CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Last year Charlotte saw the highest number of homicides in the past decade.
Now the Charlotte City Council is hoping to stop the violent trend before we pass a new, deadly record.
In a meeting Monday evening, city council members described what a new crime prevention program could look like.
It's called a Violent Crime Interrupter Coalition and the city and the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department believe it could help bring our homicide numbers down.
CMPD just gave us new figures, which show that we have exactly the same amount of homicides right now as we did on this same day last year.
So far in 2020, 55 people have been killed in the Queen City. From January to July 6th of last year, we had the same number.
Both years are more than double the amount we had up to this point in 2018 when there were only 26 homicides.
CMPD's leadership has said before that they can't fix this alone.
So they have urged the city council to implement a violence interrupters coalition to help trusted community members, some who have served time before, are trained and hired in the neighborhood initiative.
They are then called upon to deescalate situations before anyone pulls a trigger or becomes violent.
The program has shown some promise in other cities including New Orleans, where the same effort started in 2018.
The mayor there said it has brought the homicide numbers down for three years in a row, including a 50-year low in 2019.
The Safe Communities Committee also gave this timeline to city council.
It would include a National Panel on Local Change being held in July, review of police-community engagement, and police youth programs, among other items.
In August there would be a month full of reviews on various police policies. That would include a review on CMPD's recruitment, training, and rules of conduct. It would also include reviews on the roles of the Citizens Review Board and review of the "Eight Can't Wait" policies.