CeaseFire - The Campaign to Stop the Shooting

MISSION:
The mission of the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention is to: a) work with community and government partners to reduce violence in all forms; and, b) help design interventions required to better define what should be included in a community or city anti-violence plan.

HISTORY:
Formed in 1995, the Chicago Project takes a strategic public health approach to violence prevention. This approach has been employed to address and reduce other serious health threats, such as child mortality, heart disease, HIV/AIDS, smallpox, and polio. It includes a full commitment to a specific objective (in this case stopping shootings), the setting of long-term and short-term goals, strategy development based on best practices and adapted to the local situation by local practitioners, and a management structure that works at both the community and city/county levels. The public health approach relies heavily on public education to change attitudes and behaviors toward violence, outreach using individuals recruited from the target population, community involvement to change norms, and evaluation methods to monitor strategy.

The Chicago Project has formed partnerships with community-based organizations to develop comprehensive strategic plans for reducing violence. An Advisory Board and Steering Committee, comprising criminal justice, health, religious, and civic leaders, provide support for strategy development and leverage city and county resources for the project and its partners.

The project is supported by private foundation grants and with local, state, and federal funds. The project is housed at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

To accomplish its mission of preventing violence, the Chicago Project initially developed a plan and built an organizational structure to provide technical assistance and support for a comprehensive and community-based effort to reduce and prevent violence.

Eventually, through discussions with community partners, crime experts, and representatives from a cross-section of government agencies, the Chicago Project's steering committee developed an 8-Point Plan for reducing violence. CeaseFire, which emerged after five years of development and field testing of various pieces of a violence reduction strategy, brings to life key elements of the 8-Point Plan. Its focus is street violence, particularly shootings and killings.

CeaseFire was adapted from the best violence reduction work of several cities — notably Boston , which had extraordinary successes in the 1990s — and the best research of public health of the last several decades. After reviewing gang violence reduction projects initiated and evaluated by the US Department of Justice and lessons emerging from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods and mindful of the public health approach discussed earlier, the Chicago Project added the community and public education components to its violence reduction initiative.

After a year of needs assessment, planning, and building collaborative relationships at the local level, CeaseFire was formally launched in early 2000 with outreach workers in the West Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago. Police Beat 1115 was chosen as the first CeaseFire zone in large part because of the high number of shootings. In the first year of CeaseFire, shootings in beat 1115 dropped by 67%.

By the beginning of 2006 CeaseFire was either established or in the process of being implemented in 15 neighborhoods in the city and at sites in five other cities in Illinois.


Watch this video on CeaseFire's approaches and effectiveness:


Find out more about this great program here

Another Violent Tuesday (3)

Demetrius Pitts
30 years old
Pitts was shot in the chest at about 9:23 p.m. on the 300 block of South Kildare Avenue. He was pronounced dead at 11:50 p.m. last night at Stroger Hospital. No further information is available.



Tanaja Stokes
8 years old
Two young girls playing jump-rope were shot last night when two people rode up on bikes and opened fire in the Roseland neighborhood on the Far South Side. Tanaja was shot in the head and died within an hour. Her 5-year-old cousin Ariana Jones was also shot in the head and was in critical condition at Advocate Christ Medical Center this morning. The girls' grandfather, Robert Wise, said he was in front of the family home in the 10700 block of South Indiana when he saw two guys roll up on bicycles at about 8 p.m. Wise said he and a second cousin of the girls ran to protect the girls, but it was too late. Officials are investigating whether a fight about 20 minutes earlier might have led to the shooting. The fight involved three teens -- two girls and a boy. A group of about 20 teens surrounded the fighting youths, screaming, holding back the boys, calling each other names. Once the teens stopped fighting, six girls including the one who fought left the scene in a white four-door car. About 10 minutes later, six gunshots rang out to the south on Indiana. The six girls who had left in the car were seen unhurt near the scene.



Parnell Shumate
37 years old
Shumate was shot and killed at about 4:40 p.m. in a parking lot in the 1200 block of South Pulaski Road in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side this afternoon. He suffered multiple gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at 5:08 p.m. at Stroger Hospital. Police were looking for a Chevrolet HHR truck with four occupants that may have been involved in the shooting. At least one of them was possibly the shooter.

Also on August 9th (1)

James Gardner
30 years old
Gardner, who was shot early Monday in the city's Austin neighborhood on the West Side, died at 6:21 p.m. last night at Stroger Hospital. He and another man were shot about 12:22 a.m. Monday in the 500 block of North Leamington Avenue. The two were inside a vehicle when two or possibly three suspects got out of a vehicle and approached the men. At least one of the suspects fired several shots in their direction. The victims tried to drive away after they were shot but their car crashed into a parked car. The suspects then fled.

5 Year Old's Death Ruled a Homicide

August 9th


Jonathan Jackson
5 years old
Jackson and his twin brother had just been given their baths and were playing in their room, about to settle down for the night before their first day in kindergarten when a shot rang out. Jonathan's brother ran from the room in his pajamas, followed by Jonathan, who was crawling and bleeding from his abdomen. He was rushed by ambulance from his two-flat in the 700 block of South California to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:07 p.m. Monday from a gunshot wound. The boys, who were nearly identical and inseparable, had been playing when they found the gun. It was not known who owned the gun or where it had been kept in the apartment.

The Cook County medical examiner's office today ruled the death a homicide, meaning that Jonathan's death was caused by someone besides himself. The ruling is not an indication of criminality or intent.

Eddie Izzard Talks About The Gun Thing

August 10th (1)

Tito Lindsey
17 years old
Lindsey was shot and killed this morning near his home in the Far South Side's Fernwood neighborhood. He was shot in the back about 7:10 a.m. in the 10200 block of South Wentworth Avenue and was pronounced dead at 7:40 a.m. at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.

August 8th (1)

Troy Brown
15 years old
Brown was killed and another girl was wounded in a shooting Sunday afternoon in the 4900 block of West Iowa Street in the West Side's Austin community. The shooting happened about 2 p.m. He was pronounced dead at Stroger Hospital. No further information is currently available.