Durham County residents can win $25 for submitting their thoughts on gang issues affecting Durham.
The county’s 2021 Comprehensive Gang Assessment includes a 10-minute, confidential survey. Four winners will be chosen at random to receive a $25 gift card.
“We really want input from the community,” said James Stuit, the gang reduction strategy manager at Durham’s Criminal Justice Resource Center. “We don’t have all the answers.”
It’s the third gang assessment conducted by the county, Stuit said, after assessments in 2007 and 2014.
“Our goal is to get as much information from the community as we can,” he said. “We’re making a concerted effort to get the survey out to folks in impacted neighborhoods — that’s been our difficulty. Typically, they may not have wifi, they may not be subscribers to the newspaper, they might not have a neighborhood listserv.”
Stuit said the county is giving paper copies of the survey to Bull City United, the city and county’s violence interruption team, to distribute.
In January, the Durham City Council agreed to spend nearly $1 million to expand the program. Bull City United staff members go to specific neighborhoods where shootings take place to speak with those involved in the conflict in an attempt to negotiate peace, The News & Observer reported.
‘Looking at the cause of this’
A possible record number number of people were shot in Durham last year: 318 people, compared to 189 the year before.
In 2019, there were 1,053 incidents in Durham that involved a validated gang member as a victim or suspect, according to a report. Guns were involved in 149 of those incidents.
Among other questions, the survey asks residents if they feel safe in their neighborhoods, how active gangs are around them, why young people join gangs and how Durham should address the issue.
“Right now, there’s a mood in Durham that we need less aggressive law enforcement and perhaps a different kind of response,” Stuit said. “Obviously, with violent crime, drive by shootings, and some of the things we associate with gangs, we need a law enforcement element. But we also need to be going upstream and looking at the cause of this.”
He added they’re looking at educational opportunities as early as Pre-K, nutrition and health, and other factors that might help prevent violent crime and gang activity, as well as intervention methods to help get kids out of gangs and keep them safe.
Other parts of the assessment include surveys of law enforcement agencies, public school employees and youth-serving agencies, a round table discussion with clergy and analysis of demographic changes since 2014.
Some potential recommendations from the assessment may include more mental health workers in schools, higher police presence in specific neighborhoods or more support for those leaving jails and prisons, Stuit said.
“It’s not just something general like ‘reduce gun violence,’” he said. “It’s going to be something measurable that we can track over time and see the effectiveness of this assessment.”
The survey will remain online until the end of August, Stuit said. Durham County residents can fill it out at www.surveymonkey.com/r/ZC7S2K5, and those who provide a valid email address will be automatically entered to win.
The Durham Report
Calling Bull City readers! We’ve launched The Durham Report, a free weekly digest of some of the top stories for and about Durham published in The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun. Get your newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every Thursday at 11 a.m. featuring links to stories by our local journalists. Sign up for our newsletter here. For even more Durham-focused news and conversation, join our Facebook group “The Story of my Street.”