KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – The City of Kalamazoo now has a game plan to curb gun violence, and someone to help put it in place.
City Commissioners got their look at the plan at their meeting on Monday evening, June 5 while many anti-gun violence activists, who had just held a rally in Bronson Park looked on.
Jen Heymoss, the V.P. of Initiatives at the Kalamazoo Community Foundation calls it the “Blueprint for Peace” and says she has spent the last two years working with community groups to draft it.
She went onto say that it’s a complex, long term plan that treats gun violence as a public health problem, aimed at prevention of what she called “upstream interventions”.
Heymoss says the plan essentially calls for community improvements to ease the tensions, poverty and illegal access to firearms that instigates gun violence, which she says takes everyone pitching in to help.
And she says the community is already off to a good start.
Heymoss says now that they have a plan, implementation comes next. Commissioners told Heymoss that reducing gun violence remains their top priority and pledged to do their part to execute the plan.
reporting from John McNeill
