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Efforts to stop gun violence in King County
The King County Board of Health has revealed what it's been doing to stop instances of gun violence in the county.
SEATTLE - The King County Board of Health has revealed what it's been doing to stop instances of gun violence in the county.
The public health approach is relying heavily on data and community collaborations to provide intervention and support to the hardest hit areas.
Officials say in some areas of our community, the gun violence per capita is as great at what is happening in Chicago. With gun violence being a leading cause of death for children nationwide, health officials say the need for prevention is greater than ever.
"It’s almost like we have a street team that’s out patrolling the neighborhood," said Marvin Marshall, Director of Violence Prevention, YMCA of Greater Seattle.
Marshall is one of the community leaders on the front lines of stopping violence in the community through intervention and the assistance of youth. Outreach and membership is a big part of the program.
"Engage the young person holistically, be able to identify supports and build upon those," said Marshall.
He's also part of the Public Health approach to stopping regional gun violence, which has been tearing communities apart at a growing rate over the past few years.
"As of the last two years, gun violence has become the leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States, so I think it’s easy to correlate to any public health emergency," said Eleuthera Lish, Director, Regional Gun Violence, Assessment, Policy Development.
From 2006 to 2020, more than 800 King County residents died from firearms. In 2020 alone, 177 deaths occurred and 105 children in King County died by firearms between 2002 and 2020. King County reports that 67% were among the ages of 15 to 17.
Health experts report that, "approximately 50% of the victims (are) African-American/Black men and boys."
The fact that the black community in our region only makes up 7.24% of the population and is experiencing over 50% of the homicides, It is one of the most intimate forms of community violence impact in any part of the country," said Lish. "Per capita we are experiencing levels of violence on par with Chicago or any other major city, so I just want to call that out because it is very unique to our region."
According to the 2022 year-end incident report from the King County Prosecutor's Office, the total number of shots fired incidents in 2022 was up 16 percent.
"Just a snapshot of some of the areas where the emphasis of the work is happening according to that data that we’ve been collecting," said Lish.
The regional approach is very focused on data collection and analysis. Teams focus on hot spots for remediation and strategic community engagement and wrap around services are provided along with community restoration and healing activities. The impact is demonstrated in the program participation numbers, with 300 youth enrolled, 190 hotspot engagements and community events held, and 117 critical incidents responded to and 150 plus families served.
"About 117 critical incidents that were responded to over 350 have been sent as notifications to the groups... the groups have to assess whether or not those are active scenes they can deploy to," said Lish.
As part of new efforts to collect timely data, emergency medical services will also be tracking how many instances of fire arm injuries they see in King County. The data could be available within a month's time, which will allow response teams to respond to hot spots faster.
"We have a new EMS dashboard where it’s responded to firearm injuries in our county," said Karyn Brownson, Community Safety Manager for Violence and Injury Prevention.