Office of Violence Prevention Initiatives

Initiatives run by the City of St. Louis Office of Violence Prevention

Overview

Founded in July 2022, the Office of Violence Prevention coordinates public safety resources and community violence intervention programs to make St. Louis neighborhoods safer. The new division, funded in part from the America Rescue Plan, is designed to improve public safety outcomes using data-driven community violence intervention strategies. These are the initiatives the division is currently working on.

CURE Violence

The CURE Violence Initiative, administered by the St. Louis Department of Health, started in late 2020 with the help of the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis starting its first location in Walnut Park West Neighborhood and eventually to two other locations. Our current partners in the CURE Violence program include the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis and Employment Connections.

Crisis Response

The objective of the crisis response system is the early diversion of individuals in crisis or seeking crisis support using a targeted outreach and co-response with public safety personnel. The system will build upon, but not rely on, existing emergency services such as 9-1-1, with an aim to prioritize the use of non-law enforcement responses and interventions when most appropriate to address the social, health, and mental health needs of individuals and communities.

Programs

Co-Respondent

  • BHR’s Justice and Crisis Response Unit (J-CRU) has created a first-of-its-kind street triage co-responder model where a trained J-CRU clinician partners with a St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officer. Clinicians travel on calls related to behavioral health such as mental health, substance use, trauma, quality of life events, self-sufficiency incidents, and more.
  • The Crisis Response Unit provides a first-, second-, and post-event response system. This model ensures CRU teams are the first to respond whenever possible, are called to the scene quickly when they are not the first to respond, and continue to follow up on cases after their first response.
  • Crisis Response Unit goals:
    1. De-escalate individuals experiencing a behavioral health crisis
    2. Stabilize and develop a crisis response/safety plan with those is crisis
    3. Divert individuals from jail and hospitalization to the appropriate regional system of care and community behavioral partners
    4. Support for the community
    5. Conduct follow-up and coordination of care
    6. Track and report outcomes to our community partners and stakeholders

Call Diversion 

  • A 24/7 service for St. Louis City residents. When an individual calls 911 and requests assistance, the 911 Communication Center dispatcher determines whether the individual could benefit from speaking to a mental health clinician. If so, they will transfer them to our crisis line. Clinicians will talk to the individual and support them through their crisis. The 911 Diversion program helps the community obtain crisis phone services if an emergency response is not needed.
  • Objectives:
    1. Provide crisis phone support and de-escalation to divert the individual from unnecessarily going to the hospital
    2. Conduct follow up, coordination of care services, and linkage to long-term supportive services

Community Violence Intervention

Community Violence Intervention (CVI) programs focus on reducing homicides and shootings by establishing relationships with people at the center of gun violence in our communities. These programs support people at the highest risk of being victims or perpetrators—or both—of violence. CVI programs include but are not limited to the following:

  • Violence mediation
  • Engagement with high-risk individuals including youth, high-risk* adolescents, adults, and families
  • Gang intervention
  • Gun Violence
  • Domestic Violence
  • Restorative Justice

Based on recent trends in shootings, killings and other forms of severe violence as evidenced by health indicators and local police data on shootings and violent incidents for at least the past three years, the City seeks to focus its initial CVI programming on the following neighborhoods.

  • Dutchtown
  • Wells/Goodfellow
  • Hamilton Heights
  • Walnut Park
  • Columbus Square
  • Peabody Lasalle
  • O’Fallon
  • Fountain Park
  • College Hill
  • Baden

Organizations

Supportive Re-Entry

The division of supportive re-entry’s mission shall be to deliver support to individuals in the criminal legal system in a trauma-informed, anti-racist, evidence-based, client-centered, participatory, community-driven, and collaborative fashion, which emphasizes the clients’ right to self-determination through flexible, non-punitive, and low-barrier service provision.

The Division of Supportive Re-entry shall perform the principal functions of rehabilitation, case management, and pretrial screening.

Other Initiatives

  • Juvenile Justice

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