Hanifa Shabazz - Delaware Business Times

Features, New Castle County, News, Viewpoints

Viewpoint: We can’t police our way out of youth gun violence

Guest Writer June 29, 2021

By Hanifa Shabazz Guest Colmnist As youth gun violence continues to plague the Black community, it is clear to many of us that the status quo state government and city […]

1 Comment 806 Views

Health Care, News, Viewpoints

Publisher’s View: Delaware shouldn’t pick and choose its epidemics

Editorial May 4, 2021

By Robert Martinelli Is gun violence an epidemic, as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested to Delaware officials back in 2015, a disease that can be treated […]

0 Comment 1003 Views

News, Residential Real Estate

Buccini/Pollin breaks ground on 92-unit complex

Jacob Owens December 11, 2019

WILMINGTON ““ What was once a furniture store in the Lower Market neighborhood of the city will become the Buccini/Pollin Group‘s newest apartment complex in early 2021. Company officials, […]

0 Comment 1422 Views

Education, Features, News

DSU accepts 252 future freshmen at taping of ‘First Take’

Editorial September 27, 2019

Over $1 million in DSU scholarships given at 76ers Fieldhouse event WILMINGTON – For 252 high-school students, going to the 76ers Fieldhouse on Sept. 20, was memorable not only because […]

0 Comment 1366 Views

Commercial Real Estate, Hospitality & Entertainment, News

Residence Inn by Marriott opens in Wilmington

Alex Vuocolo April 27, 2018

Mayor Mike Purzycki and City Council President Hanifa Shabazz yesterday joined Canon Hospitality Management for the ribbon cutting of the first new hotel in downtown Wilmington in nearly 20 years. […]

0 Comment 987 Views

Premier Digital Partners

© 2023 Delaware Business Times

By Hanifa Shabazz Guest Colmnist [caption id="attachment_212707" align="alignright" width="297"]

Hanifa Shabazz
Wilmington City Council President[/caption] As youth gun violence continues to plague the Black community, it is clear to many of us that the status quo state government and city police responses simply are not working. Tragically, most of the victims and perpetrators are young African-American males from communities in which there have been and remain the need for more investments. Nearly a decade ago, just before Wilmington had been called “Murder Town, USA” by Newsweek, in response to my request as a city council member, the state asked the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to examine youth firearm violence in our city from a public health perspective. That nationally lauded and groundbreaking report, released in 2016, acknowledged that the city’s gun violence was a public health epidemic and provided several recommendations to the state to combat it. It urged the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services to form an advisory council – today known as the Wilmington Community Advisory Council, or WCAC – to create interventions to address the root causes of the violence and its traumatizing effects on our communities. The WCAC released its recommendations late in January 2017, the worst year on record for Wilmington shootings and homicides. The WCAC has worked with its dozens of community organization members, helping to raise more than $11 million to provide needed services to youth and their families, including trauma training partnerships, a Community Well-Being Initiative, and a COVID-19 community mobilization, as well as serving as a springboard for many of the violence prevention and intervention initiatives that are in place today. Unfortunately, most of the government investments have focused primarily on law enforcement and judicial approaches, without commensurate investments to address the social determinants that expose too many of our young people to violence. One must wonder if there would be a more comprehensive response to the violence if it were occurring in more affluent communities. How many times must we say, “We cannot police our way out!” We cannot police our way out of the damaging levels of poverty among the 20,000 children and youth in Wilmington. We cannot police our way out with minimal funds for intervention programs, meaningful youth employment and training, or safe places for youth to gather, nor inequitable resources for Black student education and the seemingly revolving door of the courthouse and the prison systems. We cannot police our way out of fundamental sociological issues by using policing “after-effect” strategies that focus on invention and redemption after the violence has been done, leaving our traumatized and battered communities to deal with the grief and the lost. As of this writing, there have been 76 shootings in Wilmington, including 14 deaths with a 14-year-old boy, most recently. Currently, the U.S. Congress introduced the Break the Cycle of Violence Act which includes funding to community organizations for intervention and prevention services to the youth and their families. Understand, the youth in our city who are being approached and/or contemplating to use a gun need urgent emergency and long-term interventions. To reach them will require substantial funding of a community-driven, culturally based, and professionally researched and developed youth violence prevention action initiative. The Wilmington Community Advisory Council, in partnership with the Center for Structural Equity, Network Connect, Stop the Violence Coalition, and United Way of Delaware, have developed such an initiative. The WCAC calls for a government partnership that includes adequate funding to implement this community-driven plan that can make a major contribution to address the myriad social and economic inequities affecting some of our Black communities and the entire city.

Hanifa Shabazz is the immediate past president of the Wilmington City Council and serves as a co-chair of the WCAC. For more information on WCAC, please visit www.wilmcommunityadvisorycouncil.org.