With gun violence down in St. Paul, city and community leaders said Friday they’re going to continue the trend this summer with programs to keep young people learning, working and having fun.

Nonfatal shootings have dropped 64 percent so far this year, compared to the same time in 2021, and homicides have also decreased year-over-year.

St. Paul announced Project PEACE in July 2022, which is ongoing. The aim has been to reduce retaliation for street crime by connecting individuals and families impacted by gun violence with mental health support and other holistic intervention services. Part of the effort is the police department’s Operation ASPIRE, which has officers working on prevention, intervention and enforcement involving gun violence.

Brooke Blakey, director of St. Paul’s Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS), said it’s important to talk about the positive work that’s being done, rather than only highlighting various organizations’ preventive work when a tragedy happens.

Public safety is the job of police, the fire department, Parks and Recreation, the libraries, ONS and community partners, said Mayor Melvin Carter at the kickoff gathering for what the city is calling “Safe Summer 2024.”

When Carter created ONS in 2022, the goal was balancing “investments in emergency response with an array of community-led strategies focused on addressing the root causes of crime,” he said. “Our neighbors know what our neighborhoods need best.”

Preliminary numbers show there were 29 nonfatal shootings in St. Paul as of Monday, compared to 49 during the same time last year, 76 in 2022 and 81 in 2021, according to the police department. There have been 10 homicides in St. Paul this year; there were 15 at this time last year.

Youth programming around St. Paul

Among the community members who talked about their work Friday was Natalia Davis of Take a Breath LLC. She’s hosted healing circles at several St. Paul recreation centers and elsewhere, where she teaches young people breathing techniques to manage grief and anxiety and deal with trauma.

This summer, she’ll be at Safe Summer Nights in St. Paul to teach breathing techniques to bring about calmness. Safe Summer Nights started in 2014, intended for St. Paul police and residents to get to know each other over a meal.

At the Black Youth Healing Arts Center at 643 Virginia St. in St. Paul, where Davis is artistic director, she said there will be free summer programming like yoga, gardening, sewing and Afro dance classes.

Johnny Allen Jr. is founder and executive director of the JK Movement, a nonprofit youth engagement organization that works out of the Jimmy Lee Rec Center. Their free summer programs include SAQ (Speed, Agility, Quickness) for middle and high school students; a digital art class for second and third graders; a Monday through Thursday, 4-7 p.m. program for middle and high schoolers; and career programs for young people about commercial real estate, construction, music and more.

There’s also St. Paul’s Right Track, where city residents who are 14 to 21 can get a summer job, Blakey said.

People can get more information through organization websites or social media, and there’s also outreach to get people signed up.

“They really do engage with community … for those individuals that are in that gap, that aren’t necessarily the ones who are going to go to a website, or the people we see in the neighborhoods who need opportunities,” said Blakey, who was at the White House on Wednesday with other people in the violence prevention field to further develop a national collaborative approach.

St. Paul’s ONS awarded $478,800 in gun violence prevention grants last year to community organizations — three have received funding and others are in the process of signing contracts. Another $400,000 is earmarked for grants this year and the application process is due to open soon, according to the city.

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