We just talked about the Youth Ambassadors program. We know that we're about to do hiring around contact tracing and other things. So how can we expand and create some new sort of innovative employment opportunities, maybe beyond what we traditionally? All right. Thank you so much. And of course, vacation. And I know that there were were others who reached out to me and they had had some concerns about that. And I would just say that, again, I'm fully supportive of this item. We need to be more innovative. We always need to be creative when it comes to reducing the violence in our city, interrupting violence in our city. Also, we should be mindful of requires that we get the guns off of our streets because those are the tool used for so much of the violence in our communities. I mean, obviously, you know, we have stabbings and battery, but guns take lives and do so much damage. And I can't emphasize that enough. You know, we have young people come to the council a little over a year ago. We've seen mass shootings. We've seen, you know, shootings in our city, you know, sporadically throughout the year. But the source of that violence is guns. And we need to continue our work to get guns off of our streets. And I will continue to be supportive of those efforts. We also need to acknowledge and and recognize the real racial tensions in our neighborhoods. Right. And again, we talk about prevention, you know, gang intervention strategies, grassroots neighborhood action. We need to be mindful that we live in a very, very, very diverse city. And, you know, with with mirrors. With. Decades of history here that we need to unpack you and your listeners. And lastly, I would just say any time now to say any time a life is systematically lost to violence in our city, we should be outraged. Right. And and not giving in to, you know, being desensitized by this moment. So, you know, this this this item, I think, is dedicated to Archie Harris, who was was shot murdered some days ago. I think we kind of keep this off and we're having a vigil the next day. And there were only three other shooting victims, including Carla. Denise, while those lives will be lost to gun violence in our city. And they were the emphasis, I think, of this item. So thank you again, Governor Richardson, for bringing this forward. Those shootings happened on the border of our districts. I mean, right across the street. You know, we've got a district where the end of the day when one city and one community. I'll be supporting the site. And thank you.
Speaker 3: Katherine Richardson.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think we're I think we're in a good place. I think we're clear on what we what we're attempting to do. Thank you, Councilman Austin, for asking those clarifying questions and acknowledging that, you know, this is you know, there's a there's a lens of race and a lens of sort of neighborhood activity, all these other things that are out there that we need to be mindful of. And we also want to understand that we want to just say that we know that communities are very sensitive to what's taking place. The situation with the tragic shooting at the vigil, the stirring video of the the taco vendor that's gone viral. And so we see those things. We acknowledge those things. And we need to make sure that we're doing all that we can with our grassroots community partners to make sure that we we're doing all that we can to invest in peace. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Councilmember. I'm going to just. Just briefly, before we go to public comment, I just want to say and I agree with everything that the council has said. You know, our our hearts are with the family and friends of just everyone that's been affected. I mean, the whole city has been watching these acts of violence. And I know that our public safety officials and the city team is also doing everything they can to ensure that that those who are committing these horrific acts of violence are also responsible for those actions. These are serious actions, and our community needs to be safe. And at the same time, we know that there are a lot of conditions out in the community that need to be addressed. We know that we're also dealing with racial tensions, that the challenges in front of us are real. And it's a very emotional and difficult time for the entire community. But as we know, in these times of crisis, this is not the time to turn against each other with senseless acts of violence. And so as a city and as a community, we have to think about our future, the community we want to be. And so I'm just thankful that this is a discussion that councils have having and that we're kind of bridging together, that the different aspects that are going out in the community. I want to uplift the work that's been happening. I mean, you have champions have been talking about violence prevention in the city for a long time that have been doing that work. And I want to thank them. And we know that there's a lot of groups and it's groups like Central China and so many others that are out there as well that are doing that work . And so we're going to hear from some of them tonight. And so thanks again for bringing this forward and we'll open it up for public comment.
Speaker 4: Our first speaker is Anna Christiansen.
Speaker 2: Your time starts now. All right. Jason, Mark, your time starts now. Hello? Can you hear me? I've worked with almost every existing black organization in the lobbies, the military, even those like the role of men, a bit like basketball that no longer exists. In 2012, my peers and I orchestrated the ceasefire in the city of Long Beach, and violence was very minimal. Last year there was a breakout of racial violence at Lobbies Party Hard, where Hispanic gang members targeted and assaulted a black artist, a high school student and other credible members of the community kind of being able to diffuse and create stability between the black and Hispanic communities. We also stepped in to aid and assist the Hispanic vendor, who was also assaulted around last week by black youth in the Washington neighborhood. Not only did we publicly denounced it, but we physically stood up for that leader and his community by helping to raise over $80,000 with his Go Fund Me to help support his family. And we're very instrumental in the black and brown peace walk from Ocean Boulevard to Artesia Boulevard last week. And it was also for intervened when there was an eruption of violence in North Long Beach where there was two homicides, one black on black and the other brown, all black homicide which occurred at a visual. We're again able to utilize our licenses to operate and reach out to the higher ups from both communities. Those on the street are behind the walls to influence the culture in order to keep retaliations at heights of trauma of others caused by systemic institutional racism and misguided societal behaviors. To a minimum, this requires very tedious late night and early morning hours of diplomacy meet up and see dangers which cannot be quantified by data. However, it takes community trust, credibility and respect for peers across all quarters in order to implement any outside violence against a rupture practices that create any form of health and wellness in our community as a whole if it is to be sustainable. I respect the work of Central China. I personally have great relationships with the ministers of the black community but have never discussed. And as I told them, by sending numbers and statistics over the last 15 or 20 years, their outreach has done nothing to enhance or develop the quality of life of the black community. Perhaps this is due to a limited reach and credibility within the heart of the black community. After over 15 to 20 years of the black community, you'll see that we're at the bottom of every statistical category according to data and research in the city of Long Beach, and this is under their watch. So it is imperative to immediately power those who have the total community trust and credibility to assist with the stabilizing and revitalization of the black community. Therefore, we must implement a holistic, community driven process. We can't afford to rush in a reduction when approaching promised progress in our community restoration. We must implement practitioner based strategies to build an infrastructure that has already been successfully replicated not only in the county of Los Angeles, California, other community led organizations, the mayor offices throughout the United States, but also successfully replicated internationally in countries such as France, Argentina, El Salvador, Africa and beyond. I know this because I was certified by a big practitioner, instructor and a first responder from the city of Long Beach for over 40 years, and the only grassroots organization that has globally achieved this through the aforementioned practices. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker 4: That concludes public comment for this item.
Speaker 3: Very great comments. Thank you. There is a motion on the floor, so please roll call cast and let's do the votes.
Speaker 0: District one. I district to. District three. High District four. District four.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 0: District five. District six.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 0: District seven.
Speaker 2: I.
Speaker 0: District eight. District nine. My motion carries.
Recommendation to request City Manager to explore the creation of the Long Beach Violence Interruption Strategy.