SALISBURY, N.C. — The Salisbury Police Department is partnering with the Salisbury-Rowan Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to launch “Summer Cease Fire.”
This is a local initiative to encourage Salisbury youth, and in some cases, adults, to stop gun-related assaults during summer 2019.
The initiative will include detecting areas where crimes are occurring, using community members trained in de-escalating conflicts, and mobilizing communities to come together through activities to ensure the violence doesn’t return.
According to Salisbury police data, there were six homicides in 2018. So far, there has only been one homicide in 2019.
"We will sustain our current efforts, our community's current efforts that have seen reductions, such really good reductions in violent crime in recent months,” Salisbury Police Chief Jerry Stokes said.
Last summer, Salisbury Police responded to 25 crimes involving guns.
The year-to-date data shows gun-related crime is down compared to last year heading into the heart of summer. Police data shows there were 61 crimes involving guns by this date in 2018, compared to 46 crimes involving guns in the same time period for 2019.
Police hope the “Summer Cease Fire” continues the trend.
"We're very excited that they came to us with this and wanted to make sure that the reductions that we have seen in violent crime over the past year here in Salisbury, that we continue with that,” Deputy Police Chief Shon Barnes said.