Crowley Announces Public Safety Initiative

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley announced a new state-funded public safety initiative Wednesday that will bring nearly a dozen community organizations and providers together to coordinate a community response to violence.

The county is launching the “Destined for Greater” initiative using a $1.5 million grant from the Wisconsin Office of Violence Prevention. The county is local community organizations to coordinate, and fund, new and existing community safety programs that seek to disrupt violence before it occurs.

Local Organizations involved include Milwaukee Turners, InPower Solutions, C.C. We Adapt, Milwaukee Community Justice Council, Milwaukee Bucks Foundation. For youth in detention, Muhibb Dyer, Speak Wellness, AJH Solutions and La’Ketta Caldwell will provide services and participate in community coordinating efforts. Bloom Therapies and Youth Advocate Program will work on youth employment.

Funding will be used to expand some of the programs offered by participating organizations. They will also meet regularly to share updates and coordinate programming and interventions. Funds will also help the county expand some of it’s own intervention programs working on housing, wellness and community safety.

“At Milwaukee County, we know that community safety and community health go hand in hand,” Crowley said in a statement Wednesday. “That’s why we’re investing in prevention, intervention, healing, housing stability, behavioral health services, and pathways to opportunity for our young people.”

In 2024 the county’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) launched a violence interruption program called the Advance Peace Fellowship. The new initiative will build on the work of that program, which the Crowley administration reports is showing positive results.

The Advance Peace Fellowship aims to disrupt the cycle of retaliatory gun violence by reaching out directly to the people in Milwaukee who are committing the shootings. Once in contact, program ambassadors attempt to persuade them, mostly young men, to join the program. To date, 95% of participants have not sustained a new gun injury since joining the program, according to the Crowley administration.

The Crowley first launched a violence interruption program early in his first term with the creation of the Credible Messenger program, which reaches out to at-risk youth or youth who have become involved in the justice system, to provide them mentorship and counseling. Since it launched, 76% of participants had no referral or criminal offense while in the program.

“For DHHS, this work brings together Children, Youth and Family Services, Behavioral Health Services, housing, prevention efforts and community-based violence intervention strategies,” said David Muhammad, DHHS deputy director. “It recognizes that public safety is achieved by meeting the basic needs of youth and families to change behavior and requires more than one kind of support.  In addition to intervention and helping navigate conflict, they may need housing, mental health support, transformative mentoring, a job, or other services to help them thrive.”