Ceasefire Halifax works in hot spots of the city with people who are involved in high-risk behaviours. The idea is to try to stop violence before it erupts on the streets, by treating violence as an epidemic.
The program started in Halifax nearly five years ago, following a record year of homicides and shootings in the city. At the time, Halifax was the first Canadian city to adopt the model, but the future of the program is now in jeopardy.
That’s because the Ceasefire program is only a pilot project and funding runs out next year.
“The challenge ahead of us is to continue that work without interrupted funding. That’s the concern now,” said Frank Perez, the national director of Ceasefire.
Perez was in Halifax this week to train local members of the organization. He says the Ceasefire model, which originally started in Chicago, works.
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Perez says the program hasn’t just been implemented in Halifax, but in many cities across Canada, the United States and seven other countries around the world.
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“The world is grasping onto the idea that we can no longer treat violence from the criminal justice perspective or from the moralistic perspective but rather from the health perspective and that’s what we’re doing,” Perez said during an interview with Global News. “We treat violence just like we would Aids, Ebola, Cholera, any other disease that’s out there.”
The concern is without a new funding commitment, the work that Ceasefire has done over the last few years will not be able to sustain itself and the violence may return.
“If you stop vaccinating after any disease there’s a likelihood the disease will come back and since this is a health model, we want to continue doing the work so that we don’t take those kinds of chances and the disease of violence ends up coming back,” said Perez.
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Me Lucas, the project manager of Ceasefire Halifax, says funding for the program is set to run out before June 2017. Officials have been meeting to discuss the future of the Ceasefire program, but so far, no funding commitment has been secured.
The need for more money comes after the municipality saw the fatal shootings of four young men within a few weeks of each other.
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“The feds (federal government) have a habit of starting great programs and then walking away from them,” said Halifax Mayor Mike Savage.
Savage believes the Ceasefire program works and says if the city has to be a part of the solution to keep Ceasefire in the region, it will be.
“We will not let this die,” said Savage. “The last thing we should be worrying about right now is whose jurisdiction it is. This is a program, I think, that’s working and we got to find a way to keep it.”
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