Baltimore outlines plan to take flagship anti-violence strategy citywide within two years

Baltimore’s third experiment in a promising approach to violent crime, which officials say has provided much needed hope in the Western District over the past year, will now be expanded to other districts and eventually citywide. But the city’s police union and the chair of the City Council’s public safety committee, while both supportive of the program, expressed some skepticism that the Baltimore Police Department has the manpower to support the expansion. Known as the Group Violence Reduction Strategy, or GVRS, the approach melds traditional policing with alternative anti-gun violence approaches, such as offering city services to individuals who have been identified by law enforcement as being the most “at-risk” to be victims or perpetrators of gun violence.