Community members on the Leeward Coast (and throughout Oahu) are gravely concerned about the recent increase in violent crime on that part of the island. They justifiably want the City and County of Honolulu government to do something now.
Addressing this problem is easier said than done, but the city and police department should consider implementing a holistic plan modeled on Community Violence Intervention programs as described by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
CVI is an evidence-based approach that treats gun violence as a public health crisis. CVI includes law enforcement and city officials, but also stakeholders from throughout the community.
The exact form CVI takes varies across communities, dependent on their distinctive needs. But the overall model comprises a grassroots-driven, multifold approach including the use of focused deterrence, violence interrupters, social services, behavioral interventions, and community investment projects.
In fact, the Hawaii Attorney General’s office, in its 2024 “Gun Violence and Prevention in Hawaii: Landscape & Findings” report, identified CVI as an important strategy for reducing gun violence, but one not yet implemented.
“Focused Deterrence”
Much of CVI includes indirect measures that address the root causes of gun violence in the long term. Measures like infrastructure improvement, social services, and job programs do not have an instantaneous impact. They are, however, worthwhile investments in a more peaceful future.
Still, Oahu residents want an immediate impact as ongoing violence means more families grieving the senseless loss of loved ones. People look to the police for immediate solutions.
Successful crime reduction through policing is contingent on proper deployment of police resources.
Approaches based on broken windows theory, utilizing aggressive enforcement against petty offenses and frequent “stop and frisk” searches looking for drugs and weapons have been widely used and sometimes touted. But they are counterproductive as they alienate the community and have minimal crime-reduction effects.
Police can effectively put immediate downward pressure on crime though. Focused deterrence is a targeted and more procedurally fair alternative, which evaluations find can reduce gun violence by about 30 percent on average. Moreover, focused deterrence means police resources are concentrated on the policing mission that the public most strongly supports — confronting serious and violent crimes.
Focused deterrence begins with law enforcement identifying individuals at risk of escalating violence.
Generally, a few individuals are committing a large proportion of serious violent offenses in any given community. Once those individuals are identified, a carrot/stick approach is employed whereby police do “call-ins,” at which targeted individuals attend a meeting with police as well as community stakeholders, service providers, faith leaders, etc.
At the call-in, it is made clear that police are aware of these individuals’ criminal activities and that the community rejects their conduct. These individuals are then offered support to embark on a different life trajectory but are also threatened with vigorous prosecution and long prison sentences if they continue on their current trajectory.
Police can effectively put immediate downward pressure on crime.
Focused deterrence is not a cure-all. For instance, it’s not an approach that lends itself to cases like those of Cherell Keamo, Courtney Raymond-Arakaki, and Jessyca Amasiu who were murdered by Hiram Silva, a neighbor with whom their family had an ongoing conflict. A better intervention for such violence is violence interrupter programs.
Violence interrupters engage in community outreach to identify potentially violent conflicts and attempt to defuse them. Violence interrupters are mostly well-respected individuals in the community, and often have personal experience with violent crime.
Using their influence and knowledge, interrupters do just that — interrupting conflicts before they result in serious violence. These programs have yielded encouraging results in many cities. For instance, Buffalo, New York, saw a 46% decrease in gun violence after implementing violence interrupters.
Additionally, Cure Violence, one model for violence interrupters is used in cities not only across the U.S., but also internationally, yielding substantial reductions in shootings and homicides. A well-supported violence interrupter program could quickly mitigate violence on the Leeward coast, especially considering the reputation of communities like Waianae as tightly knit.
As stated earlier, the state and city need to make longer-term investments in the community too, by improving infrastructure; offering more social and mental health services; creating jobs programs, etc.
Most important is to provide opportunities to the young men who are the group most frequently involved in serious crime. Teen and young adult men are the most common demographic to become involved in serious offending when the economic opportunity structure and a lack of social support pushes them to the margins and instills a sense of fatalism.
Such opportunity and community investment measures would generate long-term decreases in crime, and they would also support a part of the island that is often overlooked and underserved. This holistic and integrated approach is essential to effective CVI.
A poorly planned, under-resourced, or half-hearted approach to CVI will greatly reduce its effectiveness and could backfire. And of course, a CVI program must be community driven. It cannot consist of local elites imposing pre-determined solutions on the community. The particular strategies and interventions to be implemented must be determined from the bottom-up, not top-down.
The community is demanding a fast and effective response to gun violence on the Leeward Coast. Our leaders can and should meet that demand by proposing Community Violence Intervention.