101 Summer Jobs Will Be Created for Youth in This Area; 100 Long-Term Jobs Will Be Created in Partnership Consortium for Worker Education
State and Community Leaders Have Agreed on Initiatives to Respond to Ongoing Gun Violence in Identified Cluster Zones
Key Initiatives Include Creating Jobs and Summer Programs for At-Risk Youth; Increasing Presence of Violence Interveners in Community; and Expanding Community Services and Assistance for Mental Health, Substance Abuse and Family Crisis
Following today’s gun violence prevention community meeting in southern Brooklyn, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced 201 jobs will be available for at-risk youth in five ZIP codes that make up this zone.
The State will provide funding to create 101 summer jobs for youth aged 15 to 24 in this zone to keep them employed until the start of school this year. The State is also partnering with the Consortium for Worker Education to provide long-term jobs for 100 young people who are out of school and live in this zone.
“Gun violence is a major crisis and we are not going to look the other way and hope it gets solved on its own,” Governor Cuomo said. “It our duty to keep our communities safe and to prevent our youth from becoming entwined in a cycle of violence, and that is why we are creating 201 jobs in this slice of Brooklyn alone and dedicating the necessary resources to conduct outreach and support other vulnerable groups of people in the community.”
At the first gun violence prevention community meeting last week, the State and community leaders agreed on several initiatives to respond to the ongoing gun violence in the East Brooklyn community. The initiatives focus on engaging the most at-risk youth in cluster zones in employment and community activities, hiring new community-based gun violence interrupters, as well as assistance for mental health and substance use disorders. This was the first in a series of community meetings that will be held in emerging gun violence hot spots across the state.
Governor Cuomo issued Executive Order No. 211 declaring gun violence a disaster emergency and requiring New York State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services to compile incident-level data provided by major police departments on a weekly basis so that it may be used by the newly established Office of Gun Violence Prevention to track emerging gun violence hot spots and deploy resources to areas most in need.
In today’s meeting in southern Brooklyn, specific steps to combat gun violence in this area included:
- Creating 201 jobs for youth, including 101 summer jobs and 100 long-term jobs placed by CWE;
- Establishing summer programs for youth, including 100 dedicated events at Shirley Chisholm State Park as announced last week;
- Hiring new violence interveners to work at existing community intervention programs in this area; and
- Expanding community services and assistance for mental health support, substance abuse treatment and family crisis intervention.
On July 6, Governor Cuomo declared the first-in-the-nation gun violence disaster emergency as part of a new, comprehensive strategy to build a safer New York. This new strategy treats gun violence as a public health crisis, using short-term solutions to manage the immediate gun violence crisis and reduce the shooting rate, as well as long-term solutions that focus on community-based intervention and prevention strategies to break the cycle of violence. The disaster emergency allows the State to expedite money and resources to communities so they can begin targeting gun violence immediately.
