Cleveland activists say gun violence prevention efforts are disjointed — but there's a fix
CLEVELAND, OH - APRIL 8 2025 - Since President Trump eliminated the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, many states are trying to create their own. However, they're noticeably absent throughout the Midwest. Local community leaders in Cleveland have called on the city to create an office of gun violence prevention, stating that a permanent investment in an office would make their work more effective. (Photo by Daniel Lozada for The Trace)
This story was published in partnership with The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom covering gun violence.
In February, 10-year-old Lorenzo Roberson, dressed in a suit and tie, spoke passionately at a town hall meeting in Cleveland. He was there to address city leaders about how he and other kids feel about safety in their neighborhoods. Most importantly, though, he was there to remember his best friend, Kaden Coleman, who was shot and killed that same month as he sat in the backseat of a car in Mount Pleasant, eight miles south of downtown Cleveland.
'I am Kaden because his spirit now lives within me. I am Kaden because I am 10 years old, too; I get good grades, too,' Lorenzo told a mix of residents and elected officials. 'Will I have a chance to survive? Will my life be cut short, too?'
Then he posed a challenge to the audience: 'Will the adults in this room make sure that I have a chance to grow?'
His call for safety in the face of rising shooting rates among young people reflects the pervasive fear among people who live in Cleveland's most turbulent neighborhoods, including Mount Pleasant, where Lorenzo lives. Despite a recent decline in shootings across the city, a handful of neighborhoods — Central, East Cleveland, Mount Pleasant and others — experience disproportionate levels of violence. Homicide rates in those areas range from 25 to 57 per 100,000 residents compared to places that are as low as 0 to 15. All of the struggling neighborhoods are majority Black.
To combat the burden of shootings on those communities, local leaders and activists have worked hard for decades to fill gaps, establishing intervention and prevention programs, doing outreach work among young people, and providing mental health support to those in need. Those methods seem to have contributed to the city's overall decline, especially in the last few years.
But people working to tackle gun crimes in Cleveland said local groups have fallen into silos as they each vie for funding, creating a competitive, uncoordinated response that they see as inadequate for addressing the shifting crisis. A localized Office of Gun Violence Prevention, they said, would help address that isolation — and curb shootings.
'We've seen how successful (these types of offices) have been in other cities. I think it would make a real difference,' said Laron Douglas, the executive director of Renounce Denounce, a community-based gang intervention program that works with kids in Cleveland.
Many cities across the country have created offices of gun violence prevention over the past several years. They coordinate local initiatives, fund programs, and help drive policy changes. Since President Donald Trump eliminated the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention in his first month in office, dozens of municipalities are proposing or creating their own, but local offices are notably scarce throughout the Midwest, where gun violence rates are higher than in some of the country's largest cities. Several states in the region, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin, have successfully established them; Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, is one of the few counties to host one.
'Having one dedicated gun violence prevention office will make us more intentional. The office would be able to call a family and deploy resources effectively,' said Myesha Watkins, who runs the Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance, an anti-violence group established in 2009 among a handful of still-active community groups. 'There's too many people who don't know where to go for gun violence prevention.'
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The city has a variety of official violence prevention strategies, including the Neighborhood Safety Fund to invest in community violence prevention work; Cleveland Thrive, the city's community-based violence intervention coalition; and the Mayor's Office of Prevention, Intervention, and Opportunity, one of several offices addressing root causes of youth violence under the mayor's 'all-of-government' approach. Cleveland has also deployed a street outreach team from the Community Relations Board to do violence intervention work, and the Neighborhood Resources and Recreational Centers are involved with providing activity space for kids.
Those efforts are helpful, but they're not strategic enough, said City Council Member Richard Starr, who is a native of Central and represents several neighborhoods struggling with gun violence. 'They don't have a plan right now,' Starr said, noting the city's handful of initiatives but lack of a concrete plan for tackling gun violence or measuring its trajectory.
According to city data, Cleveland had a firearm death rate of 45 per 100,000 residents in 2023, the most recent year full data is available, an increase from 39 in 2022. In 2024, homicides declined to 113, from 156 in 2023, according to data from the city's police department. Still, residents warn that the data doesn't tell the full story.
Data is 'either going to create chaos or it's going to create hope, and depending on the narrative, it can do either or it can do both,' Watkins said. 'If we're talking about our community members, they'll see a post that homicides are down, but they're not feeling that when they walk outside their homes.'
Local leaders say the encouraging numbers shouldn't dissuade engaged citizens from creating an office of violence prevention, especially when considering the areas most affected. Michael Houser, the Cuyahoga County Council Member for District 10, which includes some of Cleveland's most gun violence-plagued neighborhoods, including East Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and St. Clair Superior, has been pushing the county to build an office of violence prevention since his election last year, and hopes to work in partnership with Starr at the city-level to create one.
The County Council is in talks to create one, but the question is how they're going to fund it. 'We find money to fund everything else,' Houser said. 'So hopefully we will be able to find the funding for this very important initiative.'
In Cleveland, Council Member Starr led the effort to declare gun violence a public health crisis, legislation which passed in the city council yesterday. Starr will now be able to use state and federal resources to fund an office. 'You look at some of these other cities, they have plans and investment in how they're going to curb violence. Cleveland is behind on that,' Starr said, pointing to Columbus, one of the few Midwest cities to have such an office.
Since its municipal office was created in 2023, Columbus has achieved what Starr and others hope to. They've taken a public health approach to gun violence, helped coordinate and strategize violence reduction programming between different local groups, and begun to measure and assess their progress (a report is coming in the next few months).
'Columbus is flooded with (violence intervention groups) and we needed a way to streamline these groups to make sure they're most effective and have access to funding,' said Rena Shak, the executive director of the Office of Violence Prevention in Columbus.
That sort of strategizing is exactly what people want to see in Cleveland.
'We have individuals and we have groups doing great work, but we need to find a way to bring people together,' said Michelle Bell, founder of M-PAC Cleveland, which provides resources to families and friends who've lost loved ones to gun violence. Bell remembers feeling like there was nowhere to turn after her son was shot and killed in 2019. 'If people are saying we need this office, our officials and local leaders need to listen.'
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