The Persistent Problem of Gun Violence

Dan Rather:

Think of Richmond, Virginia. And you may think of a quiet southern city, unhurried and untroubled, but crime statistics out Justice Week tell a different story. And right now, police are coping with a crime spree that has shaken the city to its core.

Rich Meagher:

I’m Rich Meagher. This is RVA’s Got Issues. You just heard Dan Rather back in 1996. He wasn’t the only one talking about our city this way, in the mid 1990s, Richmond was known as the murder capital of the South. The crack epidemic hit the city hard, and murder rates and gun violence skyrocketed. Now, we’ve come a long way since then. In many ways, the city’s having a renaissance, but gun violence is still very much a problem for Richmond with a dogged persistence that is challenging all of our assumptions about how gun violence happens. Today on our show: Why is the problem of gun violence so persistent? And what is Richmond doing about it? I’m joined by Greg Hopkins. He’s the interim director of the City of Richmond’s, department of Justice Services, and was recently named by Mayor Danny Avula to be the first director of the city’s new Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Greg, welcome.

Greg Hopkins:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate you being here.

Rich Meagher:

So, Greg, let’s start here. Right? How do you define the problem of gun violence?

Greg Hopkins:

Um, interpersonal conflict. So many people have access to weapons, and oftentimes, um, as we just mentioned, you just played the clip with Dan Rather. Back then, a lot of the, the issues were surrounded by individuals that were like system two thinkers, where it’s more calculated. It was drug, you know, beefs and turf beefs, what we seen coming outta COVID, and not just post COVID, but a lot of people just unraveling and those interpersonal arguments, domestic issues, it become deadly when there’s a firearm involved. And lot of folks, uh, have access to firearms these days.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. I want to go back to some language you’re using, right? You said system two thinkers. What does that mean?

Greg Hopkins:

Um, system one thinkers of, of like those kids, when you tell ’em, don’t put your hand on that stove, and they do it anyway

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Greg Hopkins:

<laugh>, and it’s sort of reactionary. Like it’s that childhood kindergarten adolescent thinking that, you know, if I’m upset at you, um, regardless if the teacher pushing me back, I’m still gonna throw a punch.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Greg Hopkins:

Uh, the system, two thinkers are that individuals say, okay, I’m gonna get you next week, but I know what time you’re gonna go to your locker. And, um, it’s 11:05 and I’m gonna catch you there.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And so I, I think what people often assume about gun violence

Greg Hopkins:

mm-hmm

Rich Meagher:

Is that it’s, it’s always premeditated.

Greg Hopkins:

Right.

Rich Meagher:

It’s like people planning a crime or they’re planning some kind of violence against someone else. But what you’re suggesting then is it’s not really way that that’s not the real driver of what’s happening. That we’re thinking system two. And it’s actually system one.

Greg Hopkins:

That’s, that’s it. I mean, um, it, it’s a shameless plug, but there was a book out called, uh, Unforgiving Places, <laugh>.

Rich Meagher:

Right, right. By Jen Jens Ludwig. Right?

Greg Hopkins:

Exactly.

Rich Meagher:

He’s a researcher. Yeah.

Greg Hopkins:

He, he explains how we get gun violence wrong.

Rich Meagher:

Richmond Police Chief, Rick Edwards said something similar to what you just said. Right? He recently told VPM that what’s driving gun violence these days are arguments that escalate. Right? People with easy access to firearms and low impulse control. So is that the, the full scope of the problem here?

Greg Hopkins:

Uh, it’s a, it’s a part of it. I mean, Richmond is experiencing what a lot of other cities in the Commonwealth is experiencing now. Um, and not just in the Commonwealth across the country. During the pandemic, everybody was scared of zombie apocalypse folks, you know, started getting weapons and we starting to see emergence of folks buying firearms.

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Greg Hopkins:

Uh, young folks, um, their access to firearms became a little bit more, um, easier

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Greg Hopkins:

And then when we opened back up as a society, um, certain people didn’t have the same protective factors that they had post pandemic. And so if me and you were in the argument, I lost my job, I lost my parents during pandemic. Um, there was not that much emotional stability with individuals. We starting to see folks who had preconceived, like I say, diagnosis underlying issues, but it never really surfaced to the point where they really were needed to seek some sort of help. The issue now is that the argument will turn deadly because that individual has a firearm. And we seen that play out with the last couple of homicides that we have had, um, in the city of Richmond.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. I wanted to talk about a couple of those examples, right?

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

So one example of this is this 35-year-old actor named Adam Turck. Right? He was shot and killed in Shockoe Bottom.

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Just trying to intervene in

Greg Hopkins:

Exactly.

Rich Meagher:

a domestic argument. And then another example, you told our producer, you know, two brothers who got in an argument over a soda can in Gilpin Court.

Greg Hopkins:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

And one ends up shooting the other. Like, these examples seems so trivial and that the consequences are so devastating. Now, I know you are not a social scientist, but you’ve been in this space for a long time, right?

Greg Hopkins:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

Um, why do we think this is happening?

Greg Hopkins:

Um, I mean, it goes back to what I just said. I think that there’s a lot of people who have been through some significant issues or trauma in their life, and it’s been so far removed from the surface of their everyday interactions that when there’s a trigger or a spark, they snap. And, um, in these situations, two individuals that were emotionally, um, unstable, had access to a firearm. One had just recently got out of prison. That’s the situation that happened in Gilpin. Came back here to looking for some, uh, stability with family. And oftentimes when those individuals coming out don’t have the necessary resources at their disposal, and they have access to a firearm, it sort of empower them as being, Hey, I have my credibility, I have my, you know, they look at that as being some sort of a protective factor. And in, in, unfortunately the situation resulted in a homicide. And so the similar situation in Shockoe Bottom, I know Chief Edwards has, you know, expressed this numerous of times that our issues and common drivers are interpersonal relationship disagreements, arguments, but following behind that is domestic cases.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Greg Hopkins:

And in this situation, you had a young man who really didn’t have that much interaction prior with the court system, but he had access to a firearm. And unfortunately, what you see with the individual that tried to intervene, um, he had, um, become deceased and the individual committed suicide.

Rich Meagher:

So the high profile shootings we were talking about, right? These sort of like, big cases often get lots of news coverage, and that can make it easy for people to feel like crime’s going up all the time. Right? So what does the data actually tell us? Where are we actually

Greg Hopkins:

mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

with gun violence in Richmond?

Greg Hopkins:

I mean, we’ve been trending down since post pandemic right now we are flat. We’re sort of even as we were last year at this time, um, I believe we’ve ended out the year 54. The year before that, I think we were at 57, I’m not sure. But each year it’s been projected down. And, um, so in the big sense of things, I think we’re doing really good to keep enforcement pieces, um, together.

Rich Meagher:

This is also not just about the city, right?

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

It’s parts of the city. There is a geography to gun violence in the city, isn’t there? Like, how does that shake out?

Greg Hopkins:

Well, it’s like people, places and opportunity. Um, when we look at homicides for last 10 years, I’d say less than 20% would have taken place in our public housing, but it contradicts what we think. Well, when we talk about gun violence, oh, Mosby Court or either Coalter Street, Lynnhaven. I remember when I was growing up in Richmond, Lynnhaven was like the, you know, if you go South Side, it’s, it’s like the boogeyman. It’s a whole different, you know, neighborhood now. Um, but that is not always the case. I always talk about what’s the correlation. So we talk about, you know, uh, Coalter Street. I just take that for example, in Mosby. Um, we probably, probably had less than 10 shootings and probably less than five give resulting in a homicide this year. But we never talk about what makes the individuals resilient on that street and the folks that are getting those folks that are victims of homicide in that area, not from that area. And so it goes back to the political places and opportunities.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So is there something we aren’t talking about here in terms of the, the, the scope of the problem of gun violence that helps us understand kind of why and where gun violence is happening?

Greg Hopkins:

What we don’t talk about oftentimes is those individuals exhibiting behaviors that oftentimes go unchecked for a substantial long time. The question is, what did we do with those individuals when they came into our touchpoint with different programs or services under the city’s umbrella? If we know at that time what high risk or moderate risk individuals need, and what we can actually put in place for those individuals to put them on a trajectory for success, then we will start to say, Hey, look, we can start, you know, chipping down on those numbers individuals that are either gonna be a victim or offender of a homicide.

Rich Meagher:

Well, let’s talk about solutions then.

Greg Hopkins:

Okay, cool.

Rich Meagher:

Right about preventing gun violence.

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Now, violence prevention’s a little noisy. Like if I, I look at the city’s website, um, forgive me for a second here. I wanna take a deep breath.

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Right? We’ve got Gun Violence Prevention Intervention Framework. We got the Safer Communities grant. We’ve got One Richmond, a unified strategy for community safety and healing. The Trauma Healing Response Network, Injury and Violence Prevention Program, Operation Safe Summer of the mayoral action, prevent, like, you get the point here, right? There’s like this alphabet soup. We’re doing all these things. Why do we need this new office of gun violence prevention? Like a new set of words?

Greg Hopkins:

You just said it, it’s air traffic control. It’s a lot of stuff that’s going on, but we have over the years, and you know, what we realize is that it becomes a bumper car effect, and we have people duplicating initiatives that it’s not in your role or your lane to be doing in the first place. And there’s a lane carved out for everybody.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So what you’re saying essentially is there’s nothing wrong with the alphabet soup here as long as everybody gets together. And so that’s what you are gonna do, is try to bring everyone together to, to make sure they’re not stepping on each other’s toes.

Greg Hopkins:

Absolutely.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And so this is an idea that’s been tried elsewhere, right? Uh, like, uh, Baltimore.

Greg Hopkins:

Baltimore has it. Yeah. Baltimore has the Office of Neighborhood Safety Engagement. Um, Greensboro has a new office, um, Atlanta, uh, St. Louis. Uh, but I wanna look at it differently because we’re not standing up, you know, programs that you know, that, you know, everybody want the feel good programs that they say, oh, this is gonna do drive down gun violence. My thing is, there’s a lane for that. But if we do simple solutions that mean that if I have a agency that’s responsible for, say, for instance, local probation, juvenile probation, juvenile services, all those individuals that we looked at last year, that committed homicide had some sort of touch points. So if we set up multidisciplinary teams on each of those levels and really take a deep dive in those moderate to high risk individuals and come up with some clear solutions and service planning for individualized service planning, we can see a significant investment, but a long time reduction coming up.

Rich Meagher:

So this sounds a little pre-crime ish, right? So like you,

Greg Hopkins:

Predictive analytics?

Rich Meagher:

What’s that?

Greg Hopkins:

You said predictive analytics?

Rich Meagher:

I didn’t say that I said pre-crime, but, so what is predictive analytics? What does that mean?

Greg Hopkins:

Can I say that?

Rich Meagher:

I, you can say it for sure.

Greg Hopkins:

I dunno if I should.

Rich Meagher:

But what does it mean?

Greg Hopkins:

Well, it means that, hey, look, we didn’t look at trends. We look at, um, geography, the types of individuals coming through our system, and then not necessarily say we predicting the likelihood of offenses, but we can also look into in the future to see if this individual had propensity to commit crimes based on their trajectory, past trajectory in the juvenile or the adult criminal justice system.

Rich Meagher:

This sounds to me it’s a little bit about data, it’s a little bit about individuals.

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

I wanna start with data here. Right? So Richmond Police Chief Edwards told VPM news that the RPD was obsessed with data.

Greg Hopkins:

<laugh>.

Rich Meagher:

Right. I wanna play for you a clip where he talks about how he thinks about data.

Greg Hopkins:

Yeah.

Rick Edwards:

So when we talk about using data to fight crime, it’s like, I don’t know if you ever saw that movie Moneyball, but that we, I use that analogy all the time. We’re like the Oakland A’s, we can’t, you know, we don’t have the resources that we used to have in 2020

Dean Mirshahi:

Mm-hmm.

Rick Edwards:

Um, but, but if we’re smart about it, we can still be successful.

Rich Meagher:

So the chief’s big on data. The mayor’s big on data. How, how do you see data playing a role in your office?

Greg Hopkins:

It plays a big role in our office. Um, if you look at six pillars of the framework of

Rich Meagher:

This is the gun violence prevention framework that the city’s adopted, right?

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm. So you have first one is crisis response. When things happen when the city, what’s the city’s response, um, in the neighborhood? What we have done over time is, like I say, for the last, since I would say February, each incident has been cataloged. So we have a pattern of, of neighborhoods, we have a pattern of, um, I will say in some shape or form some connection between individuals.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Greg Hopkins:

Either relationship or either family dynamics that we can start drawing upon delivering sort of what will be a, a correct crisis response. Second thing is, um, our offender and victims information is sort of, is super crucial with it when it comes to looking at how we can employ strategists going to work. We focus on our accountability public safety program so often that we miss the co, uh, what we call a competency program, which, you know, deal more so on triggers of individuals, how they think. My goal is to, how do we exploit that information and get those competency program scaled up to the point where we have more of them than we have accountability and public safety programs,

Rich Meagher:

Meaning competency, like building up people’s abilities to not do crime in the first place.

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

As opposed to punishing them after they do the crime does that sound right?

Greg Hopkins:

So like cognitive behavior, treatment therapy.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Greg Hopkins:

Um, this pretty much has been the, the, the solution CBT to, um, any individual with some sort of, uh, underlying diagnosis or individuals that are struggling with, you know, thinking errors and triggers. Um, it’s heavily used in our behavior health docket in our specialty courts.

Rich Meagher:

And so can we then, you know, using examples like this, can we data our way out the gun violence problem?

Greg Hopkins:

Nah, I think it’s a little bit too early to say that.

Rich Meagher:

Okay.

Greg Hopkins:

But I’m gonna try it. You know, <laugh>

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>, And I mean, the way you’re, you’re talking about like data, like when I, when I hear Chief Edwards talk about data, I’m thinking like some big, you know, computer and map of the city and

Greg Hopkins:

Like Tron.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. Or

Greg Hopkins:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

Or, yeah. Or, or you know, a bunch of people with headsets.

Greg Hopkins:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

The way you’re talking about it, it seems more like a kind of, almost like case management.

Greg Hopkins:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

But you’re suggesting that that data then becomes helpful for thinking about how do we find people who might commit crimes and give them the supports they need so that they don’t commit the crime anymore. Does that sound like…

Greg Hopkins:

Similar to that. But also it helps us realize what’s working, what’s not working. We have a lot of people that come up with different strategies to address gun violence. Um, and some of ’em do have a place in what we, you know, in this, in this, in its environment. But I also look at it as being prescriptive. Just like when we go to the doctor, you know, you go, the doctor’s not going to prescribe one medicine if you have multiple issues going on. And in these situations we have multiple drivers of, um, homicide of firearm related offenses. So Yeah. So it takes a coordinated, but a a little bit like, you know, a three dragon type process of, you know, how we address this.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So it almost reminds me of like, how do we cure cancer?

Greg Hopkins:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

Right? Because when you talk about cancer, you’re talking about hundreds of different factors and different kinds of cancer. So it sounds to me like, tell me if this is right. How do you cure gun violence? Well, there’s different types of gun violence and we have to think about different medicines for each of those kinds of gun violence. Does that sound right?

Greg Hopkins:

Right. So a simple solution is this, and I had a friend of mine, she told me this a while back, um, if I had like a sticky notes and I gave you a sticky note, you a sticky note, you a sticky note and told you put down what a what can you do to cure to, to alleviate gun violence? And you write down poverty. You look at, uh, you may say, um, housing, you may say peers, and you put it down at the table, all your sticky notes. I will reach into my backpack and put a gun on the table. What’s your first thing you’re gonna remove?

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>. The gun.

Greg Hopkins:

Exactly.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Greg Hopkins:

So the simple solution is legislation all the time. And with, with strong weapons violation legislation, we can make some significant reductions in crime here in the city of Richmond. The issue goes back to those three things I mentioned earlier. People places and opportunity. And so if we alleviate that opportunity, then we can start working on the people.

Rich Meagher:

Is that gonna happen?

Greg Hopkins:

I think it is now. <laugh>.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>. Okay. Okay. Uh, post-election. We’ll see. Right. I guess we’ll see. Yeah. Yeah. So you have this new coordinating office.

Greg Hopkins:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

Right? Chief Edwards seems when

Greg Hopkins:

mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

when people talk to him to be excited about some new tools and approaches. We may have this new political environment here in Virginia. Are we turning a corner here on gun violence?

Greg Hopkins:

I think so, man. We have what the, the, the next step is to get the community to buy into understanding what safe spaces mean. And some of the initiatives that we started with Chief Edwards and his team at RPD is crime prevention through environmental design assessments. So we look at lighting, we look at, you know, brushes. Yeah. Broken windows. And oftentimes people don’t know that, like businesses and homeowners could leverage care act money or enterprise money to make those repair necessary repairs. So you don’t necessarily have that broken window effect in your neighborhood.

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Greg Hopkins:

And it also gives community members and business associations, um, a sense of purpose that the city is being responsive. And so far we did like about 13 of those assessments. And, um, it’s been paying off real well far as community buy-in.

Rich Meagher:

So the community buy-in is good. Right? The efforts that you’re doing is good. Right. But at some point we need to have a target, right? Outputs

Greg Hopkins:

mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

and the numbers have to come down.

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

It can’t just be vibes. Right?

Greg Hopkins:

Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

So, so is there a, a number you’re targeting? What are the results look like here?

Greg Hopkins:

I mean, the results right now, we want to be below 54. The ending out this year may not get there. We’ll see. But moving forward in January, uh, 2026, our reduction, we want to see a substantial amount less than 15% of in homicides or shootings in the city of Richmond.

Rich Meagher:

And so, is there a timeline for these numbers, right? You’re saying, so next year

Greg Hopkins:

mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

your goal is to reduce homicides by 15%.

Greg Hopkins:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Right? Are there targets for broader gun violence as well?

Greg Hopkins:

Um, yeah. We wanna make sure individuals that, especially our youth and young adults. ’cause right now our ages increased dramatically over the last five years.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Greg Hopkins:

So the average offender is 29, the average, um, victim is at 34.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Greg Hopkins:

Um, normally that age group was a little bit lower than that. And, uh, right now we got started to see an increase the older folks participating in a violent crime. Our goal is to make sure those older folks that they do have, those that do have protective factors, they continue to work, not just get off work. And then, you know, if suddenly somebody bump into ’em, then they’re gonna shoot ’em. But the other piece is, you know, how do we measure what we put out there far as campaigning awareness, you know, some things that we’re working on, uh, with social media, um, that I believe will have some significant impact on what individuals see and how they can, um, think before something happened.

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Greg Hopkins:

It’s something we wanna try.

Rich Meagher:

Greg Hopkins is director of the Office of Gun Violence Prevention for the City of Richmond. Thanks, Greg.

Greg Hopkins:

Thank you, rich. I appreciate it.

Rich Meagher:

Coming up, we’ll shine our community spotlight on a nonprofit program. It’s part of the city’s gun violence prevention approach, although they don’t exactly see it that way themselves. That’s next on RVA’s Got Issues.

This is RVA’s Got Issues. I’m your host. Rich Meagher. City leaders often talk about afterschool programs for kids as part of the solution for gun violence, but how do the people who run those programs see it? To find out, I’m joined by Amir Elsayed. He’s the director of Strategic Partnerships and initiatives for NextUp RVA, a nonprofit that supports a network of afterschool and summer programs for Richmond youth. Amir, welcome.

Amir Elsayed:

Awesome. Thanks for having me, Rich.

Rich Meagher:

So NextUp is focused on three letters that I learned from you, right? OST. What is that and, and why is that important?

Amir Elsayed:

Yeah, so OST stands for out of school time. So one thing about, uh, youth in the state of Virginia is for every youth that attends after school, there are four that are not attending after school.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Amir Elsayed:

So there’s a, a big need for OST in our community. But out of school time is any, any sort of activity or enrichment that is occurring after the hours of school as well as during the summer.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And I, I think you gave me a stat, like, what is it, like 80% of time it’s spent outside of school?

Amir Elsayed:

Yeah. 80% of, uh, youth’s time is, is spent out of school. So it’s a, it’s an important time for youth. It’s the time that they’re continuing to learn, especially during the summer, um, as well as during the afterschool hours.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And so what do you provide during that time, that out-of-school time?

Amir Elsayed:

Yeah. So we’re actually an out-of-school time intermediary. NextUp is not a direct service provider, but our services are really through our network of providers. We have a network of 158 different organizations ranging from grassroots to larger organizations that provide programs during the afterschool hours as well as during the summer. Uh, so we do that in two main ways. The first being through what we call our middle school alliance. Um, and this is when thinking of kind of traditional after school happens during the school year, um, at seven different middle schools within the city of Richmond. And youth can kind of tap into a lot of their different interests, um, whether they’re career interests or hobbies through programs that have high enrichment. The other way is through our community based organizations, uh, that serve youth. And those organizations are happening in the community. It could be at churches, could be at different community centers, uh, but youth are recruited by different organizations, and we help fund those organizations. And that’s just something that we kind of took on in the year 2022 through what we call the Positive Youth Development Grant, uh, through the City of Richmond.

Rich Meagher:

Right. So you got these middle school programs, right, after school

Amir Elsayed:

Mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

And, uh, and summer programs. And those programs also extend out for, for kids up to the age of 19.

Amir Elsayed:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

Right. And so what, what do they get out of that? Right? What kinds of benefits come from this, uh, what do you call, like, quality OST or, or extended learning?

Amir Elsayed:

So it’s a lot of them tapping into what are their career interests. Um, so the VDOE has 16 career clusters, um, that each of our organizations is tied to. So even if they’re going to do something that they’re enjoying to do, at the end of the day, they are learning something.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And so I want to be clear about this, right? Is it the, the for everyone, there’s four who don’t have access to, to quality after school programs. Is that even with you folks out there doing all this work?

Amir Elsayed:

Yes, that’s correct.

Rich Meagher:

Okay. So there’s even more unmet need out there.

Amir Elsayed:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

That to fill one day.

Amir Elsayed:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So you, you told me you support all these programs, but they kind of fall into a, a couple of clear categories

Amir Elsayed:

mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

What were those categories?

Amir Elsayed:

Yeah, so the categories that all of our, uh, programs in our network fall into are leadership and career readiness, sports and health, arts and humanities, and stem. And we try to offer youth at the middle schools a diverse range of options.

Rich Meagher:

So one category you did not mention is gun violence prevention. Um, but you, you get some funding from the city, uh, Richmond’s Positive Youth Development Fund grant, that’s part of the city’s Gun Violence prevention framework. And on your website, you mentioned that the city connects a a 64% drop in youth gun violence since 2017 to outta school time programs like OSC programs like yours. So do you see yourself, you at NextUp RVA, as a gun violence prevention program?

Amir Elsayed:

Yeah, I think it’s definitely a preventative measure where the programs that are within our network, um, having youth engaged during the hours of where there might be risky behavior, um, is, is super important. And I don’t wanna say we’re the direct causation of that drop, but we’re a part of it. Right. It’s, it’s a part of the overall story that if youth at an early age are in line with high enrichment productive activities that, um, they’re less susceptible to engage in those risky behaviors.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. And so I, I want to kind of ask this a different way just to make sure I’m, I’m clear on this, right? So I get you’re saying like, we don’t have the data that says one minute and after school means like 5% less risk or anything like that. But the overall story that the city is telling, right? Kids spending time in a, in a STEM class, like playing robotics with Legos is a kid less likely to be shot or to shoot somebody, right? That, that makes sense to you folks?

Amir Elsayed:

A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Rich Meagher:

And so to kind of follow up on this, and there’s, there’s some skepticism nationally about afterschool programs

Amir Elsayed:

mm-hmm.

Rich Meagher:

Uh, youth programs more generally and gun violence, right? That yeah, sure, it’s good for kids, um, but it’s not targeted enough to those people who are going to commit gun violence to really have an impact there. I mean, what’s your feel for that kind of argument?

Amir Elsayed:

Um, yeah. I would argue that it, after school and outta school time, um, as well as what they’re doing during the summer is a part of just the holistic child. It’s part of their whole experience. For them to be, uh, engaged in opportunities that are gonna lead them to their career interests, um, as well as just their overall hobbies. And some students just want to have fun. Like, let me like, let me have fun after school too.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s not so bad, right?

Amir Elsayed:

Yeah. There’s nothing wrong with having fun. That’s important. So it’s, it’s overall the story of who a youth becomes is a lot of that has to do with OST and if you learn about something while you’re having some fun Yeah. I’m not gonna complain about that.

Rich Meagher:

Amir Elsayed is Director of Strategic Partnerships and Initiatives for NextUp RVA. Thanks, Amir.

Amir Elsayed:

Thank you.

Rich Meagher:

That’s our show. Thanks to our guests, Greg Hopkins and Amir Elsayed. Tell us about your issues by visiting our website, RVAsGotissues.vpm.org, or send us an email at [email protected]. Be sure to leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Rachel Dwyer script editing on this episode by Nicki Stein and Rachel Dwyer. Audio mix by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Shawn Freude is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VPM’s Chief Content Officer. Special thanks to Dean Mirshahi. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.