Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV)
The Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence (CIRV) is home to Cincinnati’s multi-disciplinary effort to reduce gun violence.
What does CIRV do?
- CIRV identifies high-priority offenders by collaborating with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to track crime guns and those who use them in our community.
- CIRV works with residents to examine the root causes of chronic violence in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
- CIRV invests in community-led prevention initiatives to help build neighborhood resilience.
- CIRV partners across sectors to co-create and implement multi-disciplinary approaches to violence reduction.
How has CIRV changed over the years?
Modeled initially after Operation Ceasefire in Boston, CIRV used traditional Call-Ins and Street Outreach as its primary violence reduction program from 2007-2015.
Several things have changed since then:
- Our gangs now rarely self-identify like the traditional gang structure; they are much more fluid, cross boundaries and interact with each other.
- We have seen more trigger pullers that operate solo or in small clusters than in groups or gangs.
- An obligation to frequently update our intelligence so those no longer in the “lifestyle” are not subjected to unwarranted scrutiny.
- The City recognizes gun violence as a public health crisis and the need to identify risk and resiliency factors that can protect against violence at the neighborhood level.
As Cincinnati has nearly 300,000 citizens for the City proper, the number of homicides per 100,000 residents has put us ahead of Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and right behind Chicago in some years.
As a result, CIRV now includes a range of diverse initiatives to address the people and locations at the highest risk for gun violence.
This new strategy allows us to simultaneously attack two sides of the crime triangle aggressively, producing more sustainable violence reduction than just group and gang cases alone.