OFVP Firearm Violence Research Group Meeting Minutes, November 15, 2022

Tuesday, November 15, 2022

9:30am - 11:00AM

via zoom

Minutes

Meeting called to order at 9:39am.

Notetaker: Jessica Cortez

1. Welcome/Roll Call/Approval of minutes by Joe Hoereth, PhD, Director, Institute for Policy and Civic Engagement, University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and Assistant Secretary Christopher Patterson, Office of Firearm Violence Prevention, Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) 
   • Meeting minutes were not approved due to quorum not met. Approval of minutes for September 20th will be presented for approval at the next Firearm Violence Research Group Meeting Tuesday, January 17, 2023.
   • Assistant Secretary Patterson welcomed FVRG members to meeting
   • Joe Hoereth welcomed the following attendees: 
     1. Patricia Holling Lewis who is working with Latanya Law from IDHS on a 75-day program. 
     2. Millicent McCoy Assistant Deputy Director at ICJA. 
     3. Marlita White with the Chicago Department Public Health and Violence Prevention.
   1. FVRG Members present
      1. Joe Hoereth
      2. Christopher Patterson
      3. Timothy Lavery
      4. Tammy Kochel
      5. Soledad McGrath
      6. Eric Reinhart
      7. Kimberly Smith
   2. FVRG Members Absent
      1. Andrew Papachristos
      2. Jon Patterson
      3. Lance Williams
      4. Darryl Kroner
      5. David Olson
   3. Other attendees
      1. Dana Kelly
      2. Roy Rothschild
      3. John Bertetto (Public Safety)
      4. Jackie Carrillo
      5. Ana Genkova
      6. Theresa Everist
      7. Jakub Krynski
      8. Karla Urbas
      9. Patricia Holling Lewis
      10. Millicent McCory (ICJIA)
      11. Marlita White
      12. Elena Gottreich
      13. Stephanie Pointer
      14. Renee Vespa
2. Public Comment - No public comments received
3. Discussion and Work Items
4. Questions on OFVP Update
   1. Joe Hoereth provided an update on the research project from the September 20th FVRG meeting. Institute of Policy and Civic Engagement is working closely with OFVP and would begin doing some focus groups that were first of 2 research projects that this research group would be leading and producing in support of its role for OFVP.
      1. The first project would be that the Institute of Policy and Civic Engagement is working closely with OFVP and would begin doing some focus groups to be a research brief, something that would be produced by the end of the year to deliver to the office.
         • Seven focus groups were held between October 27 and November 4. Twenty-One total focus group participants.
      2. Second project attempting to measure and understand and account for the gun violence problem in Illinois.
   2. Joe Hoereth shared PowerPoint Presentation on Update on Research-Brief Progress.
      1. Dana Kelly: With the early themes, what are the remaining work that you're going to do to process the feedback you receive? Where is this going?
         • Joe Hoereth: Highlighting themes that were based on what we were seeing already that are coding the way we are reading the quotes and tagging them with different themes was going to lead to that theme as a strong theme. Looking for more and digging deeper.
      2. Dana Kelly: Will your final analysis have some conclusion or recommendation included?
         • Yes, especially if there were consistent recommendations from the speakers themselves. We want to highlight if there's recommendations that were implied, we will try to draw those out as well.
      3. FVRG Member Lavery: The thing that really struck me was the collaboration, that's something that I've heard before money comes and goes and groups come and go. We're not working in conjunction with each other, so we were not maximizing our effects. ICJA is about to launch our Institute to Innovate which is essentially like a training academy for fledgling or newer organizations. As we think about that curriculum might be something I take internally to have a discussion because some of the agencies overlap.
      4. FVRG Member McGrath: Do you know if any organizations that were represented in the focus group are also receiving dollars from other cities or counties? Whether that collaboration is supported in any way by the coordination of those dollars.
         • Joe Hoereth: We didn't ask them specifically about other sources; however, some volunteered that information on their own. Talking about receiving money from multiple sources, the answer is yes as far as any of these groups receiving money from other entities for the same purpose.
      5. Dana Kelly: Clarifying previous question. Did you hear that they have noticed greater collaboration between city, state, and county.
         • Joe Hoereth: I can't say that I recall that being an explicit thing that we heard but it could be there. There was reference to other sources generally.
      6. Assistant Secretary Christopher Patterson: A Lot of the work we're doing is really unpacking a lot of systemic racism and systemic instability that's been created. What we were hearing is the residual effect of what has happened for a long time in the funding arena.
      7. FVRG Member Kochel: Spoke about document that was forwarded to Joe Hoereth and FVRG Member Lavery called the collaboration toolkit that she developed with some colleagues a few years back. It's giving access to resources to help people think about the challenges and some potential solutions that are publicly available. It's helpful in addressing things like:
         1. Trust and shared vision
         2. Common goals
         3. Expertise
         4. Communication means 
         5. Actions plans
   3. Joe Hoereth continued to share PowerPoint Presentation on the discussion about the second project: Measuring Gun Violence in Illinois.
      1. FVRG Member Kochel: As the potential model shared the motivation for Carbondale Guns Needs Assessment. The city of Carbondale received some funding subsequent to COVID ARPA funds that were wanting to apply towards addressing the gun violence problem in the city and city council had sought some assistance from SIU on how to effectively distribute those funds in a way that would have an impact.
         • They asked a team and I to submit a proposal which I did to create this needs assessment with a very fast turnaround of 5 months of which the first 2 months were going through the IRB process and gaining access to data through RMS systems.
         • Where college towns are looking at both SIU data as well as the city's data from the police department standpoint. We looked at the following:
           1. Land use data
           2. Interviews with key stakeholders in the area who are already taking some efforts to address gun violence or who are situated in schools and interacting with youth who may be involved either as victims or potential shooters or family members of such.
           3. Ambulance Data
           4. Gun Seizures
           5. Arrest Data
           6. Confirmed Shootings
           7. Police calls for service
         • Our goal was to attempt to assess whether or not the lived experiences with gun violence aligned with what the official data was telling us.
      2. FVRG Member Reinhart: How was the survey administered?
         • FVRG Member Kochel: We worked with the city of Carbondale to send out notices a couple of different months in the water bills since the city sends out those bills. Some apartment complexes where that was not distributed to each apartment, we went to apartment managers and had them put out flyers. This was also a web-based survey.
      3. FVRG Member Reinhart: If we were going out and surveying people and getting lived experiences and subjective impressions which is very important, we open through the question of public safety, or gun violence, we are going to have major issues with bias and respondents. If you live in Carbondale and you feel your community is quite safe and you're not concerned about public safety or policing of gun violence you're not going to respond to the mailer that you received, whereas if you feel particularly unsafe, you're much more likely to respond.
         • How do we produce a different informational listening mechanism that minimizes or bypasses that? In some sense gun violence is the explicit object of one's questions or public safety which determines people's perception of things and comes at other issues that we think are drivers of that. Potentially link incentives for survey responses for participation.
      4. John Bertetto: Is anyone talking to offenders?
         • FVRG Member Kochel: Yes, I've engaged with offenders as it relates to gun violence.
      5. FVRG Member Kochel: Focused deterrence tends to be implemented where there are group-based gun and gang violence problems. The goal is to get organized at a jurisdictional level.
5. Action Items
   1. FVRG Member Kochel will share the following:
      1. Collaboration Toolkit document with OFVP
      2. Carbondale Community Survey with OFVP and FVRG Members.
   2. Joe Hoereth will frame some brainstorming questions as a group to discuss offline between now and the next meeting and people just populate them. Whoever populated that particular bullet can speak to that.
   3. Distribution of quarterly report data for FVRG this week for review.
   4. Draft report shared with IDHS/FVRG by December 2 for feedback.
   5. Update of IDHS regular activities shared with FVRG by December 15.
6. Proposed Next Meeting Date/Time - Tuesday, January 17th 9:30am
7. Meeting adjourned at 11:04 am