LYNN — The Lynn Police Department has received more than $535,000 in grant funding to support its efforts to curb youth violence.
The funding is through the state’s Shannon Community Safety Initiative and Safe and Successful Youth Initiative (SSYI) grant programs.
Both programs aim to steer at-risk youth away from street violence and gang activity and toward positive activity and opportunity, according to Lynn Police Lt. Michael Kenny, OIC of the department’s Youth Services Unit.
“(They’re) separate grants, but it’s kind of the same goal of intervention strategies and violence prevention for at-risk youth,” said Kenny.
Lynn has been receiving support from the Shannon Grant since its inception more than a dozen years ago, but Kenny noted that this year’s total of $295,083 was particularly exciting because it marks an increase from what the department has been awarded in the past.
Some of the funding will go toward the city’s Teen Drop-In Center, which is held at Lynn Vocational Technical Institute in the winter and Marshall Middle School in the summer and provides a popular safe haven for kids to go to on Friday or Saturday nights.
The drop-in center, a community policing effort that the department says has led to a reduction in gang violence in the city, provides alternative evening activities for youth.
“It’s just a great opportunity to provide interaction between youth and police and keep them away from that risky behavior,” said Kenny. “It’s keeping them off the street and gives them a positive place to hang out.”
The grant also funds case management for at-risk youth at Catholic Charities and Family & Children’s Services of Lynn, and the outreach done by Antonio Gutierrez, who works with at-risk youth through Lynn Youth Street Outreach Advocacy.
Similarly, the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative targets youth with high-risk behaviors, but a lot of the candidates served by the program come from the state’s corrections facility or through probation. Last year, 153 youth were served by SSYI in Lynn, Kenny said.
The program is geared toward urban youth, aged 17 to 24, who have the highest risk of engaging in serious violence, such as those with a leadership role in a gang, or are involved in gang activity.
The multi-faceted community approach to reducing that violence combines public health and public safety efforts. For instance, the program’s primary strategy is aggressive outreach and counseling, aimed at convincing people they need help and steering them toward the necessary services. Another effort is to help them secure employment, Kenny said.
The department’s goal for the program is the same as the mission of its major SSYI partner, Roca, which is to disrupt the cycle of incarceration and poverty by helping young people transform their lives, Kenny said.
“It’s done with community collaboration, street advocacy, and getting people away from that violent behavior,” he said.
In the past, the program was only available to males, but it’s been expanded to females this year. Although stats show more men are committing violent crimes, there are many female offenders as well, who could benefit from the same type of programming, Kenny said.
Kenny said intervention programs have been successful — last year, there was an overall 8 percent decrease in crime and a reduction in juvenile arrests.
But there’s still much work to do. The city saw an uptick in its gang and gun violence last year, largely due to ongoing retaliatory shootings committed by two rival gangs, Kenny said.
Police are investigating what led to the ongoing dispute, but identifying and targeting certain people has been challenging because most of the threats have been posted on their social media pages.
“Gang members are quiet about it publicly, (but will) blow up their online personas,” said Kenny. “One group will have a problem with one group’s posted message on social media sites. It goes back and forth like a vicious cycle.”
Often, the two gangs have retaliated to those online posts with shootings. The most recent incident was on Dec. 14 and police recovered the gun four days later, Kenny said.
To combat that violence, Kenny said the department has added two new officers to its Gang Unit and shifted another officer to its Drug Task Force.
He also cited the importance of the two grants that have been awarded to the department.
“Nobody can do it alone,” said Kenny. “Community partnership is built on the fact that we need to collaborate. We need people of different backgrounds to come together and attack this as a group.”
