Portland city leaders now say it could be mid-June before the final two contracts are awarded to fund 18 more street-level outreach workers or violence interrupters.
They are essentially people with credibility on the streets who aim to use their influence to prevent gun violence, oftentimes convincing people not to retaliate.
It’s a process KATU has followed since January when the city’s Community Safety Division first confirmed roughly $4.4 million over two years to fund the program.
The city contracted with Cure Violence Global to grant three contracts for 26 total outreach workers, assigned to specific neighborhoods in the city.
Initially, the city planned to award all three contracts in March. However, the city only approved one contract for eight interrupters at Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center, or POIC, for the city’s North/Northeast zone.
The city’s Community Safety Division – which oversees the city agency running the program - said the goal was to get the other two contracts out in May. However, the mayor’s office said on June 1 that it would be sometime in June.
“What's happened over the last year is we’ve had the ability to build some capacity. We wanted to make sure as we move into this new process that we are moving with intention,” OVP program manager Sam Thompson said. “We want to be intentional about what we want to do in terms of being able to reduce gun violence, and we also - with the organizations that we have - we want to kind of touch onto accountability.”
Thompson will oversee the street-level outreach for the city’s Office of Violence Prevention. The mayor's office said each of the groups under review for the final two contracts has staff ready to go - meaning they could start working right when they get the contract this month.
KATU will continue to track the progress of the contracts.