New Milwaukee Office of Violence Prevention director says steps are under way to address frustrations with efforts
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Milwaukee Health Department leaders say its Office of Violence Prevention is taking steps to address the frustrations officials had voiced before the firing of OVP's previous director in August.
OVP Director Ashanti Hamilton told leaders of the council's powerful Finance and Personnel Committee that he is working on filling vacancies and collecting data to determine — and demonstrate — the effectiveness of the office's programs.
Hamilton was appointed in August by Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a former Common Council colleague, to succeed Arnitta Holliman.
Holliman was fired by Johnson after months of questions about the effectiveness of her office and a White House trip that raised questions at City Hall about a violence prevention fund housed at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation that leaders said they had been unaware existed.
She has said she was unfairly maligned and called her termination "unwarranted."
On Thursday, Hamilton noted the transitions in mayors and health commissioners that left the OVP director as the only person aware of the fund.
It is supposed to be overseen by an advisory committee made up of the mayor, health commissioner and the OVP director, according to the 2017 agreement signed at its inception.
The fund was meant to be flexible to allow for quick responses to some of the needs that result from traumatic situations, and it should continue to exist but in a "radically transparent" form, Hamilton told the committee.
That requires an internal city process to access the funds, oversight and communication to the council and public about how the money is being spent, he said.
"I think all of us were kind of surprised about the access to resources and the ability to ... expend resources of that amount and that magnitude without there being some process," he said.
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Hamilton and Health Commissioner Kirsten Johnson also said they are working to expand data collection and reporting to show the outcomes of OVP's work and spending.
That data is needed in order to determine what efforts are working and prove the impact of the work, Hamilton said.
Johnson said the Health Department has the expertise to identify data that can be reported. But she said it's also necessary to work with community partners and the Medical College of Wisconsin to ensure the collective impact of OVP's work can be compiled and reported in a uniform way.
She said more proactive communication is necessary with groups that partner with OVP about the kinds of data that could be collected and those groups' capacity to collect it.
Hamilton also said his goals for 2023 included sustaining and growing crisis response and healing, and re-engaging the community, including by using Promise Zones to carry forward the Blueprint for Peace and reaching out to residents citywide to create a "network of protection."
The Office of Violence Prevention, housed within the city's Health Department, was created in 2008 and has dramatically changed in the past decade. Once a one-person office that focused primarily on gun policy issues, the Office of Violence Prevention now has more than a dozen positions and a budget of more than $4 million. It coordinates community-based organizations and efforts addressing the root causes of violence.
Contact Alison Dirr at 414-224-2383 or adirr@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter @AlisonDirr.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Office of Violence Prevention director highlights efforts
