A four-year strategic plan to address youth violence is in place in Lexington. The formal announcement of the ONE Lexington plan came Friday at City Hall. The city worked with the University of Kentucky’s Community Innovation Lab and Cities United to develop the plan.
Innovation Lab Director Bryan Hains said full-fledged community collaboration can help facilitate more youth development programs while also addressing issues like food insecurity. Hains said that can lead to a decrease in gun violence.
“The youth are going to have more opportunity to go out and rather than taking out violence on each other or seeing violence in their communities, they’re going to be able to step forth and literally rise above all of this, so that they have a better quality of life. Not just for themselves, but that increases the quality of life for the entire community,” said Hains.
There’s been a 50% drop this year in homicides involving people 13 to 29 compared to last year. Some of the strategic plan objectives in the early years are to strengthen street outreach through collaboration by 50% and to become a leading resource for matching volunteers with community organizations addressing gun violence.
The plan is aimed at enhancing collaboration across the community. Larry Johnson is community response coordinator with ONE Lexington. One example involves those in judicial, law enforcement, and social service areas.
“Being able to bring those pieces of the community that don’t traditionally work together like justice system partners, and the police, and the CBO’S, community-based organizations. Bringing them to the same table so that we’re not just working in silos but we’re working together to address this important issue,” said Johnson.
The strategic plan also calls for engaging middle and high schools to identify students most vulnerable to gun violence. It also calls for enhancing community engagement through listening sessions.
Lexington Police Chief Lawrence Weathers said the plan is a step in the right direction in looking at systemic issues that can lead to gun violence. He said each person involved in violence is different as well as the victims. Weathers added the plan has to be quote, “living, breathing, and care enough to address those challenges that face each individual situation.”
