Pennsylvania anti-violence organization calls on state government to up grant payment

MCKEESPORT, Pa. — Shootings are taking over the headlines and gun violence knows no age or even county line.

“Our community in particular deals with the unfortunate violence that has occurred historically due to guns,” said McKeesport Superintendent Dr. Mark Holtzman.

Holtzman told Channel 11 he sees daily the ramifications to these shootings on our youth.

“It’s something that needs attention and people to exclusively be doing that work in an authentic way to connect with the schools and have leverage to be like hey look these are the consequences,” Holtzman said.

That’s where grassroot community organizations come into play. But those groups can’t do the work without the funding and this year the governor is pledging $35 million in grants to these organizations to help prevent gun violence.

“We are at crisis epidemic levels. 2020 saw a peak in homicides in a long time. 2021 the data is still coming in but going to be a very violent year and 2022 not off to a great start. We need all the tools we can get,” said Josh Fleitman with CeaseFire PA.

That’s why CeaseFire PA and other organizations are asking the governor to raise that number from $35 million to $100 million to get more efforts off the ground.

“Pittsburgh is no different. It’s one to three percent of the population that is driving the gun violence so if you can have programs and fund programs that target individuals with intervention, support to address the underlying issues you can see a big decrease,” Fleitman said.

The governor has until June to potentially raise that funding for the final budget.

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