Organizations that prevent gang violence in Los Angeles took to the steps of city hall on Tuesday to show how their work has improved the safety of angelenos. Brittany Hope reports for the NBC4 News at 11 a.m. on March 18, 2025.
Organizations that prevent gang violence in Los Angeles took to the steps of City Hall on Tuesday to show how their work has improved the safety of Angelenos.
And they say that potentially losing federal funding could have a major impact.
This comes on the heels of the Los Angeles Police Department’s major announcement on Monday on the crime data from 2024.
The number of violent crimes and victims across the board went down, and cases that were gang-related decreased as well.
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On Tuesday, LA Mayor Karen Bass announced that the city’s 23 zones that are the most impacted by violence, gang-related homicides were down 45 percent last year as compared to 2023, and down 56 percent compared to 2022.
There was also a 48 percent drop in the number of people shot in gang related conflicts in 2024 compared to the year before.
The mayor thanked the community violence intervention workers for those gains.
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Those groups are part of the LA Peacemakers Initiative, founded in February 2024.
Eighteen community based organizations have over $9 million in funding from the federal government and private funding to prevent violent crime before it happens.
But leaders say they’re now at risk of losing the funding from the federal government and that could mean big cuts to programs that are working with that money.
The initiative says it has been able to hire 40 percent more intervention workers, has responded to 672 crises and has prevented 841 incidents in Los Angeles from escalating to violence.
Fernando Rejón, urban peace institute executive director, said that the federal money they do have runs out in about a year and needs to be sustained.
“There’s mixed messages that we’re receiving from the federal government, as everyone in the media knows. So we're anticipating some cuts so right now we’re working with philanthropy and outreaching to city, county, and state government to sustain funding to ensure we have public safety in LA,” Rejón said.
As those federal funds hang in the balance, the focus now is to find more money in the city budget and from the private sector.
