Salem Mayor Chris Hoy and Police Chief Trevor Womack on Wednesday will convene the first in a series of public meetings intended to draw up solutions to rising gun violence with the help of those most affected.
A “community conversation” about reducing violence is scheduled for 6-7:30 p.m. on Wednesday at the East Salem Community Center, 1850 45th Ave. N.E. Spanish interpretation will be provided.
For anybody who cares about the Salem community, Hoy said the meeting is the best place to learn about the issue and how people could be part of the solution.
“It’s about really telling the truth about what’s going on with violent crime in Salem,” he said. “It’s not like it’s widespread, but it’s really impactful where it’s happening and with the individuals involved.”
Salem citizens should attend because “their voices are extremely important,” Womack said.
“There’s just no way to do this work, and make it as effective as possible and make it ‘right’ for our community unless we hear from all the voices in our community,” he said.
The meeting Wednesday comes four months after a report commissioned by the police department found shootings in the city have doubled in the past five years and are largely concentrated in the northeast. In 2022, Salem endured 20 shootings of people, four of them fatal.
In response, city leaders are spearheading Salem’s Community Violence Reduction Initiative. Hoy and Womack plan to work with other law enforcement agencies and community organizations to focus on preventing shootings.
The Salem City Council on Feb. 12 approved funding for a limited-term position in the city manager’s office overseeing the violence reduction program and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The position would cost $54,000, paid from police salary savings from vacant positions.
Councilors also approved $18,000 of such funding for work related to the initiative, including a “community stakeholder listening campaign,” three community gatherings and an evaluation report, according to a city staff report.
Hoy said city officials picked the meeting location based on the disproportionate impact of gun violence on people in northeast Salem. “We really felt like it was important to try to be someplace that’s accessible to people,” he said.
The event will be held in the auditorium of the community center. There will also be snacks in the common space and an area for children’s activities led by city staff so that parents can participate.
Hoy will begin the meeting speaking about his goals for bringing the community together to address the crisis before Womack reviews the data on the number of local shootings and who is involved.
The bulk of the event will be a Q&A for people in attendance to ask questions. The city will also hand out notecards before the meeting for anyone who wants to provide written input. The mayor said that will begin the community conversation about creating solutions.
“This meeting is much more about a conversation with our community than it is about the police talking about what we’re doing,” Womack said.
At the meeting, the chief said he hopes to take stock of people and organizations willing to work with city leaders to address the issue.
“Who are the stakeholders that are showing up? What resources might they bring to bear? And what are their initial thoughts on how they might engage with us around a solution?” he said.
Salem officials sent invitations to social service and criminal justice organizations to attend the event, according to city spokeswoman Elizabeth Kennedy-Wong.
Womack said that included neighborhood association chairs, the chief’s advisory council, the Salem Police Foundation and organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club, YMCA and Youth With A Mission.
There will likely be three meetings this year, the chief said, “the goal being at the end of that process, we’ll have a really good list of who some key stakeholders are, we’ll have heard a lot of thoughts and ideas from our community about how we should approach this problem, and we can synthesize all that information, and in 2025, actually start building some sort of coordinated strategy with our community.”
Womack recently said he hoped to create a new team of officers dedicated to investigating shootings in Salem that leave people wounded or dead. He told Salem Reporter that the city needs around six officers assigned to such shootings to work with community organizations, identify people most at risk of being assailants or victims, and steer them away from violence by getting them help.
To create the violence intervention team, the chief said he would need to shift officers from other duties or get additional funding. Getting more money would be a challenge at a time the city already is planning budget cuts. He said his such a team would include one police sergeant and five officers and cost an estimated $900,000 a year.
But Womack has also been clear that police alone will not solve the shooting crisis. Police are best equipped to handle people who commit violence, but community resources are needed to help steer Salemites, particularly young men, away from gangs and violent activities, he said during Salem Reporter’s Town Hall on Gun Violence Feb. 15.
Hoy announced following the release of the gun violence report that he intended to convene a group of community leaders to address the crisis and recommendations made by the researchers.
He said the upcoming meetings will help narrow down what organizations are interested in focusing on prevention work, and whether an existing group can take the lead or a new one needs to be formed.
“Then we can start focusing on, ‘Okay, how do we help these groups or this group to actually do this work as a community?’” he said, adding that the city is not in a position to finance such an effort. “It’s going to be a community solution, but they’re going to need help.”
The mayor’s ultimate goal is to curb gun violence through community-building, he said. “Once law enforcement is involved, then the system has failed because we’re having to respond to violent crime, but really my goal is to prevent it.”
Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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Ardeshir Tabrizian has covered criminal justice and housing for Salem Reporter since September 2021. As an Oregon native, his award-winning watchdog journalism has traversed the state. He has done reporting for The Oregonian, Eugene Weekly and Malheur Enterprise.
