Salinas, Ca., has adopted "Project Ceasefire" to attack a crime problem that has involved 26 murders in a year, all gang-related and all involving young Latinos — some as young as 14 years old, says the Monterey Herald. At National Network for Safe Communities conference last week, local officials heard tales of success with the program from from people who refuse to accept that young people must keep dying because of gangs and drugs.
Cincinnati, Boston, Pasadena and Stockton, Ca., are among places reporting progress under the "Ceasefire" concept. "The community engagement piece--absolutely the most important," says David Kennedy of John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who started Ceasefire 15 years ago in Boston while he was at Harvard. He has long said a community must say loudly and clearly it will no longer tolerate violence for the program to work.
