Orginal Article Here on The Detroit News
By Dujuan Kennedy
November 9, 2025
As Detroit’s mayor-elect Mary Sheffield prepares to take office, our city stands at a crossroads. The question wasn’t only who leads, but how we lead and whether we’ll keep investing in what’s truly saving lives. The answer is right in front of us: community violence intervention works. Now we have to fund it like we mean it.
I say that, not as a policymaker or politician, but as someone who has lived on both sides of the story. When I was incarcerated, I met men who refused to let violence define them. They showed me a different way to live — one built on accountability, conflict resolution and healing. That experience was my first encounter with what we now call community violence intervention, or CVI. It changed my life, and when I came home, I committed to doing that same work in the communities of Detroit.
Today, CVI teams are quietly delivering results that many didn’t believe were possible. In the city’s “ShotStoppers” zones, shootings and homicides have dropped between 30% to 70%. These reductions didn’t come from new laws or larger police budgets; they came from people with lived experience stepping in at the right moment, preventing retaliation and helping young people choose life over violence.
Each gunshot injury costs about $1.1 million, and each gun death about $1.6 million. That includes emergency response, medical care, policing, courts, incarceration and lost productivity. When you add it up, every life saved means less trauma for a family and millions of dollars that stay in our neighborhoods instead of being spent cleaning up tragedy.
That’s why it’s time to stop treating CVI like a pilot project or a short-term grant. This is essential public safety work. Outreach workers are first responders in every sense of the word. We step into conflict, mediate between families in pain and respond to shootings before emotions turn lethal. We should not have to worry about whether our program will be funded next year or not.
The new mayor has an opportunity to lead Detroit into a new era of safety; one that builds on what works instead of returning to what doesn’t. Over-policing and reactive enforcement haven’t solved violence; investing in people has. Thankfully, we have a Detroit police department that currently understands this. When communities trust those doing the work, the results follow.
Funding CVI as a permanent part of Detroit’s public safety infrastructure isn’t just the moral choice, it’s the fiscally responsible one. The data show it costs far less to prevent a shooting than to respond to one. The economic argument and the human one point in the same direction.
Safety is the foundation for everything else this city hopes to achieve. A person can’t thrive if they don’t feel safe in their own neighborhood. A city can’t grow when its youth are dying. Every shooting sends ripples of grief that reach far beyond one block; they slow progress, drive away hope and dim the promise of a city that deserves better.
To Detroit’s next mayor: Ms. Sheffield, double down on what works. Support community violence intervention as a core service, not an afterthought. Give the people doing this work the resources, stability and respect they’ve earned.
Detroit has already shown that change is possible. Let’s keep building on that and make public safety about saving lives, not counting losses.
Zoe Kennedy is executive director of FORCE Detroit.
