Mike Groll/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Senate co-leader Jeffrey Klein, D-Bronx, helped fund the SNUG program that will begin this summer at Jacobi Medical Center
The Bronx has a new weapon in the war against gun violence.
Operation SNUG — guns spelled backwards – will launch this year in the borough for the first time ever with the help of Jacobi Medical Center, officials told The News.
The initiative, based on the successful Ceasefire program implemented in Chicago in 2000, provides former gang members with jobs mentoring adolescents in troubled areas.
Members, dubbed “violence interrupters,” also reach out to high-risk individuals — often ex-convicts or current gang members — and work on ways to settle conflicts without violence.
“SNUG’s aggressive and proven approach makes it clear to our young people that guns and gang violence do not need to be a way of life,” State Senator Jeff Klein (D-Throgs Neck) said in a statement announcing the initiative.
Klein helped acquire $ 250,000 in state funding for the program last year and Jacobi, which was chosen by the state Division of Criminal Services, has provided another $ 50,000 for the effort.
In addition to former gang members, the program also enlists counselors who work with victims of gun violence immediately after an incident, often while the victim is still in the hospital, to prevent retaliation.
Lombard, Mariela
Dedric Hammond, 35, is a Violence Interruptor with the Harlem SNUG. The program will expand to the Bronx this summer.
“Empirical evidence shows that hospital-based interventions are extremely effective,” Jacobi’s Dr. Stephen Blumberg said. “(It) will allow us not only to gain an insight to those who are affected by gun violence but also to make an impact on these individuals lives.”
SNUG has been utilized in other boroughs in the past with mixed results.
A report released by the Center for Public Safety Initiatives at Rochester Institute of Technology last year analyzed several sites and found the effect on overall crime was hard to gauge.
“The success is really measured in the amount of conflicts that you prevent from escalating,” said Courtney Bennett, the Harlem SNUG Director. “It’s about stopping things before they get started.”
The Bronx was one of only seven areas selected across the state for part of $ 2.18 million in funding for the initiative this year.
The popular three-year-old outpost in Harlem, run by the New York Mission Society, is now backed by funding from the City Council. “We were really able to turn some lives around,” Bennett said of his work uptown.
Bennett said he hopes Jacobi staff will be able to reach out to the areas in the Bronx that need the help the most.
“I hope they have the connections to reach out to the hot spots and the credible messengers,” Bennett said.
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