16 OCTOBER 24, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Ahead of the District Attorney election, Melinda Katz addressed Queens’ recent spike in gun violence. Photo: Max Parrott/QNS
Katz outlines plan to enlist community
groups in fi ght against gun violence
BY MAX PARROTT
MPARROTT@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@QNS
Queens Borough President and
District Attorney candidate Melinda
Katz held a conference on Tuesday
to present her plan to use the offi ce
to fund programs aimed at reducing
gun violence.
With two weeks until the Queens
DA election, Katz joined a group
of clergy and at-risk youth leaders
predominantly from southeastern
Queens to call for a collaborative response
to the borough’s spike in gun
violence over the past year.
“It’s critical for the Queens District
Attorney’s offi ce to become a community
partner. The centerpiece of our
plan up here today is to implement
guns as a public health issue and to
treat it as such–to treat violence as
a contagious disease, one that can
eff ectively be treated and prevented,”
said Melinda Katz.
Katz said that as DA she would use
the offi ce’s criminal asset forfeiture
funds on the organizations that run
job trainings, mentorship programs,
drug treatment programs, mental
health services, re-entry programs,
and aft er school programs.
According to NYPD CompStat data,
the number of shooting victims in
Queens increased from 117 to date in
2018 to 127 victims in 2019. The biggest
jump in this number, however, did not
occur in southeast Queens but in the
northern half of the borough where
the victims went from 33 in 2018 to 42
this year.
Katz said that she would use what
she deemed a “public health response”
to these statistics, meaning she would
try to reduce arrests through funding
mentorship and advocacy work in
high-risk communities.
In addition to more engagement and
funding for faith- and communitybased
organizations, Katz said that
her approach would include longer
sentences for gun traffi ckers, a 24/7
gun-buyback program, and increased
training for law enforcement and
school offi cials on the use of Red Flag
laws to take guns from individuals
who they consider to be a threat to
themselves or others.
Besides cracking down on gun
traffi ckers, Katz focused mostly on
preventive eff orts instead of prosecution.
In her speech, she did not make
mention of how she would prosecute
weapons possession charges — an
area that has proven controversial
for Brooklyn District Attorney Eric
Gonzalez.
In approaching weapons charges,
Gonzalez has made prominent use
of diversion programs, an option
which permits certain off enders to
plead guilty and join a community
programs instead of going to jail.
When asked by QNS how much she
plans to use diversionary plans in response
to weapons charges, Katz said
that she believed the primary problem
facing the offi ce was not illegal possession
but gun traffi cking, although she
showed support for such programs
“I am a true believer in diversionary
programs, especially for low-level
criminal activity,” Katz said. “But the
Cure Violence groups, the mentorship
groups, the workforce development
programs–all the programs we
provide–we need to fi gure out how
to get people into those programs
so even if they have a violation, or if
they’re arrested for illegal weapons,
they don’t do it again.”
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