With teary eyes and anguish in her tone, Amanda Goldsmith recalled the times and ways gun violence took a heavy toll on her life, during a Zoom interview.
She began witnessing gun violence at just 4 years old. She got shot at 17. She lost her partner’s brother just two weeks shy of his 18th birthday to gun suicide.
Goldsmith was 17 when she rejected the advances of a 22-year-old man, who then stalked and shot her. The bullet hit her spine, piercing her stomach before exiting her body. She lost her left kidney, half her large intestine and her descending colon. Extensive physical therapy was needed after the attack.
“I flatlined that day and after 12 hours of surgery, I survived,” said Goldsmith, 41, the survivor membership co-head of the Alachua County chapter of Moms Demand Action, a national grassroots movement with chapters in every state that pushes for public safety laws to protect people from gun violence.
The U.S. Surgeon General declared gun violence a public health crisis for the entire country in June — almost a year after the city of Gainesville had declared the same thing.
There were 14 homicides in the city last year — the Gainesville Police Department reported that 13 were due to gun violence.
In the first six months of this year, GPD’s public information officer Brandon Hatzel said there have been eight homicides.
This past May, the city launched Impact GNV, a new community-based gun violence prevention program. This is the third gun violence prevention program in Gainesville since 2018. Will the third time be the charm?
What Is Impact GNV?
Impact GNV is the city’s latest strategy to help prevent gun violence. The city announced this community-based initiative in May as a way to “connect neighbors experiencing on-the-ground needs with city and community resources that can help.”
Gainesville City Manager Cynthia W. Curry developed the program, according to the city’s website, along with policy direction from the city commission. Curry declined WUFT’s request for an interview, directing all inquiries to the city’s Gun Violence Intervention Program manager, Brittany Coleman.
“We are responsible for taking a public health approach,” Coleman said, “to reducing community-based violence and gun violence in our city.”
Impact GNV, under the direction of Gainesville Fire Rescue, is jointly headed by GFR’s Community Health Director Brandy Stone along with Coleman.
Impact GNV has partnered up with other initiatives. One partnership is with the B.O.L.D. (Brave, Overt Leaders of Distinction) program. B.O.L.D. had been run by the Gainesville Police Department until May of this year, when it was moved under the direction of Gainesville Fire Rescue. B.O.L.D. provides mentors for youth to steer them toward education, employment and housing.
Another partner is the Willie Mae Stokes Community Center, which serves Alachua County youth through community events, mentoring programs and outreach. The community center was contracted to provide services under the city’s previous gun violence prevention initiative, the Violence Interrupters Program.
A main goal of Impact GNV is to involve youth in the gun violence conversation. To accomplish this, the city formed the Gainesville One Nation One Project Youth Steering Committee for youth ages 16-24.
The goal of the committee is to make recommendations to the city and Impact GNV on which types of prevention efforts have been working, what hasn’t been working and next steps for including youth in this conversation. They are looking for new members. Members of the committee are compensated for their time.
Above: Gainesville gun violence intervention program manager Brittany Coleman discusses the city's initiatives to reduce gun violence in the community. (Jordan Ramos/WUFT News)
Following the Money
Impact GNV is funded, WUFT reported in February, by the Gainesville City Commission, which reallocated $150,000 from the American Rescue Plan Act for gun violence prevention programs.
The American Rescue Plan Act, signed in March 2021 provides federal funding to local governments to make an economic recovery from the effects of COVID-19, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Eligible costs for the American Rescue Plan must be incurred between March 3, 2021, and Dec. 31, 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Originally, $400,000 from the American Rescue Plan was intended for gun violence prevention allocation. However, Gainesville Regional Utility (GRU) had attempted to cut $15.3 million in funds from its Government Services Contribution to the city. This left a $1.4 million hole in Gainesville’s budget, the Independent Florida Alligator reported in February.
GRU’s efforts to slash its annual contribution to the city’s general fund ultimately failed, the Gainesville Sun reported. GRU then agreed to charge the government up to $218,000 for fiber and up to $5.8 million for IT services to make up for the loss.
The city allocated the other $250,000 elsewhere, the Independent Florida Alligator reported, spurring questions about the city’s commitment to gun violence prevention.
Violence Interrupters Program
Gainesville is just one of hundreds of cities across the country that started gun violence prevention programs after the Parkland High School shooting in 2018. While there were some programs before then, one of the biggest gun violence prevention programs in the city prior to this year was the Violence Interrupters Program that started in 2021.
This program, under the direction of former GPD chief of police Tony Jones, treated violence as a public-health epidemic, like Impact GNV. It aimed to identify high-risk individuals and areas. It also would deploy trained individuals to prevent violence and steer people towards education or other alternatives, the city’s website said.
Mediators, or “interrupters,” are trained and placed residents with neighborhood groups to identify and help people who were at higher risks for gun violence.
The program received $240,000 in grants to train and buy equipment for the mediators in 2021. It’s unclear what the program accomplished while under GPD.
The program is now folded into Impact GNV, under contract with the Willie Mae Stokes Community Center.
A Community Alliance
Impact GNV is a part of an alliance with the city of Gainesville, Alachua County and Santa Fe College. Each entity has a different role to play in what makes the alliance work.
The role of the city is to leverage available resources among the various city departments involved, including Gainesville Fire Rescue, GPD, housing and community development, according to the alliance’s memorandum of understanding.
Santa Fe acts as a convener and keeps track of the budget and meeting invitations. Santa Fe also hosts the meetings, which are open to the public.The college offers its services in-kind and does not contribute financially to the alliance.
Alachua County utilizes the expertise of its various organizations, such as the Victim Services and Rape Crisis Center, the Alachua County Crisis Center and Alachua County Fire Rescue.
The county also gives funds based on the agreed-upon program budget, according to the memorandum of understanding.
The alliance held its second monthly meeting on July 10 to mainly discuss grant opportunities for grassroots organizations that want to prevent gun violence.
However, some of the time was spent addressing attendees' questions about the main purpose of the alliance, which is to ensure area gun violence prevention organizations are on the same page.
“We want to make sure to share info with each other to avoid overlap,” said Asha Brunings, the Interim Executive Director of Organizational and Community Engagement at Santa Fe College.
Jaye Athy, the Community Agency Partnership Program (CAPP) manager, introduced the alliance to potential grant opportunities. The CAPP program provides funding to Alachua County non-profit organizations that help reduce poverty, according to the Alachua County Website.
The grants, Athy said, are “not quite structured because we want to hear what the community thinks on what will work.”
And while Athy introduced some reimbursem*nt grants to the alliance, many didn’t like the idea of them.
Chanae Jackson, who lost friends and family to gun violence, spoke about the difficulties for smaller organizations to reimburse money rather than receive the grant upfront and added that it's been especially difficult for Black-led organizations to receive these grants.
“It sometimes feels like the focus is on institutions,” Jackson said, “and not the people.”
These grants are meant for grassroots organizations that serve people and communities at or below 150% of the poverty level. The federal poverty level for a family of four is $31,200, according to Healthcare.gov.
After the meeting, Athy discussed other grant opportunities for smaller organizations. They also discussed providing accounting and legal services to these nonprofits to help them.
Still, some in attendance were left feeling less than content. Chanae Jackson is a statewide organizer for Florida for All, a coalition of six state-based civic organizations. She said she is tired of having these meetings and feels like the solutions aren’t happening fast enough.
“We’ve had these conversations since 2016,” Jackson said. “I believe we can get in the right direction, but we’re not as far as we should be.”
The alliance’s next meeting will be on Wednesday evening and is open to the public. Those who wish to attend the 5 p.m. meeting at the Thomas Coward Auditorium located at 224 SE 24th Street can use this hyperlink to sign-up, as there are only seats for 50 people in person. Athy will be discussing more grant opportunities during the meeting.
Would it work?
Impact GNV is still in its early stages as an organization. But it might be heading in the right direction toward success, according to research.
Successful gun violence prevention programs take an anti-epidemic strategy, “a three-pronged approach of related elements to stop violent behavior from being transmitted: identification, interruption, and behavioral change,” wrote Irshad Altheimer, director of Public Safety Initiatives at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in the working paper “Community Violence Intervention Effectiveness on Gun Violence.”
The first step in this strategy is to identify areas where there are higher rates of violence. This helps determine people who may be at higher risk of gun violence, according to the article. With the help of the city’s police department, Impact GNV is working to identify the areas of town that are at higher risks of gun violence, Coleman said.
The next step is to hire violence interrupters who will work with high-risk individuals as mentors and interveners, building relationships before violence happens. Partnering with the Willie Mae Stokes Community Center, Impact GNV is providing violence interruption training to a yet-unknown number of people. Stone said they’ve conducted four training sessions so far this year and have received positive feedback from the people receiving the training.
The last step is to hire behavioral outreach workers to redirect the behavior of people toward education, employment and housing.
Impact GNV is providing these types of resources with its B.O.L.D. partnership.
Although Jackson wants the solutions to gun violence to go faster, she does believe that Impact GNV can be successful.
“The main difference is Brittany Coleman,” Jackson said. “I do believe she is a person who is trustworthy.”
The Everytown Survivor Network is a nationwide community of gun violence survivors who work together to end gun violence. Anyone who has been impacted by gun violence in any way can text SURVIVOR to 644-33 to connect with the network and find resources near you.
If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, you can reach the national crisis hotline at 800-273-8255 or by dialing 988.
Coleman is offering free gun locks to anyone who asks. Those interested can email her. The city has also provided a list of various gun violence prevention resources.
