PHR’s September Community Meeting brought residents and partners together to discuss the future of public safety in Baltimore—and ensure Park Heights voices are part of the conversation.
We joined forces with We Our Us and the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE) to host a community listening session focused on Baltimore City’s next Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan (CVPP).
The session gave Park Heights residents an opportunity to learn about the City’s proposed priorities for violence prevention over the next five years, ask questions and—most importantly—move into breakout rooms to share their own perspectives on what safety should look like in their community. That participation directly reflects Community Engagement and Collaboration pillar of the plan, which emphasizes ensuring community voice is part of Baltimore’s public safety strategy.
What Is the Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan?
Baltimore’s Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan is a citywide strategy for addressing violence through multiple approaches, including prevention, intervention, enforcement, re-entry, community services and neighborhood-based strategies. The City’s first five-year plan covered 2021–2026, and the next plan is designed to guide Baltimore’s work from 2026–2031.
The proposed 2026–2031 plan is organized around six pillars:
- Strengthen Evidence-Based Violence Intervention Strategies. This pillar focuses on people at the highest risk of being involved in violence and includes strategies such as the Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS) and Community Violence Intervention (CVI), including street outreach, conflict mediation and hospital- and school-based violence intervention.
- Youth Justice and Violence Reduction. The plan calls for earlier intervention, greater youth participation in public safety strategies, stronger programming for school-aged youth and better coordination among agencies, families and youth-serving organizations.
- Invest in All Baltimoreans. This pillar looks beyond immediate violence intervention to factors that can affect long-term safety. Priorities include victim services, trauma-informed care, re-entry support, employment opportunities, support for older adults and reducing barriers to services for immigrant and LGBTQIA+ residents.
- Build Safe and Healthy Neighborhoods. This pillar focuses on the conditions people experience where they live—including neighborhood stabilization, vacant properties and other quality-of-life concerns, harm reduction, behavioral health response and access to nutritious food.
- Sustain and Expand Baltimore’s Public Safety Toolkit. Strategies include strengthening the City’s violence prevention infrastructure, improving data coordination, addressing the flow and storage of firearms, pursuing policy and legal strategies, and improving access to identification for underserved residents.
- Community Engagement and Collaboration. This pillar puts residents and community partners directly into the public safety process through Neighborhood Public Safety Plans, efforts to strengthen public trust, community-informed messaging, formal opportunities for public feedback and partnerships among residents, government and community organizations.
View CVPP Plan Summary
View CVPP Slide Deck
Your Voice Can Still Be Part of the Plan
The conversation does not end with one community meeting.
MONSE is continuing to collect public input on Baltimore’s Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan. Residents can complete the public CVPP feedback survey, review information about the plan, visit MONSE’s page , or contact MONSE directly at monse@baltimorecity.gov or 410-396-0125 for additional information.
And there are opportunities to stay engaged right here in Park Heights.
PHR Community Meetings are held every third Wednesday of the month. These meetings are a space for residents to learn about neighborhood initiatives, hear directly from partners and decision-makers, connect to resources, and make their voices heard on issues affecting Park Heights.
Follow Park Heights Renaissance on Eventbrite for details about our upcoming community meetings and other opportunities to get involved.
