506 Jobs Available In At-Risk Youth Program Includes Crown Heights

Following today’s gun violence prevention community meeting for North and Central Brooklyn, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo today announced 506 jobs will be available for at-risk youth in seven ZIP codes that make up the zone. The ZIP codes are: 11206, 11213, 11216, 11221, 11222, 11233 and 11238.

The state will provide funding to create 254 summer jobs for youth aged 15 to 24 in this zone to keep them employed until the start of school this year. The State is also partnering with the Consortium for Worker Education to provide long-term jobs for 252 young people who are out of school and live in this zone.

“Gun violence has claimed lives, broken families and destroyed communities across New York, and it demands our immediate attention,” Governor Cuomo said. “That’s why we’re creating thousands of jobs as part of a multi-pronged strategy to reduce violence and improve the state’s communities. These meetings bring important stakeholders to the table in a local setting to produce concrete solutions to these critical problems.”

At the first gun violence prevention community meeting last week, the State and community leaders agreed on several initiatives to respond to the ongoing gun violence in the East Brooklyn community. The initiatives focus on engaging the most at-risk youth in cluster zones in employment and community activities, hiring new community-based gun violence interrupters, as well as assistance for mental health and substance use disorders. This was the first in a series of community meetings that will be held in emerging gun violence hot spots across the state.

Governor Cuomo issued Executive Order No. 211 declaring gun violence a disaster emergency and requiring New York State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services to compile incident-level data provided by major police departments on a weekly basis so that it may be used by the newly established Office of Gun Violence Prevention to track emerging gun violence hot spots and deploy resources to areas most in need.

In today’s meeting for North and Central Brooklyn, specific steps to combat gun violence included:

• Creating 506 jobs for youth, including 254 summer jobs and 252 long-term jobs placed by CWE;
• Establishing summer programs for youth, including 100 dedicated events at Shirley Chisholm State Park as announced last week;
• Hiring new violence interveners to work at existing community intervention programs; and
• Expanding community services and assistance for mental health support, substance abuse treatment and family crisis intervention.

On July 6, Governor Cuomo declared the first-in-the-nation gun violence disaster emergency as part of a new, comprehensive strategy to build a safer New York. This new strategy treats gun violence as a public health crisis, using short-term solutions to manage the immediate gun violence crisis and reduce the shooting rate, as well as long-term solutions that focus on community-based intervention and prevention strategies to break the cycle of violence. The disaster emergency allows the State to expedite money and resources to communities so they can begin targeting gun violence immediately.