State and local officials will receive the findings of a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study on violence in Wilmington commissioned later this week.
Wilmington City Council Member Hanifa Shabazz pushed for last year’s Council resolution inviting the CDC to Delaware’s largest city to study what she calls an epidemic of violence among young African American males.
She says the city needed an expert outside opinion to help determine how best to deal with the problem.
“Evidently there is something we are doing wrong that we can’t see that is forming an epidemic pattern of behavior,” she said.
Shabazz adds she pushed for the CDC study because she believes violent behavior is an affliction, and not something Wilmington youth are born with.
“I felt strongly that it wasn’t young people being born and bred with destruction in their hearts and in their minds, and that it had to be something they were suffering from,” she said.
The City Council will hold a special meeting on April 9 to officially receive the CDC’s findings.
Wilmington saw a near-record 28 homicides in 2014, 23 involving guns.
