OFVP Firearm Violence Research Group Meeting Minutes, March 19, 2024

Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Time: 9:30am - 11:00AM

Meeting Minutes

Welcome/Roll Call/Approval of Minutes
- Meeting Called to order @ 9:32am
- Facilitator Joe Hoereth welcomed FVRG members to the meeting
- FVRG Members Present: Joe Hoereth, Tim Lavery, Dave Olson, Soledad McGrath, Kim Smith
- FVRG Members Absent: Andrew Papachristos, Lance Williams, Eric Reinhart
- Other Attendees: Ana Genkova, Roy Rothschild, Karl Groschow, Assistant Secretary Quiwana Bell, Melissa Pfeiffer, Kari Branham, Sam Theno, Orlando Mayorga, Kayla Butler
- Notetaker: Jessica Cortez
- Meeting Minutes for February 20, 2024 have been approved
Public Comment - No public comments received
Discussion and Work Items
1. Discussion of Methodology to Determine Eligibility
  - Facilitator Hoereth: There is one single item on the agenda: discussion of methodology to determine eligibility and I am prepared to do a review because this group started to formulate around that discussion but that was almost three years ago in August 2021. I am sure everyone is familiar with the decision that was made based on our recommendations around the eligible areas to receive funding from all the OFVP. We wanted to revisit that process and revisit specific language in the act with Assistant Secretary Bell being present. Assistant Secretary Bell is looking for all the information and support that she can get to inform her decisions.
  - Facilitator Hoereth shared a PowerPoint presentation with the FVRG Group.
  - Facilitator Hoereth: I went back through my notes and also our files and documents and spent some time skimming back through the Reimagined Public Safety Act, which is the act that enabled this office to be created.
2. FVRG Process for Recommending Eligible Communities to OFVP (2021-2022)
  - Process was driven by language in the RPSA, with most relevant being:
    - section 35-20 (Illinois municipalities greater than 1 mil pop)
    - section 35-40 (municipalities with less than 1 mil but greater than 35k; as well as any municipalities less than 1 mil)
  - Fall 2021
    - IDHS staff engage in preliminary discussions with experts on process consistent with RPSA
  - December 2021
    - IPCE synthesizes these discussions into a set of recommendations to OFVP regarding a process, then applies that process to generate lists of recommended eligible areas (IPCE Memo to OFVP)
  - OFVP accepts recommendations (Asst. Secretary Patterson Letter)
  - Facilitator Hoereth shared the Reimagined Safety Act-Eligible Community Areas and Municipalities Memo with the FVRG Group.
  - Facilitator Hoereth: The decision to use both rate and volume as a blended approach is significant in that we are acknowledging there was an effort to avoid leaving out smaller communities that may not have a high volume but have a high rate but also not penalize larger communities that have a lot of shootings because they are larger.
3. Important Factors in Eligibility Process
  - The focus on fatal and non-fatal gunshot injuries was decided based on RPSA definition that "most violent" communities are those with highest fatal and non-fatal gunshot injuries.
  - Recommendation to cluster communities also driven by RPSA language recognizing that gun violence is not constrained by neighborhood or municipal boundaries.
  - With high variability of shooting data for smaller areas, the average of that municipality's five-year data provided better measures for the purpose of ranking areas than just the previous year alone.
  - Facilitator Hoereth: Describing a process where you're ranking and then selecting things and then marching down the list in 2 stages is quite difficult to visualize and show the data that's behind it. I would like to walk people through as we did when we were in this process in 2021.
  - Facilitator Hoereth shared a ranking spreadsheet with FVRG Group.
    - Assistant Sec. Bell: If we were looking at this spreadsheet today how would our ranking change or differ?
      - Facilitator Hoereth: The act says that this eligibility process should be reviewed no sooner than every three years and we are in that window. Since then, we've also had discussions about which data matters with regard to just identifying the most violent communities or the work of all OFVP in terms of tracking it, looking at impact and so on. One question that comes up is looking at fatal shootings alone, the proper way to do that. Second would be to revisit the decisions we made around ranking by rated volume and clustering. I feel like we can update our advice regarding which data to look at much more easily if we wanted to.
      - Assistant Sec. Bell: The overall goal is to impact firearm violence from a statewide perspective and whenever we can allocate resources. We talked about a formula which is wonderful but that may not be practical. At this point I would like to be able to have some advice around If we put X amount of dollars in these areas this is where we could get the most bang for our buck. It will be great to understand from an evaluation perspective where our resources will have the most impact.
      - FVRG Member Olson: I don't think the availability of it on a quarterly basis might be helpful for evaluation for the funding formula if we're still going with an average over a period if it's through the end of 2003 vs the first quarter of 2024 that isn't going to affect it. The issue I see is we developed that original funding formula through 2020 and now 4 years later if we were to redo everything like Facilitator Hoereth described it with the most recent 5 years of data. Would it change? Would there be communities that are no longer eligible for funding? Or is this a problem something that doesn't change in a few years and it would still be the same communities then at least reassuring that we are focused on the right communities that have an entrenched problem. For IDHS the challenge would be what if a community is no longer in that ranking and received money for a certain number of years are no longer eligible other than the discretion that the office has.
      - FVRG Member Lavery: I think we have to do the same analysis if we upon discussion make any changes then we would need to know the impact of those changes. The next question is are their other angles that we want to look at to capture need? Do we believe that we're confined to only looking at firearm violence. Does the statue constrain us to that?
    - Assistant Sec. Bell: If we were to heavily concentrate on some of those, say top 10 as opposed to the top 26 will we be able to get that number from .78 even higher? Will it go down? If we were to just reduce it would affect the overall rate that was just shown.
      - FVRG Member Smith: If the goal is really to be able to convince legislators that the dollars are having an impact, focusing on those areas that account volume wise for the largest number of incidents continuing to focus on volume will be important. If you are able to have a 15% improvement in those areas that will result in as many people's lives as possible weighing the volume heavily in that selection process.
    - Facilitator Hoereth: Are people aware of current research or recent research that might inform this conversation?
      - FVRG Member Olson: If our discussion is to focus on the resources where there's the highest level of gun violence then we should be making sure we can measure gun violence as best we can. The limit we had with the last round was we could only look at gunshot victims who were either killed or treated in an emergency room. That is ok to measure but it's not looking at firearm victimization that doesn't result in an ER admission. The thing FVRG Member Lavery raises about looking at other indicators that are associated with violence it works with R3. The goal of R3 isn't just to address gun violence it's to address economic inequality. Having a broader definition for programs that intended to cover a lot of areas, but it should be focused on firearm violence and improving the measures of those rather than pulling in other measures. Facilitator Hoereth in my view that's more about how programs identify individuals to enroll that's nothing we could ever do at a state level with the available data. If a community could tap into school enrollment and truancy and some other things that may be predictive of individuals that need service that's something that at the program level may be able to do.
      - Karl Groschow: The recent data from NIBRS in terms of offense reporting is solid. At this point the number of law enforcement agencies reporting data in is maxed out to where it probably was with ICUR summary reporting beforehand. The issue that comes up for the current conversation is that different agencies will hold different standards for how consistently and completely they record details about injuries and the presence of firearms and poses a complicated issue in terms of using it for a prioritization metric.
    - FVRG Member McGrath: Do we know what the overlap is between the R3 dollar?
      - Assistant Sec. Bell: There has been some public funding analysis done through the GASC but not sure if it's R3 specific as opposed to ICJIA altogether that shows where the overlap with certain agencies has been. The full analysis of that if it's not out it should be coming out soon. They expect to have a 2.0 analysis available within this quarter sometime in the next couple of weeks.
      - FVRG Member Lavery: To the spirit of FVRG Member McGrath question I'm willing to provide information that looks at where we are funding R3 and look at other violence prevention programs or violence prevention programs that fall out of R3we well. To Assistant Sec. Bell pointed out that the GASC analysis wasn't just R3 it was more like our portfolio.
      - FVRG Member McGrath: The conversation we're halving now about eligibility and the purpose of these dollars with the point that FVRG Member Lavery made expanding the definition and ultimately what we know from the research is you can have targeted dollars and targeted strategies that are impacting numbers in that year in that quarter but if you're not changing the conditions the risk will move.
      - Assistant Sec. Bell: We all fight against the whole concept and notion of finite resources and ARPA money starts to dry up and prioritizes what efforts have the most impact. The political will do some of the hard work with addressing the root causes of this violence is a progression step that has been played out.
    - Assistant Sec. Bell: From a timing standpoint what would mean for FVRG to be able to give us some feedback so we can make better choices as we think to renew?
      - Facilitator Hoereth: The sorting and ranking doesn't take long; we just have to ask for the data and get it. Right now, we seem to be on a 2 to 6 week window between whenever we ask and whenever we receive that data. Our most recent asks have been limited to already eligible areas. We weren't pulling for the whole state like we did when we started the eligibility discussion, but the request can be done.
    - Facilitator Hoereth: Question for Karl. Have you looked at the overlap between the NIBRS data that is reliable and good, and the eligible RPSA communities?
      - Karl Groschow: I haven't checked exactly what communities were consciously. It's the same sets that we're looking at with James Pagano for references. Some of the specifics where I'd look into the murder data visa be reliability was specifically for that where I would actually check.
Action items
1. Facilitator Hoereth to update data and the ranking on the baseline version that was done the first time for all Illinois municipalities.
Proposed Next Meeting Date/Time: Tuesday, May 16, 2024 @ 9:30am
Meeting Adjourned @ 11:00am