ST. LOUIS – A St. Louis activist group hits the street to try and play a role in the fight against violent crime. They are especially critical of the city’s implementation of an anti-crime program called Cure Violence, which they convinced the city to implement.
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen, led by Lewis Reed, appropriated $7 million for Cure Violence. But the activist groups say the city didn’t follow the model for putting the program into practice.
Cure Violence was supposed to cut murders by 50 percent. Instead, St. Louis is seeing one of its most violent years in recent memory.
There are already 220 murders so far this year, more than the homicides in all of last year, when there were 194 killings.
The activist group Organization for Black Struggle has members going out to contact some of the shooters to try and convince them to forgo retaliation. That’s something Cure Violence was supposed to do but activists say it’s fallen short.
