Milwaukee leaders make pitch for funding Ceasefire, a violence interruption program

Milwaukee officials brought their pitch for funding Ceasefire, a violence interruption program, to business and nonprofit leaders in the Greater Milwaukee Committee during a discussion of the city's overarching violence prevention plan.

Ceasefire is based on the Cure Violence model, which involves training and paying trusted insiders of a community to anticipate where violence will occur and intervene before it erupts. Those interrupters typically work in an eight-to-10 block "hot spot" zone in neighborhoods.

Milwaukee will launch Ceasefire this year in the Old North Milwaukee neighborhood with $280,000 in city funding and $100,000 from Bader Philanthropies.

Reggie Moore, director of the city's Office of Violence Prevention, said the city would need another $280,000 to bring Ceasefire to a second neighborhood this year.

"Our goal is to ensure that the community has the resources, and when I say community not just the folks outside this room, but all of us are involved in this issue," Moore told the Greater Milwaukee Committee Monday.

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