President Lewis Reed Reaction to Passage of Cure Violence Funding by City's Top Board

Today, the Board of Estimate and Apportionment approved $5M in funding for Cure Violence in St. Louis. 

“I am grateful to the members of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment for approving these funds. I am hopeful and optimistic that our City is going to see a real change and a dramatic decrease in violent crime,” said Reed. “This is a historic moment for our City.” 

Board Bill 105AA now moves to the full Board of Aldermen for one final vote before becoming law. The vote will be Tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 4 at 10 a.m. 

The bill, sponsored by President Reed, was also unanimously perfected at the Board of Aldermen this past Friday, Sept. 27 and has 20 cosponsors. This moves the bill one step closer to becoming law. 

The bill allocates $5M in funding over three years to fund the public safety program, Cure Violence. Cure Violence treats violence as a disease. Cure Violence focuses on the troubled areas and those creating the problems in those areas. They intervene and find resolutions to issues causing them to turn to crime.

The Cure Violence Model has been implemented in cities everywhere, such as New York City, Baltimore, San Antonio, New Orleans, Kansas City, Syracuse and Albany. Cure Violence is proven to reduce shootings and killings dramatically in just one year: New York - 63% reduction in shootings (2017); Philadelphia - 30% reduction in shootings (2017); Baltimore - 56% reductions in killings and 44% in shootings (2012); New Orleans 47% reduction in shootings, 85% reduction in retaliations (2017). A growing number of Cure Violence sites are going one to two years without a shooting or killing, cities such as Yonkers, New York that went more than two years without a shooting and the 39th neighborhood in Philadelphia that went 16 months without a murder.