San Francisco will pay criminals $300 a month NOT to shoot other people in desperate plan to tackle surging gun crime
SAN FRANCISCO is planning to pay violent-prone people as much as $500 a month each to not pull the trigger and drive down gun crimes plaguing the city.
"These small investments can transform the lives of individuals, but they can also transform communities," said Sheryl Davis, executive director of the Human Rights Commission which is rolling out the Dream Keeper Fellowship pilot program in October.
The funding consists of $6 million annually to intake needs addressed by the community and focus on closing unemployment and disproportionate gaps in “income and wealth,” according to the .
Those selected to participate in the program are matched with life coaches from the city's Street Violence Intervention Program and will serve as "community ambassadors," the publication reported.
"As you become better, your community benefits from that," Davis said.
Also troubling is that the found the city has the highest rate of property crime in the state with 3,045 property incidents per 100,000 residents,
'TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES'
Mayor London Breed had previously applauded the pay-for-peacemakers program as one way to lower the violence in the city.
"My desire is to get to them, not to just make an arrest, but to get to them and to try and figure out if they would be willing to work with us on something that is an alternative," Breed said at a Violence Prevention Summit hosted by the Human Rights Commission in August, according to .
"We can’t just put them in a program without making sure that they have money, without making sure that they have something to take care of themselves."
The effort to curb gun violence in the city comes as California seeks to become the first state to pay drug addicts a few hundred dollars to achieve sobriety.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom through Medicaid.
The peace program in San Francisco is modeled after another similar effort in nearby Richmond, California.
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Back in 2007, the city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety came up with a controversial solution to pay two-dozen men in an 18-month-long fellowship to not commit any shootings, according to .
A 2019 study credited the program with helping reduce gun homicides in the city by 55 per cent.