Mayor Sarno and Chief of Staff Tom Ashe sat down with State Representative Carlos Gonzalez, Chair of the Joint Committee on Public Safety and Homeland Security, City Councilor Lavar Click-Bruce, Chair of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee, Bishop Talbert Swann II, President of the Greater Springfield NAACP, and Brother Johnnie Muhammad from the Mission Inc., for an initial meeting to discuss supporting, enhancing and expanding the various successful intervention, preventative, and proactive outreach programs and initiatives in the community that help address the root causes of some criminal activities before they become violent.
Mayor Sarno states, “I want to thank those community and religious leaders for reaching out and meeting with me to continue our discussions on our collaborative efforts towards a plan of action to enhance and expand our preventative and intervention measures and initiatives within the community to curb this uptick of violent criminal activity. We had a very productive meeting and all agreed that it is important that we bring our community partners together and marshal all of our resources to end this streak of violence and address the root causes for this violence. Together, we are committed to ending this recent uptick of violence and supporting our public safety efforts. Our successful and recognized community partners, including Bishop Talbert Swan and the NAACP, Solomon Bayman and ROCA, and Brother Johnnie Muhammad from the Mission, Inc., all of whom my administration has worked closely with by supporting and funding their community outreach efforts, will continue to be our ‘boots on the ground’. This group has agreed to continue to meet to expand and include additional community stakeholders, partners and clergy in future meetings, as we have done previously. It is important that we get together to share information and resources on outreach and intervention programs and initiatives, which they can bring back to their respective agencies and organizations and share within the community.”
In addition, Mayor Sarno calls on the public for their assistance. Anyone with any information to share with the Springfield Police Department can do so anonymously via the Text-A-Tip program.
Text-A-Tip
- Text the word ‘SOLVE’ and the information you wish to share to ‘CRIMES (2-7-4-6-3-7)’
- Texte la palabra ‘SOLVE’ con su mensaje al numero ‘2-7-4-6-3-7’
