City of Champaign Candidates on Addressing Gun Violence

This question was created by journalists and community members during the Democracy in CU: Let’s talk solutions to community violence event on March 14th.

What is your strategy to address gun violence?

MAYOR

Deborah Feinen:

We should continue with the CU Fresh Start Program. We should also continue to support and adequately fund our police, while continuing to improve their communication and relationships with the community through the efforts of our Community Coalition and training. We also need to financially support local service providers by paying them for the work that they do on behalf of the City particularly in the areas of youth development and work on anti-violence initiatives. We should help to fund programs with our school district, and outside programs that are directed at trauma informed care. We need to continue to work with youth through programs such as the Youth Employment Services Program and Goal Getters while also providing social and economic opportunities for adults in our community. We need to continue to support job training and mentoring through our membership at the Regional Planning Commission (RPC). As a community we have to work to preserve funding for mental health services and substance abuse programs and work on creating healthy families not just healthy children.

Additionally, I want to continue to work on reaching kids and young adults in meaningful ways to stop the gun violence in our community. I will support continuing the Goal Getters program and initiatives like TRUCE along with work force development programs, youth employment services, CU-Fresh Start, Community Coalition, MOMS Demand Action, the reading mentor program (in conjunction with the Chamber of Commerce) and new or additional programs with similar goals. I support the City engaging with the school district in meaningful ways to make a difference for our at-risk kids and focusing on trauma informed care. This goal has a long horizon but is important to the ultimate success of our community. It also includes the needs for safety and economic stability for all citizens of our City. I am committed to the City being actively engaged in the success of our kids and their families and to programs that will make a difference.

CITY COUNCIL

Tom Bruno:

I will continue my support for the Community Coalition and the Summer Youth Employment Program.

Andrew James Christensen:

We need a comprehensive short-term and long-term response to gun violence that is focused on eliminating systemic inequality and building strong community-police relations.

We can address systemic issues by prioritizing communities with basic infrastructure needs, by placing more low income and minority community leaders in decision-making roles for the city, and encouraging more mixed-income housing.

The city’s CU Fresh Start program rightly identifies previous gun crime offenders as centers of influence that can help prevent future gun crime in the community. However, the program requires predictable funding and employee stability to be able to offer services consistently. The city also needs to broker more access to stable housing and employment opportunities to these citizens. Any citizen with a history of incarceration is more likely to repeat a crime without access to basic necessities like stable housing.

Community policing initiatives can help build trust between police officers and the neighborhoods they patrol. Neighbors that trust the law enforcement institution are more willing to call out suspicious activity. It’s also important to mention that a significant portion of the gun violence in our community occurs behind closed doors, and that engaged neighbors are able to help alert the city to circumstances that may be peacefully resolved through conflict resolution resources.

Matthew Gladney:

I want to continue to support the work of Community Coalition and C-U Fresh Start, perhaps with additional funding and support to help with their efforts. I want to continue and to strengthen our partnership with Unit 4, so we can provide education, jobs and opportunity for our youth, so they have the tools necessary to deflect them away from any temptation of a life that could lead them to participating in gun violence. And, of course, I want to support the police in their efforts to combat the issue, though that is more reactive, compared to the more proactive strategies I laid-out earlier.

William Kyles:

I would continue to support initiatives such as the Community Coalition and the Fresh Start Initiative. I support funding areas to these programs as needs are identified. Through these initiatives, we have been blessed to work with a number of nonprofit agencies. Some of these agencies are very effective in building strong, positive relationships with those affected by gun violence. While I recognize that we cannot fund every agency that exists in our community, we can actively work with our community partners to supplement some of the expenses that this work entails.

Along with supporting initiatives, I would like to continue to look at opportunities to specifically engage our community on this topic. This may include hosting youth summits and informal meetings. I want to be able to engage people who want to be engaged, but are looking for different ways of engagement. Part of that engagement means engaging the individual AND the community around that individual.

I also want to continue to work on workforce and business development. When our citizens have meaningful opportunities to take care of themselves, individuals are less likely to engage in gun violence.

Pattsi Petrie: Just last evening, a community resident mentioned that nothing has worked so far. A lot of tax dollars have been expended; yet gun violence continues to increase. The resident stated it is time to take a step back, reassess what has been tried, evaluate a paradigm shift by engaging community input, and more effectively bringing the ministers “to the table.” Collaboration must include the clergy, five police departments, the two cities, the county, CUPHD, MHB, UIUC, local health facilities, not a defined list. During conversations, there is a sense of frustration expressed that so much money, time, energy, commitment has been expended; yet the gun violence curve continues upward. During the community meeting about gun violence held at Parkland on 14 March 2019, once again an attendee mentioned the importance of ministers becoming more involved in the solution.

Therefore, it is time to arrange for representatives of the above named entities to produce an intergovernment agreement (IGA) containing next steps, including generating sufficient seed money for implementation for three years. The three years will give a cushion of time to write grants for additional funding. This is a community of economic means. Since there is consensus gun violence is a major issue, these entities might financially support this approach.

Gun violence is not just a Champaign issue, but a whole Champaign County issue. I would work on this approach with these representatives and work with city council members as to the involvement of the city.

Jon Paul Youakim:

Gun violence is a symptom and result of poor public policies and legislation: a result of decades of mass incarceration, decades of systemic racism and classism and a lack of addressing economic and educational adversities. The overarching issue that needs to be addressed in this city is truly the cycle of poverty that is inextricably linked to gun violence. CU Fresh Start is a noble endeavor that is attempting to decrease gun violence in our community. The issue however is that the program is not enough, it is only a piece of the puzzle. Those that have participated in the program have stressed that as a city we need to find ways to offer educational opportunities, jobs that offer living wages and address affordable housing for those that have been incarcerated. The goals to decrease gun violence echoes the objectives to decrease recidivism rates in the community. We as a city aren’t addressing enough of the root causes of gun violence. We need to have a comprehensive plan that provides a platform for community members to lift themselves out of the cycle of poverty, overcome educational and economic adversity and that prevents so many from falling into that cycle in the first place.

A landmark study by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente in the 1990s observed the correlation between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and well-being later in life. These ACEs can include all types of abuse and neglect as well as household stressors (such as domestic abuse, mental illness, parental separation, substance abuse and the incarceration of a family member). The researchers questioned individuals on whether they had been exposed to these ACEs and found that adverse childhood experiences led to a whole host of problems later in life. The more prevalent and elongated these stressors were, the greater the risk of "negative health and well-being across the life course". An individual with 4 of these ACEs vs. an individual with 0 has twice the risk of having heart disease, 4x the risk for lung disease, depression & drug abuse, 7x the risk for alcoholism and 12x the risk for suicide. What’s even more disturbing is that someone with 6 or more of these ACEs has their life expectancy drop from 80 years to 60 years. The reason this is the case is because toxic stress disrupts normal brain development leading to social, emotional and cognitive impairment leading to the adoption of high risk behaviors. This leads to an increase in social problems, disease and disability and ultimately early death. These long lasting effects can be seen in Champaign and throughout communities nationwide.

Taking a closer look at the 1990s Kaiser Permanente ACEs study we see that the effects of these adverse childhood experiences gives rise to an increase in gun violence. Toxic stress on the brain stunts the development in parts of the brain responsible for empathy, planning for the future, reasoning and regulating impulsivity. This stress over stimulates the part that is responsible for fight or flight, the amygdala. This increase in impulsivity is important because when the University of Chicago’s Crime Lab studied the homicides in Chicago they found an alarming pattern. They found that the overall equation of gun violence was young individuals getting into a disagreement, there’s an impulsive action with a gun around leading to a dead body. It’s this impulsivity that we find significant because it is controlled by the part of the brain that is disrupted and stunted by toxic stress.

There are many in the community that are currently working towards addressing these ACEs with a home visiting program for pregnant women and families with newborns, parenting training programs and social support for parents. The city must help fill in the gaps in addressing the cycle of poverty and ultimately gun violence by directly addressing affordable housing, discrimination against ex-offenders when they attempt to obtain housing, and encouraging job training and education. We must coordinate with designated community members and hospitals to stop escalation in gang violence and quell tensions when gun violence occurs. Only by addressing the root causes of gun violence can we create long-lasting solutions. We cannot imprison our way out of gun violence.

NOTE: We reached out to Azark Cobbs, Kenton Elmore and Michael LaDue and received no or incomplete responses.