While crime and violence in Central America attract media attention, nine municipalities in El Salvador and Guatemala are taking steps toward crime and violence prevention with assistance from ICMA. Using the CityLinks™ approach, ICMA’s Municipal Partnerships for Violence Prevention in Central America (AMUPREV ) program (www.amuprev.org) facilitates partnerships between municipal and police officials from Central American municipalities and their U.S. counterparts.

Through a series of exchanges, staff and officials from the U.S. jurisdictions, including their police/sheriff's departments, showcase successful approaches that focus on the roots of crime, not primarily on enforcement. They provide information on multi-stakeholder crime and violence prevention initiatives led by the city as well as on community-oriented policing practices.

The most recent exchange visits occurred between Alexandria, Virginia, and three municipalities in El Salvador and between Santa Ana, California, and representatives of three municipalities in Guatemala.

Alexandria Hosts Delegation from El Salvador

Alexandria hosted a delegation of 11 representatives, including mayors, from Suchitoto, San Bartolomé Perulapía, and San José Guayabal, El Salvador, in October. They were accompanied by a the communications coordinator from the National Union of Local Governments of Costa Rica and Marisa Fortin, ICMA’s technical consultant for the AMUPREV program.

Following welcomes on behalf of Alexandria Mayor William Euille and City Manager Rashad Young, the delegation embarked on an intensive four-day orientation and education program. They heard presentations explaining how prevention activities are integrated into city-wide functions:

• Communications and public information
• Transportation and environmental services
• Code enforcement
• Redevelopment and housing
• Human rights
• Public schools
• Court services, probation, and parole.

Site visits included

• The police department, where they heard from law enforcement officials and their federal and state partners
• The school resource officer unit at a local high school
• A mentoring program
• The courthouse, where they observed court proceedings and met with judges, the commonwealth’s attorney, the public defender, and other key players
• City Hall, where they learned about interventions in teen pregnancy and substance abuse
• The Alexandria Seaport Foundation, a local organization that uses traditional boat building as a framework for teaching vocational and social skills to at-risk and disadvantaged youth
• Wright to Read, a program that provides volunteer-based one-on-one literacy tutoring and mentoring for elementary school children in need and helps foster a comprehensive support network for each child.

To prepare for the visit, Eddie Reyes, Alexandria’s deputy chief of police, and Linda Odell, director of alternative programs in the Juvenile Court Service Unit, went to El Salvador in July to present their programs and learn first-hand about the activities of the three municipalities. The next step in the exchange is for one or more representatives from Alexandria to visit El Salvador to provide training on one or more of the areas identified by the participants as priorities during the visit.

Santa Ana Hosts Partners from Guatemala

Representatives from the National Association of Municipalities of the Republic of Guatemala and the municipality of Mixco traveled to Santa Ana in late September to learn about programs focusing on violence prevention. Police Chief Carlos Rojas welcomed the group, and the visitors learned how the city delivers services related to violence prevention:

• Programs that aim to keep young people out of gangs, including the Police Athletic and Activity League and the Gang Reduction and Intervention Partnership (GRIP) that Santa Ana earlier introduced to several Salvadoran and Guatemalan municipalities
• Gun violence prevention and detection programs, including gun buy-back
• Parenting programs, including a Parent Academy at a local elementary school; the visitors attended a session focusing on warning signs of juvenile drug use and prevention of drunk driving
• School programs for children, including a fitness program presented by a police officer at an elementary school
• Domestic/family violence programs, including local issues, police response, and victim services
• Community programs offered to local youth: Kidworks, Officer Friendly, and after-school programs.

Santa Ana’s partners in Guatemala are Santa Catarina Pinula, Palencia, and Mixco; the city also had partnerships from 2011 to 2013 with Sonsonate and Nahuizalco, El Salvador.

About AMUPREV

Funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), AMUPREV has two main objectives:

• Promoting comprehensive local-level violence prevention strategies and programs and foster development of regional peer knowledge networks that will be self-sustaining in the future
• Employing ICMA’s CityLinks exchange model, provide training and technical assistance to local governments and community groups in coordination with police and other local-level programs.

To learn more about ICMA’s international programs, visit the website and the International Development topic area in the Knowledge Network, or contact international@icma.org.