announces plan to encourage community organizations to help reduce shootings

A Detroit plan to reduce gun violence will lean on community organizations to mediate potentially deadly disagreements and reward them with more funding quarterly for demonstrably fewer shootings.

Mayor Mike Duggan announced the proposal, called ShotStopper — a play on the controversial ShotSpotter program — at his state of the city address on Tuesday. e plan includes spending $10 million over two years to encourage community organizations to help reduce shootings in targeted high-crime areas in the city.

“Police can’t do it alone,” Deputy Mayor Todd Bettison said. “You have to get the community involved.” ere is broad support for the proposal, which would pay an estimated $700,000 a year to between three and ve community organizations in areas of the city where the number of shootings is higher than average.

Large organizations with a history of success could take on a larger area.

But the acclaim is not universal.

Demetris Knuckles-El, a base-building organizer with Michigan Liberation, said he’s concerned the city will micromanage activists’ e orts and not give them enough money to compensate for the dangerous situations they may face.

“It’s a slap in the face,” he said of the proposal. “Stop trying to hold something over our heads. If they’re going to run it, let them run it. Money does not make a di erence, if they’re telling you what to do.”

Requests for proposals from community groups opened Wednesday and are due April 10. e program is expected to launch this summer. Bettison said he expects selected organizations will already be engaged in violence prevention work in the city’s neighborhoods. Winning applicants will have at least two years’ experience in violence prevention, violence intervention or con ict mediation, according to the city.

Detroit will fund the program with money from the American Rescue Plan Act. If successful, Bettison said, additional money will be made available once ARPA funding runs out.