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August 16, 2025
How Baltimore’s violent crime rate hit an all-time low: ‘This is not magic. It’s hard work’
The end of violence in Baltimore is a litany of stories that weren’t told in 90-second clips on the evening news, about shootings that didn’t happen.
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August 16, 2025
Federal grant nixed for Springfield violence intervention program for women
About four years ago, Breasia Mitchell was living at a women’s shelter in Holyoke. She had been in an abusive relationship for years, and shelter staff there referred her to a violence intervention program for young women and mothers at Roca. Though Mitchell credits the program with changing her life trajectory, Roca has less capacity to help young women like her, because the U.S. Department of Justice this spring terminated a grant that brought in about $1 million to the women’s program in Western Massachusetts.
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August 15, 2025
From the streets to second chances: How Roca is changing the lives of Baltimore’s young men
The first step at Roca isn’t therapy, job training or even talking. It’s showing up — over and over again. For John Young and John “Yahya” Lewis, being staffers at Roca Baltimore means logging miles across the area in the rain, in the cold, in the heat, to connect with the young men they serve.
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August 13, 2025
Administration decries crime rates, but has slashed prevention efforts
President Trump moved to take over policing in Washington, D.C. to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime,” but the data doesn’t back up many of his claims. Murder and violent crime dropped significantly across the U.S. last year, a trend that’s continued so far in 2025. The crackdown comes even as his administration cut funding for other kinds of crime prevention work.
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August 13, 2025
More than a dozen high-risk young mothers and women graduate from Roca Springfield
Roca, a non-profit organization, has been working for 37 years to help high-risk young women in Massachusetts find safety and stability. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen a steep rise in female-perpetrated violence and incarceration,” said Sunindiya Bhalla, Executive Vice President of Women and 2Gen at Roca. Roca’s three-year million-dollar intervention program is making a way to decrease the rise, despite the U.S Department of Justice deciding to terminate tens of millions of dollars in grant funding for community violence intervention programs.
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August 13, 2025
Roca students graduate amid uncertainty over program’s future
Wednesday was an important day for several young women, beginning a new chapter in life after graduating from Roca Springfield. But now, the community violence intervention program is at risk itself as grant funding for these programs across the country have been terminated by the Department of Justice.
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July 29, 2025
MGM Springfield donates to local workforce development programs
MGM Springfield has reinforced its commitment to community support by donating to local non-profits Dress for Success and ROCA.
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July 25, 2025
Why America is murdering less
How Baltimore explains America’s miraculous murder decline.
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July 16, 2025
Green Bay, WI pivots in response to Office of Violence Prevention closure
Violence interrupters are pivoting and getting creative to maintain the incredible decrease in homicides that Community Violence Intervention has driven across the country, despite tightening state and federal budgets. Green Bay, WI’s Office of Violence Prevention may be closing down, but the city’s finding other ways to keep Rewire CBT as part of their anti-violence strategy – like training the Green Bay PD in Rewire4.
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July 11, 2025
Baltimore mass overdose: ‘Coordinated neighborhood stabilization response’ launched in Penn-North
Baltimore City is deploying resources to the Penn-North neighborhood in the day following a mass overdose that left dozens of people hospitalized. Roca joins the coordinated response.
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July 2, 2025
Are we witnessing a Baltimore Miracle in fight against crime?
Violence intervention strategies have produced nothing short of a miracle, a “Baltimore Miracle” that has seen a dramatic reduction in violent crime in one of the most difficult public safety environments in the nation.
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June 16, 2025
Roca Hartford celebrates 22 program graduates
Roca Hartford, a program dedicated to helping young women break cycles of poverty, trauma and violence, celebrated its 2025 graduating class Monday.
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June 16, 2025
PHOTO: First Graduating Class at Roca Hartford
Roca Hartford celebrated as the first 22 young people graduated.
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May 27, 2025
Boston stays the course, despite Trump yanking violence prevention grants
‘There’s nothing quote-unquote woke about saving lives,’ says city community safety leader
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May 14, 2025
Trump DOJ eliminates funding from Baltimore violence interruption efforts
The department cancelled more than 360 ongoing grants totaling more than $800 million for community violence intervention work around the country. Roca’s After Shooting Protocol team will not be able to serve as many individuals after the Department of Justice ended the organization’s community violence intervention grant.
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May 1, 2025
Baltimore’s homicide rate dropped to a historic low last month, defied racial trends
Baltimore ended April with five homicides, the lowest monthly total in recent memory, as looming cuts to federal grants threaten gun violence prevention programs.
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April 30, 2025
He lost his legs in a shooting. Now, the Baltimore program that helped him faces Trump Administration cuts.
Marquis Milliner told WJZ that life will never be the same after he was a victim of Baltimore gun violence. “I got shot April 29 of last year. I didn’t wake up until June 14,” he told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren. Milliner, who recently turned 27, knows how lucky he is to celebrate that birthday. “It’s a blessing to be here. They told my mother to cut off my legs,” he said. “I had a 30% chance of living.”
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April 11, 2025
WA DCYF Partners With Roca Impact Institute To Strengthen Behavioral Support and Leadership Development At Harbor Heights
The Roca Impact Institute announced a new partnership with the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families to support DCYF’s initiative to strengthen behavioral support and leadership development at Harbor Heights, the new Juvenile Rehabilitation facility.
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April 6, 2025
In Lynn, Roca rises to meet high-risk challenge
The Daily Item spent an afternoon with youth worker Sted Bourdeau, a Lynn native and assistant basketball coach at Lynn Tech, who now dedicates his life to mentoring young men through some of the hardest — and most pivotal — years of their lives.
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March 31, 2025
Roca on the AAA-ICDR Foundation Podcast
Roca’s Molly Baldwin and Lloyd Wells join Tracey Frisch from the American Arbitration Association to talk about how Rewire4 is reimagining the future of policing.
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February 17, 2025
Chicago Was a Pioneer in Violence Interruption. Cities Across the Country Are Now Evolving the Approach
Attempts to break the chain of violence have been around as long as violence itself – that is to say, just about forever. But over the last quarter century, those efforts have been formalized, quantified and studied in a way that hadn’t been seen before, driven by a set of best practices adaptable to different communities and a mindset that violence should be treated like a public health problem.
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February 4, 2025
Roca training St. Louis violence interrupters on new strategies
Roca working with violence interrupters Show Me Peace in the first phase of several initiatives underway through the Save Lives Now regional plan in St. Louis.
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February 4, 2025
7 years into Roca, an update on how intervention is saving the lives of Baltimore’s young people
Homicide and non-fatal shootings in Baltimore recently reached their lowest rates in a decade, a welcomed sign of success for the city’s anti-violence programs. While a nationwide fall in violence suggests wider factors at play, city agencies and nonprofits dedicated to violence intervention say their work is making a difference.
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January 28, 2025
Mass. individuals are building stability and achieving goals after experiencing violence and trauma
In Chelsea, Roca supports young people experiencing hardship by using what it calls “relentless outreach.”
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January 3, 2025
Baltimore homicides and shootings fall to lowest levels since 2015
Baltimore finished 2024 with a second consecutive year of historic decreases in gun violence unlike the city has seen since the 1970s.
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