Red Deer eligible for funding to prevent and intervene youth gun and gang violence
Red Deer is eligible to receive roughly $2.1 million from the federal Building Safer Communities Fund to prevent and intervene youth entering gun and gang violence over the next four years.
City council approved at Monday’s meeting a budget amendment for the 2022-2026 Operating Budgets to receive and spend the additional grant dollars.
According to the federal government, eligible recipients can utilize the funds to develop local and community-based strategies and initiatives, to build capacity to better understand the nature, scope and impacts of the types of initiatives implemented, to enhance evidence-based and targeted activities, advance knowledge and evidence of what works, and develop a data collection strategy and system.
The City says they were notified by Public Safety Canada that they were eligible for immediate funding in April 2022. Ryan Veldkamp, Red Deer’s Housing & Homelessness Supports Supervisor, said 120 municipalities are eligible based on their firearms and gang related crime statistics. The amount of funds allocated to each municipality, he said, was based on a formula including a population adjustment and a severity top-up based on three proxies: homicide by firearm, incidents of firearm offences and organized crime and street gang violence involving crime.