Gov. Andrew Cuomo's budget proposal allocates $3 million for the gun violence program Operation SNUG. Let's hope this marks the beginning of a reversal of the hostility to community-based crime prevention strategies that took root during his father's administration.
On April 15, 1983, then-Gov. Mario M. Cuomo signed Chapter 55, the Neighborhood Preservation Crime Prevention Act. It was intended to establish a network of nonprofit entities to partner with public safety agencies to stem neighborhood decline and resulting crime. Through his three terms in office, then-Gov. Cuomo bragged about this program as one of his "accomplishments." It was never funded or implemented. In fact, he abruptly terminated a vibrant crime prevention program at the Division of Criminal Justice Services that evolved during Gov. Hugh Carey's administration.
Ultimately, we got Operation IMPACT, a Gov. George Pataki administration initiative that epitomizes the data-driven law enforcement tactics that have come to predominate public safety thinking in New York.
For years, New York has ignored the needs, concerns and sensibilities of citizens who live in neighborhoods where guns and violence prevail. Statistics have ruled. That is until the brief period during which Senate Democrats held a majority and its black and Latino members were able to create SNUG. It's the first and only crime-fighting program I have seen in nearly 30 years that fights crime as the people who live with it perceive it. It was a threat to those who preferred tax dollars be spent on police overtime and technology.
SNUG has been successful in Albany. Let's accept the money this Gov. Cuomo has tossed its way and make the very most of it.
O'Neill lives in Albany. He's director of Constantine Institute Inc., www.constantine-institute.org.