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Black males in the state of Connecticut were about 30 times more likely to be killed by gun violence in comparison to White residents from 2020-2023, according to data shared by the Commission on Community Gun Violence Intervention and Prevention.
In their June meeting held on Wednesday morning, the committee received a report from Susan Logan, director of the Office of Injury and Violence Prevention at the state Department of Public Health. The report highlighted trends in gun deaths and other violent crimes in the state from 2020 through 2023, showing that Black males experienced just under 31 homicides by firearm per 100,000 people during the time frame, compared to 9 for Hispanic men and less than one for White males.
“For me the data was striking, and I’m really concerned particularly about Black males,” said Jodi Hill-Lilly, Commissioner of the Department of Children and Families. “I’m interested to see how the data drives interventions, and are we targeting where we see the most need.”
Carl Schiessl, senior director of regulatory advocacy for the Connecticut Hospital Association, spoke about initiatives coming out of the General Assembly to try to address both gun violence and its root causes.
He described Public Act No. 24-151, known in the General Assembly as the Bond Act, which creates a pilot program to decrease the levels of concentrated poverty in the state by creating and implementing a 10-year plan for participating census tracts where poverty is concentrated. Part of the program’s approach is establishing a working group tasked with developing a guide document that lays out a framework for how to mitigate the effects of concentrated poverty, including focusing on crime within the census tracts such as gun violence. All work will be overseen by a new office in the Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD).
Commission member Jacquelyn Santiago Nazario, CEO of the Compass Youth Collaborative, applauded the efforts of the legislature to look for solutions.
“Violence has two root causes, poverty and racism, and when we look at the staggering number of black males affected by poverty, I think it’s something that we have to look at,” she said. “I think it’s an opportunity for us to not only look at the census data, but also an opportunity for us to share some of the data that we reviewed this morning to really make that point. But we also have to begin to look at what an ecosystem of healing looks like for us because we need to have a multipronged approach to this.”