TRENTON NEEDS A VIOLENCE PREVENTION OFFICE, NOT JUST ANOTHER RESPONSE TO TRAGEDY | OPINION

The recent mass shooting in Trenton is a devastating reminder of the human cost of violence. Families are grieving, survivors are recovering, and residents are once again being asked to carry the trauma of an event they did not create.

This moment demands urgency, but it also demands wisdom, compassion and more than the familiar cycle of outrage, enforcement and short-term response.

The time is now for the city of Trenton, our state’s capital, to establish a municipal Office or Department of Violence Prevention and Public Safety charged with coordinating the city’s non-law-enforcement safety infrastructure.

This office would provide a much-needed comprehensive public safety strategy that prevents violence before it occurs, interrupts retaliation, supports victims, and addresses the conditions that make violence more likely.

Police have an essential role in responding to crime and holding people accountable, but policing alone cannot perform every function a safe city requires.

Newark shows what is possible

Newark offers an important example. The city established its Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery in 2020 to address violence through a public health framework and coordinate services with law enforcement.

Newark dedicated 5% of its public safety budget to the office, creating municipal infrastructure that treats prevention and trauma recovery as core public responsibilities.

Earlier this year, the Newark Community Street Team released findings from a comprehensive two-year independent evaluation showing that its community-based public safety model reduces violent crime while strengthening neighborhood trust, healing trauma and creating pathways to opportunity in communities most affected by violence.

The lesson for Trenton is not to copy Newark in every detail. It is to institutionalize prevention without displacing community leadership.

Trenton already has a foundation for this work through the Trenton Restorative Street Team, the Trenton Community Street Team and other community partners that provide violence prevention and intervention through:

• Conflict resolution

• Restorative practices

• Trauma-informed care

• Victim support

• Peace circles

• Grief groups

• Community engagement

• Proactive outreach

Their work reflects a basic truth: Safety is built through relationships, not simply enforcement.

Trust is a public safety tool

These credible messengers are not simply outreach workers. They are trained public safety professionals who mediate active conflicts, respond after shootings, support victims and families and help residents access housing, employment, counseling, education, treatment and other stabilizing resources.

When a conflict is escalating late at night, the person best positioned to prevent retaliation may not be someone carrying a badge. It may be someone carrying the trust of the people involved.

Even the U.S. Department of Justice recognizes community violence intervention as a complement to law enforcement. These strategies focus on the relatively small number of individuals at the highest risk of experiencing or perpetrating violence, disrupt cycles of retaliation, address trauma and connect people to opportunity.

They rely on trusted, credible messengers — people with lived experience and deep community relationships who can reach individuals that government institutions often cannot.

Invest in prevention before violence occurs

The safest communities invest before violence happens. Given the young age of many of those affected by recent violence, Trenton needs targeted summer youth employment, workforce development and leadership initiatives focused especially on young people most likely to be pulled into cycles of harm.

Every young person connected to opportunity, mentorship, income and support is one less young person left vulnerable to violence.

Leaders in Trenton and in the New Jersey Statehouse should establish permanent recurring appropriations for community violence intervention rather than forcing organizations to plan lifesaving work around uncertain one-year grants.

Existing street teams have already reduced violence with the limited dollars they receive. They should be expanded, coordinated and treated as a valued part of the city’s public safety infrastructure.

Public investment must also permanently fund community-led crisis response models so the city can coordinate with and dispatch credible messengers to neighborhoods where they can de-escalate conflict, support victims and connect residents to housing, employment, treatment, counseling, reentry support and other vital services.

Trenton cannot arrest its way out of every conflict. Policing may be one necessary component — but it cannot be the only sustained and fully funded component.

The question before Trenton is not whether we will respond to the latest act of violence. The real question is whether the response will be different.

Will we summon the courage, conviction and collective responsibility to build the infrastructure necessary to help prevent the next tragedy?

Rev. Dr. Charles F. Boyer is the co-founder of Salvation and Social Justice in Trenton.

Published Originally on NJ.com