Your turn: Dozens of anti-crime initiatives are helping Rockford make progress

Over the last two weeks, I've written OpEds that have talked about our efforts to improve our neighborhoods and spur economic development.

Today, I'll highlight some of our crime reduction initiatives. Our crime issues did not start overnight, and they will not be solved overnight.

However, I believe we have strategies in place that will make a significant impact.

And, we are already beginning to see results with a 38% reduction in homicides, as well as decreases in violent crime, robberies, property crimes, shots fired and aggravated assaults in 2022.

More:Your turn: Strengthening Illinois gun laws will lead to safer communities

Below are some of our initiatives focusing on prevention and intervention.

Family Peace Center: Opened the state's first Family Peace Center for victims of domestic and sexual violence.

Educators' team: Created an educators' team to develop training and assistance to educators to identify and respond to children in crisis from domestic and sexual violence.

Summer program: Developed a collaborative summer program with Rockford Park District to identify and mitigate trauma experienced by participants. It includes strategies to address immediate and long-term harms in order to prevent future violence.

Navigators: Worked with Rockford Park District and YMCA to support embedding navigators into afterschool youth recreation sites to connect youth and their families to additional services and resources.

Handle With Care: Collaborated with Rockford Public Schools to create a notification system to provide school staff with notice that a student may have been exposed to a traumatic event.

Diversion program: Implemented a 21-week intervention/diversion program for youth and their families to receive group and individual support.

Human Trafficking Response Team: Established a Human Trafficking Response Team to identify, refer, investigate and prosecute human trafficking in Winnebago County.

Camp Hope: Launched Camp Hope for youth to help them process experiences of being exposed to domestic and/or sexual violence in a trauma-informed way to help with healing and finding hope.

No Entry program: Launched a five-year initiative to address racial and ethnic disparities and reduce the number of youth entering the justice system with a new no entry program.

Re-entry program: Partnered with Winnebago County to establish a program to identify and deter members of the community who were at a heightened risk of committing future acts of crime and gun violence.

Illinois Heals: Established a program for Family Peace Center staff to connect victims of crimes and their families to systems and opportunities to heal.

Mentor training: Implemented a train-the-trainer program to help staff of youth serving agencies identify, respond and redirect behaviors, beliefs and actions that may lead to violence against women, girls and marginalized communities and encourage them to be positive mentors to their peers.

Youth programs: Supported youth programs, such as Comprehensive Community Solutions, 815 Alive, New Genres Art Space and Boys and Girls Club, to provide youth with positive experiences and outlets, as well as reduce the number of youth entering the criminal justice system.

Workforce development program: Partnered with a local minority contractor to hire at-risk young adults to gain job skills by building sidewalks in neighborhoods across our community.

Crime reduction programs: Provided funds to both Northwest Rockford Neighbors, Inc., and Community Life Center to establish youth programming to help with crime reduction and violence prevention.

Here's some of the work we've done in the area of law enforcement.

Officers: Increased our authorized police force to more than 300 officers.

License plate readers: Purchased more than 100 mobile and stationary license plate readers.

Cameras: Quadrupled the number of cameras in high traffic and high crime area.

Gun detection: Purchased gunshot detection software.

Social analytic software: Instituted social analytic software to track criminals' use of social media.

Body-worn cameras: Equipped each officer with a body worn camera and each vehicle with a dash camera.

Partnerships: Continued strong partnerships with local agencies, including Loves Park Police, Park District Police and the Sheriff's Department.

Relationships: Strengthened our relationship with the State Police, FBI, DEA and ATF.

Crisis Co-Response Team: Created the Crisis Co-Response Team, which couples law enforcement withsocial workers, to respond to mental health crisis calls.

Additional strategies include:

Early childhood education: Doubled the number of children in Early Childhood Education, as well as doubled the number of hours Head Start students are in the classroom.

Business accelerator: Supported Think Big to create a small business incubator for minority- and women-owned businesses.

Scholarships: Created the Rockford Promise NIU partnership to provide any child who lives in Rockford and graduates from RPS with a 3.0 GPA free tuition for four years at NIU.

Neighborhood improvement: Launched a Neighborhood Improvement Initiative to bring community resources and services directly to six neighborhoods negatively impacted by violent crime.

Cannabis fund: Designated the 3% local sales tax on recreational cannabis to support various programs for economic and business development; education; youth programming; job training; health; or other financial assistance to individuals, businesses, and communities within the City that have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis-related laws.

I know we still have more work to do, but I'm proud of our success so far. In 2023, we will continue to focus on traditional enforcement efforts, while also working to prevent future violence with prevention and intervention strategies.

We are working hard to fight violent crime every day; however, we know we cannot do it alone.

We need every person and every organization to fight for our community together. Please find a way to get involved. Talk to neighbors. Encourage your employer to join the effort.

We can achieve great things when we work together.

Tom McNamara is the mayor of Rockford.