Downtown Shooting & Community Violence Intervention

It is a tragic reality that we live in a time when mass shootings occur on a regular basis. It deeply pains me that our community has recently been home to such a violent and terrifying act. And while I am grieving with and for the victims, survivors, family members, friends, and bystanders, I am also ready to hold up a mirror to our county and dig into the work of holding the grief and loss while finding actionable policies, practices, activities, whatever it takes to heal, learn, and stop this from happening again. There is a vigil tonight at 6pm downtown and that is a good place to start to hold the grief and begin the healing.

I do not have any additional information about the actual shooting that occurred. I know there is a lot of frustration in our community surrounding the differences in reports that were released, I followed them just as everyone else did. I read University President, Barbara Wilson's response. I will eagerly wait to learn more alongside our community as our detectives and law enforcement agencies uncover more information.

Yesterday, I reached out to Iowa City council members and county Supervisors that I knew lived near downtown and have been on the forefront of community safety. This evening we have a joint entities meeting that includes elected officials from every local government entity in the county and while this falls outside of the requisite 24 hour notice of agenda items, I will ask during public comment if we can form a response team of local electeds that honors quorum laws. This afternoon I will reach out to President Wilson to request a meeting and will urge our Board to formalize communication with her office. These are just the first steps. There are many other things that can be done and I hope that we will seek many avenues of action.

Community Violence Intervention (CVI)

Conceptually I agree with Community Violence Intervention (CVI). We need to address the issues that arise before violence occurs. My first year in office, I was presented with a CVI program that was already in the process of being developed. I was curious about the approach and outcomes of such an important program and one that I wholeheartedly wanted to endorse. I began asking questions. 

During a Joint Entities public meeting with all of our community’s local government leaders present, I asked, “What are the measurable outcomes of this program?” County Attorney Rachel Zimmerman-Smith told me that the measurable outcome is to have no shootings or deaths caused by shootings. There were no tangible, identifiable benchmarks for success. 

A few weeks later, the Board was asked to vote on the CVI program, and the price tag was $900,000 with 3 line items.

Being good stewards of taxpayer dollars means putting in place ways to measure the success and impact of our investments. Anytime the county funds a project, we require that the program tracks certain measurable inputs and outputs and outcomes and report on those metrics. We also ask for a detailed budget to understand exactly what our county dollars are funding. I asked for metrics to track and measure the success of the interventions and also asked for more detail in the budget that was proposed. Like all entities we fund, I thought transparency around inputs and outputs should be required. I never received those answers. I voted no.

So, to be blunt, I don’t have anything against CVI because it hasn’t caused active harm to our community. But I can’t boast its success because my colleagues voted yes without putting some expectation around how we would measure that.  

What is important right now is what we are going to do about a shooting that occurred in our community and how we can leverage and pivot what we have in place to create a safer county for all residents. I hope we get an opportunity to dig into the ideas that our community and my fellow leaders have while holding the healing of our town, our county, at the forefront.

Moms Demand Action is an organization that is a great resource for local action