Officials in Aurora launched a new violence reduction program this fall that aims to decrease shootings by focusing attention on the tiny slice of the city’s residents who are the most involved in gun violence: gang members.
People associated with gangs make up fewer than 1% of Aurora residents but were involved in at least 36% of the city’s homicides between January 2022 and April and 28% of its non-fatal shootings between December 2022 and April, according to a July report the city commissioned from the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College, a research center that scores of cities across the U.S. have hired to help set up similar efforts to reduce gun violence.
Aurora’s program, dubbed Standing Against Violence Every Day, or SAVE, started in earnest in September and is a joint effort — led by the Aurora Police Department — between a slew of city and regional agencies.
The program aims to identify the young people in Aurora — most between the ages of 14 and 25 — who are most likely to either commit gun violence or be a victim of it, and then offer those individuals a choice: stop shooting, and the city will help you change your life, or keep shooting and law enforcement will crack down on you.
“There are two paths from which you can choose,” said 17th Judicial District Attorney Brian Mason. “There is the path of getting out of a life of violent crime, and if you chose that path, we’re going to help you and give you resources and support. But if you chose the path of perpetuating violent crime, we’re going to make it very difficult for you.”
City officials personally visit participants in their homes to deliver the message and a letter from Aurora interim police Chief Art Acevedo in what is called a “custom notification.” Officials also plan to hold quarterly meetings to deliver the program’s message to small groups in gatherings known as “call-ins.”
“We are letting them know, face-to-face, ‘We know who you are, we know what you are doing, and we, the community, are not going to tolerate the violence. We’ll stop you if you make us,'” Aurora police Capt. Mike Hanifin said. “But it’s all about giving them an offering.”
If a SAVE participant decides they want out, the city’s youth violence prevention workers will connect the young person and his family with services: housing relocation, vocational training, substance use or mental health treatment, food stamps, transportation or just a quiet place to do homework.
“Anything they need,” said Joseph DeHerrera, the city’s youth violence prevention program manager.
But if the person rejects the city’s offer and then commits an act of gun violence after being warned by city officials, police and prosecutors will “throw the book” at the participant, Mason said. The idea is to prioritize SAVE participants on both the social services side and, if necessary, on the prosecution side, DeHerrera said. Hanifin said federal prosecutors could also pursue charges if appropriate.
Aurora spans two judicial districts, and both Mason and 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner said they’ll participate in the program. Both emphasized that they’ll make charging decisions based on the facts of the case.
“We’ll obviously evaluate each case individually, we are ethically bound to do that, but the message being, ‘If you had your chances and you’ve not taken those opportunities, we are going to bring the hammer down,'” Kellner said.
Fledgling program
City officials started meeting individually with participants in September and had carried out 18 custom notifications by mid-December, Hanifin said. He and DeHerrera, who are co-directors of SAVE, expect to hold the first call-in meeting in January. Participants in those meetings must attend as part of their probation or parole.
Hanifin said most families have been receptive to the program’s message during the first few custom notifications he’s done at young people’s homes.
“It can be very emotional for the parents when it sinks in what we are saying and why we are there,” he said. “And that we’re there to help and try to prevent the next tragedy in the community.”
There are at least 36 gangs in Aurora with a total of 1,355 members, about .34% of the city’s total population, according to the July report from the National Network for Safe Communities, which refers to “gangs” as “groups” in an attempt to better reflect the dynamics of the sometimes shifting or informal structure among members.
Among incidents of gun violence that involved gang members reviewed by the consultants, about 31% of attacks were motivated by personal disputes between individuals not connected to their gang affiliation, 22% of attacks were motivated by ongoing disputes between gangs, and 17% were identified as retaliatory incidents, that is, as a direct response to prior violence, according to the report.
The majority — 85% — of victims and suspects in gang-related shootings and homicides were male. About 60% were Black, 22% Hispanic and 13% white, according to the report.
Aurora police hope the program will reach not only people who are driving gang-related violence but also those young people who are at risk of being shot or killed because of their proximity to gang members, DeHerrera said.
The city has budgeted up to $400,000 to get the program up and running, and Aurora police have two people working on it full-time.
“We are not just looking at the most violent folks, we are also looking at people who are cusping in terms of they’re headed down the path and we are trying to pull them back before it’s too late,” DeHerrera said. “They’re maybe in the car when a driver is shooting up the house. They’re not actually doing anything wrong, but we want to impact them before we get to that point.”
Candice Bailey, an Aurora activist, said she’s worried the SAVE program may be disconnected from the very at-risk community it is trying to reach.
“I’m concerned about their lack of community connection and collaboration,” she said. “There are lots of organizations with boots on the ground, and they are being very selective about the organizations they are choosing (to work with).”
Hanifin acknowledged that it will take time for police “to build trust and legitimacy” with the new program.
“Especially with these groups we are dealing with, because all they are used to is when the police come knock on the door, we’re there to arrest,” he said. “…This is a totally different approach, so of course it is going to be met with some skepticism.”
Widely used strategy
Some 60 cities have tried the strategy behind SAVE, according to the National Network for Safe Communities, with varying success. Cincinnati saw a 41% reduction in gang-related homicides in the 3.5 years after the strategy was rolled out there in 2007, according to a 2011 study published in the Justice Quarterly academic journal.
In other cities, the strategy did not produce large or sustained declines in gun violence. Gang-related fatal and non-fatal shootings in Chattanooga, Tennessee, dipped about 20% in the year after officials unrolled the gun violence intervention strategy in 2014, but never fell dramatically over time and the program was later abandoned, said Chattanooga police Sgt. Josh May, who oversaw the effort until about 2018. May blamed Tennessee’s lax gun laws and a lack of buy-in from local prosecutors for the program’s failure.
“If I say, ‘OK, we’re going after the 60 Crips and then nothing happens and they’re out in a couple days, then it’s not going to work,” he said.
The approach is also “extremely intelligence heavy,” and relies on significant collaboration between police, prosecutors, social service providers, probation officers and others, which is difficult to sustain over time, he added.
“The danger is that you can’t do it all and be everywhere,” he said. “There is so much reliance on the individual making rational choices that is out of your hands… You can’t be an angel (on his shoulder) for one hour when he has 23 other hours of devils. It’s really difficult to do that.”
But May said Aurora is well-positioned to take on the challenge, particularly because they’re launching the program during a three-year National Public Safety Partnership with the Department of Justice, an initiative through which Aurora police have access to federal resources.
“It’s a perfect storm for them right now,” May said. “I really think they can see tangible results… they’re going to be pointed in the right direction a lot more efficiently than we were.”
Aurora is the first city in Colorado to work with the National Network for Safe Communities to set up this gun violence reduction strategy. In Denver, police have focused on reducing crime in geographic hotspots instead of focusing solely on individuals, though Chief Ron Thomas said police consider particular individuals to be “one leg” of the department’s overall strategy. Less than 2% of the city’s landmass accounted for 26% of homicides and 49% of aggravated assaults in 2020, the police department has said.
“It’s our sense that crime is actually very sticky to locations, so it’s more effective to focus on locations than it is to focus on people,” Thomas said. “Certainly people are a component, and that’s why the focused deterrence piece of that does address the people… It’s a combination of people and the environment.”
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