New Jersey's largest city has a new way to go after gun violence Newark is launching a detailed strategy for its office of violence prevention and Trauma recovery by shifting resources to community groups and the people they serve it's a plan mayor Raz Barack a hopes will break generational cycles of violence and Trauma serve as a national model to help victims of those crimes and more importantly prevent them from happening senior political correspondent David Cruz reports I'm not standing here for sympathy I'm not standing here for your empathy I'm standing here for every black mother in this city that buried their children Sonia Rogers is a Survivor but she struggles every day with the sadness and the self-imposed guilt of a mother who's lost three children all in their 20s to gun violence her tragedy is the exception more than the rule but she is just one of the thousands of individuals dealing with the painful loss of family members and the challenges of carrying on it's hard being a parent in the city of Newark is very hard but we do it every single day I commend every black woman that gets up in this city that's walking on a broken heart surrounded by members of a coalition of organizations that is working with the city's office of violence prevention and Trauma recovery Rogers was here as an example of the work that the office has been doing over the past two years to help victims of violence today the department unveiled a strategic plan that treats gun violence as the Health crisis it has become when we looked at covid we would always use these Maps we call those hot spot Maps we sent workers out to those areas set up vaccine and and all kinds of testing sites in that area because those are hot spots we want to do the same thing with violence and crime we say these are hot spots so we just don't want to send police to those hot spots and we do we want to send social workers to those hot spots Outreach workers to those hot spots job trainers to those hot spots the mayor noted that the office is now now working with 11 million dollars of funding once part of the public safety budget and another 17 million dollars for organizations like the Newark Street team and others who work on violence prevention and victim recovery Lakeisha uray is the Department's director and so we're Shifting the culture to think about trust heal right because we mean our law enforcement and our systems and so we have to rebuild trust in a community and we have to build the community to know that they are resilient and they can bounce back from whatever the harms are that have happened the Coalition refers to refunding the community rather than defunding the police Baraka said crime in the city has been steadily decreasing as have arrests and incarcerations a sign that new approaches to law enforcement can have a positive impact you can uphold people's rights and uh you know and and follow the Constitution of the United States and at the same time reduce violence and crime in fact in Newark we are arresting less people than we were five ten years ago so we're making less arrests but we also [Applause] seeing a constant reduction what does that mean that means that there is no causal relationship between uh arresting people and a reduction of violence and crime no one here is saying that the work is done in fact the term the work was used interchangeably with the life here today because in this model it's all hands on deck with everyone expected to play a role in trying to prevent crime and lift up its victims I'm David Cruz NJ Spotlight News [Music]