Scott said the strategy, coupled with $50 million in community violence intervention funding and major investments in recreation centers, schools, and youth employment, has helped bring Baltimore’s homicide rate to its lowest level in decades.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who has led the city since 2014, said crime there has dropped significantly since the city began treating violence as a public health issue and building an “ecosystem” of prevention programs.

“What police began to do is use intelligence-based policing...in which they begin to target the most violent and very specific folks and not just throw a wide net out and try to arrest everybody that they see,“ he said, adding police also began partnering with community violence intervention organizations that go into those communities and try to resolve conflict and treat trauma where it originates, ”because we know families that grow up in communities that have witnessed violence, that become victims of violence, are more likely to perpetrate violence.”

Speakers criticized the Trump administration’s April decision to terminate $820 million in Department of Justice grants for community violence intervention, victim services, diversion programs, and reentry services. Some of the cut funds were slated to go directly to Vera, the group hosting the event alongside Democratic mayors, according to Vera.

Vera Action Institute’s webpage on these grant decisions also links to an analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice, which notes some of these were restored, and the cuts ended up being closer to around $500 million. The administration said the cuts were made because they no longer aligned with the administration’s priorities.

Bibb said the cuts will harm programs proven to reduce crime, alleging that they are “a blatant attack” targeting “blue cities.”

The mayors also said a persistent gap exists between falling crime rates and public perception. Johnson said decades of mistrust between police and residents remain a challenge, while Scott argued that investments in quality of life—from recreation centers to neighborhood infrastructure—are as important as crime statistics in shaping how safe residents feel.

“We must do a better job of telling our story,” Bibb said.

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