it's a growing and National problem and leaders from some of New Jersey's biggest cities are coming together to fight it gun violence now responsible for an unprecedented number of deaths across our state and Country City officials are turning to community violence intervention programs as a means of interrupting cycles of chronic violence working with residents who are at highest risk to save lives and build safer communities senior correspondent Joanna gagas reports the trauma in a community the ripping of our and straining of our of our of our fabric it has an incalculable impact when when violence happens in our communities U.S senator Cory Booker was joined today by Congressman Donald Payne Jr and Newark mayor Roz Baraka in a round table talking about the need for more violence intervention programs in New Jersey's Urban cities young people as young as eight nine and ten talking about the dress that they want to be buried in at that age because they don't see a future they see their cousins their friends their neighbors getting mowed down and they just feel it's a matter of time for them the panel made up of urban Mayors from around the state along with Community organizations that have had success in addressing violence as a public health issue the city of Newark standing as a model for the kind of programs that have had real impact reducing rates of violent crime specifically the newer Community street team or ncst you have to have data you can't just like we have a lot of presumptions about what's going on and ideas about what's going to reduce violence and crime and so forth and so on but you actually have to have the actual data so the the way we deal with covet is the same way you deal with violence and crime in your community you know exactly where it's happening at who is happening to when Baraka was uh on the council he introduced violence as a public health issue right and so so much of our work that we do is at the intersection of Public Health and Public Safety you know within CST our high-risk intervention Team 25 individuals right now leverage their relationship capital in neighborhoods to intervene and prevent retaliatory violence in conflicts it's it's phenomenal ncst recently received funding to serve as a national model for violence intervention programs and it's that funding piece at the Forefront of many of these mayor's Minds is there a way for you to funnel information down to us through the Watson Institute so that we as Urban Mayors would know the resources that are available because they're fund and available specifically to opening a violence and Trauma prevention unit within our communities the federal government right now through cbipi is funding like three National Training and technical assistance Partners so we'd love to make some introductions some connections on that piece this is the challenge is getting those resources other programs shared their best practices for treating trauma before it turns into violence like Pei kids in Trenton what we found out is that those kids who were committing these fences were also the victims of community violence who had this untreated trauma and who were acting out because there were root issues that needed to be dealt with we've been able to develop those Outreach and then tie that to this larger Coalition that includes law enforcement hospitals Community providers so mental health substance use disorder treatment Career Development programs we are all sitting around the table and assessing how can we bring our resources to Bear together one key takeaway for the Mayors here the Attorney General's office is allocating another 15 million dollars for violence intervention programs that's in addition to the 40 million they've already allocated the Mayors here can compete for those funds in Newark I'm Joanna gagis NJ Spotlight news thank you