Archived News 2023

December 14, 2023

The Gun Machine: The Evolution of the Crime Gun

In the fourth episode of The Gun Machine, we go to Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the gun industry, where nearly every young person we talked to has a story about guns and the terror they cause in their community.

November 2, 2023

Hartford program helps domestic violence victims find employment, housing

A program in Hartford is helping to bring stability to young mothers whose lives have been impacted by domestic violence. The Roca Young Mothers program opened in 2021, but the need for services has never been higher.

November 2, 2023

Relentless Outreach – One Door at a Time

There’s no such thing as a lost cause. Roca doesn’t believe in them. They will find you. Since arriving in Baltimore in 2018, the unique anti-violence outreach and intervention program has tracked down hundreds upon hundreds of the city’s highest-risk young men – traumatized, distrustful individuals at the center of urban crime who are most likely to shoot, be shot, or have felony charges – and have given them an alternative to incarceration, incapacitation, and death.

October 11, 2023

For this Baystate trauma surgeon, care goes beyond treating the gunshot wound

SPRINGFIELD — When a patient at Baystate Medical Center has a gunshot wound, it’s likely that Dr. Kristina Kramer’s team treats them. And after they leave the operating table, a program she started can help them move forward. Kramer is the medical director for Better Tomorrow, a new violence intervention program at Baystate Health. It’s a partnership with Roca, a nonprofit focused on at-risk young adults, to try to reduce gun violence.

October 11, 2023

Key takeaways from iMPACT Maryland

Some of the Baltimore’s foremost experts in gun violence coalesced around the need for more accurate data in real time that would help inform policy decisions for violence intervention workers in the public and private spheres. The Roca Impact Institute’s JT Timpson is quoted.

May 23, 2023

In CT, survivors face domestic violence ‘over and over’ as abusers increasingly violate orders

Survivors, advocates lament how state’s bail system doesn’t consider offenders’ dangerousness

May 23, 2023

Changing thought patterns and rewiring the brain to prevent gun violence

CHICAGO (CBS) — What does brain science have to do with gun violence? A whole lot, if you ask one gun violence prevention group here in Chicago.

CBS 2 Investigator Megan Hickey got a look at how a program seeks to prevent gun violence by encouraging different ways of thinking and coping – and thus, rewiring the brain.

May 23, 2023

‘Where has this training been all my life?’: How healing trauma could actually reform policing

This approach isn’t a panacea to stopping police violence. There isn’t one. But we believe this is part of the solution.

May 23, 2023

Anti-violence program shows promise in first four years in Baltimore

When youth workers from the anti-violence program Roca first knocked on Sheldon Smith-Gray’s door in 2018, he thought it might be the police. He was “outside” at the time — “whatever you can think of, I was doing it, for sure,” he said in an interview Wednesday — and it took him about a year before he bought into Roca’s process 100%.

February 27, 2023

This Week on CBS Sunday Morning

Steering young men away from a life with guns
In Baltimore, where gun violence claims the lives of hundreds each year, what is missing from so many young men is a solid foundation. The youth workers behind a program called Roca (Spanish for rock) aim to provide that grounding, by teaching alternative ways to handling the stresses of life in a challenging environment. As one Roca participant, a former drug dealer, tells “Sunday Morning” senior contributor Ted Koppel, “I came a long way, from nothing to something now.”