After hosting a symposium in June about gun violence prevention, Seattle City Councilmember Maritza Rivera on Tuesday introduced a resolution to pursue an evidence-based strategy that has seen significant reductions in gun violence in cities across the country.
It will be up to Mayor Katie Wilson to include $418,000 in the city’s next budget for a two-year pilot program employing a consultant with the National Network for Safer Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
The network’s strategy calls for “focused deterrence” of a small number of people committing most of a city’s shootings and homicides — and unlike other intervention programs, includes law enforcement as a key partner alongside community groups and outreach workers.
Rivera said she’s been working with the mayor’s office on gun violence prevention, but Wilson has not agreed to authorize the expenditure for a network consultant. Voice and email messages sent to a spokesperson for Wilson were not returned Tuesday.
However, in a statement posted on social media Tuesday, the mayor wrote: The data shows us what works — community violence interruption and focused deterrence, investing in public safety as well as public health, and building a resilient economy with good jobs and shared prosperity."
Wilson also said she plans to announce a "comprehensive, focused gun violence prevention strategy next week, as well as investments toward reducing violence in her proposed budget in the coming weeks.
Rivera and Wilson were at a news conference at Yesler Terrace in April when gunfire erupted. And while no one was hurt, “the young children who were there quickly recognized the sounds of gunfire. … I’m told this is not an uncommon occurrence.”
“We have lost students from Ingraham, Garfield, Rainier Beach and West Seattle (high schools), with some of these killings still unsolved,” Rivera said. “Families are mourning their children, and many are still waiting for answers. It’s unconscionable.”
Rivera also referenced this past weekend’s Belltown shootings, when six people were shot, three fatally, in 24 hours, as well as July's Bite of Seattle shootings and gun violence in Beacon Hill, Capitol Hill, Pioneer Square and on Aurora Avenue North, the latter of which is largely tied to sex trafficking.
“We are, all across the city, angry and frustrated. Our communities are understandably scared,” she said. “If there’s a strategy out there that we have not tried, that has been successful in significantly reducing shootings, why wouldn’t we want that here?”
Rivera said the National Network for Safer Communities was recommended in a city auditor’s report from 2015. Last year, a second auditor’s report found Seattle “still did not have a comprehensive approach for addressing gun violence,” she said.
Cities that have used the network’s strategy have seen a 40% to 60% reduction in gun violence, and people from Philadelphia and Baltimore came to the June symposium and shared their experiences with the strategy, Rivera said.
According to the network’s website, focused deterrence involves community members with “moral authority” over group members delivering a credible moral message against violence, with “group” referring to any social network whose members commit violent crimes together. All gangs, crews, sets, posses, blocs and other associations are groups.
After the moral message from credible messengers, police then put groups on notice about the consequences of further group-involved violence for the group as a whole. Support and outreach providers make a genuine offer for help for those who want it, the website says. There’s usually a face-to-face meeting with group members and the strategy’s partners.
The intervention model “fosters internal social pressure within groups that deters violence, elevates clear community standards against violence, offers group members an ‘honorable exit’ from committing acts of violence, provides a supported path for those who want to change and reserves strategic, group-based sanctions only for situations where group-involved violence persists,” according to the network.
Committee chairperson Bob Kettle said Seattle’s current community safety efforts — including violence interrupters and gun violence prevention work being done by community organizations like Urban Family and Community Passageways — are “siloed” in the human services department, separate from public safety entities like police and fire.
A comprehensive approach to reducing gun violence will “be inclusive,” with city and county departments, including police and prosecutors, the Center for Children and Youth Justice, community service providers and neighborhood councils all involved in the effort, he said.
Councilmember Rob Saka called Rivera’s resolution “the next step in our collective journey” to better address gun violence.
He noted the 2025 city auditor’s report found the city had made significant progress in public safety, with an increase in police recruitment and hiring and decreases in burglaries, property crime, most violent crime, homelessness and fentanyl overdoses.
But the “one unique outlier” that persists is gun violence, he said, with the auditor finding “a significant increase in gun violence over the past decade, including a sustained, postpandemic increase in shootings across the city.”
Rivera, Kettle and Saka all voted in favor of recommending that the resolution be adopted by the full City Council at its Sept. 15 meeting. Councilmember Eddie Lin abstained.
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