Throughout the year, Prince William County has experienced one gun tragedy after another. Whether it’s at schools, residential neighborhoods, or at local businesses, there has been a disturbing trend of incidents, leading to many being injured or killed. Community members are speaking out, creating petitions to change open gun carry ordinances, and by strategic organizing, they are challenging elected officials to solve the issue.

This Tuesday at the Board of County Supervisors meeting, the Office of Executive Management will make a presentation on the newly proposed Community Safety Initiative. The CSI is a strategic plan to use data driven statistics and community engagement to determine strategic priorities and focused action plans. It will also seek to implement practices that are culturally competent and respond to the impact of trauma on individuals.

The CSI Implementation Plan will be developed in the following steps:

• Build Community Collaboration
• Engage the residents and address gaps in curbing gun incidents
• Create a roadmap and action plan as a framework to foster postitive changes
• Ensure holistic approaches
• Measure success by identifying and tracking performance metrics
• Create sustainable processes and culturally literate messages to demonstrate the CSI value

In addition, the plan is to create a CSI Advisory Committee, with a Community Safety Initiative Manager to oversee the CSI process. This will include potentially cracking down on issues such as active violence prevention, panhandling, and human trafficking.