A Minneapolis city council committee moved closer to locking in more than $2 million to support the city’s violence interrupters. 

For years now, the city and the Minneapolis Police Department have connected with community-based groups to help keep peace. 

“If we’re actually going to do everything that we possibly can to try and reduce gun violence, which is what we should be doing, [we] need both hard and soft approaches,” MPD Chief Brian O’Hara said about the violence interruption groups. 

In a move the chief supports, the city’s Public Health & Safety Committee approved a federal grant worth $2.5 million on Wednesday to help the program thrive. 

“Getting more folks on the ground, expanding it to other areas, is something the council, I would say, is very interested in,” Jason Chavez, council member and chair of the committee, told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. 

The work is overseen by Commissioner Todd Barnette’s Office of Community Safety’s Neighborhood Safety Department. In a statement, Barnette shared the following:

“As we work together to reduce the cycle of violence in our City, these federal funds would be disbursed to our community-based partners who operate teams of violence interrupters. This is important work and this Department of Justice grant would immediately allow the violence interrupters, a key component of our community safety ecosystem, to increase their footprint and availability.”

While the violence interrupters have a lot of support, critics say they have not been regulated well. 

Over the summer, the city said the violence interrupters will be held to stricter funding standards as a result of a settlement in a lawsuit claiming the city gave public safety contracts “arbitrarily” and “illegally.”

“I’ve had conversations with folks in OCS, the Office of Community Safety,” Chavez said, adding about the oversight moving forward, “[We’ll be] making sure that folks are on the ground doing that safety work, that we all deserve a need.”

The full council vote on the grant funding is set for next week’s full council meeting.