How I Became Involved in Syracuse Truce

Last Tuesday, I was fortunate enough to be able to meet David Kennedy, director of the Center for Crime Prevention and Control at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.  Professor Kennedy’s work, in developing effective strategies aimed at reducing gun and gang violence in inner cities, is the backbone of the violence reduction strategy currently being implemented in Syracuse, Syracuse Truce.  I first learned of Kennedy’s work just over six months ago when I heard the rebroadcast of his interview on NPR’s Fresh Air.  After reading Professor Kennedy’s book and emailing him, he put me in touch with Syracuse Truce.

Below is an introduction to the interview:

In 1985, David M. Kennedy visited Nickerson Gardens, a public housing complex in south-central Los Angeles. It was the beginning of the crack epidemic, and Nickerson Gardens was located in what was then one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in America.

“It was like watching time-lapse photography of the end of the world,” he says. “There were drug crews on the corner, there were crack monsters and heroin addicts wandering around. … It was fantastically, almost-impossibly-to-take-in awful.”

Kennedy, a self-taught criminologist, had a visceral reaction to Nickerson Gardens. In his memoir Don’t Shoot, he writes that he thought: “This is not OK. People should not have to live like this. This is wrong. Somebody needs to do something.”

Kennedy has devoted his career to reducing gang and drug-related inner-city violence. He started going to drug markets all over the United States, met with police officials and attorney generals, and developed a program — first piloted in Boston — that dramatically reduced youth homicide rates by as much as 66 percent. That program, nicknamed the “Boston Miracle,” has been implemented in more than 70 cities nationwide.