Reducing Baltimore's violence was one of Mayor Brandon Scott's priorities when taking office.Scott he announced his multi-year crime plan in three parts throughout the day Friday.While he is not the first mayor of Baltimore to talk about the need for a holistic approach to this issue, Scott said he is the first one to actually implement a comprehensive plan to prevent and reduce violent crime.The goal is to reduce violent crime by 15% in five years.READ: Baltimore City Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan"This plan is not just my plan. It's Baltimore’s plan. It’s our plan to deal with the disease of gun violence," Scott said. The plan will include three events in separate parts of the city throughout the day focusing on the three pillars of the plan: public health approach to violence, community engagement and inter-agency collaboration, and evaluation and accountability."As past public safety practices have failed to yield long-term results for Baltimore, the time is now for a comprehensive, coordinated strategy that recognizes policing, prosecution, and prisons cannot stem the tide of violence on their own. This Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan recognizes that every agency, institution, and organization that interfaces with Baltimoreans has a role to play in preventing violence in our communities," the plan stated.The Mayor's Office said it will mark the beginning of a five-year process toward building a better, safer Baltimore."This violence prevention plan assumes that violence is not an unsolvable problem, but rather a public health crisis that is treatable and preventable through an intentional, coordinated, and sustained effort," the plan stated.Pillar One - Public Health Approach to ViolenceWatch full news conference belowThe comprehensive plan focuses on five areas to address the public health approach to violence: gun violence prevention; victim services; youth justice; community healing and trauma-informed practice; and re-entry.According to the plan, gun violence prevention focuses on homicide and serious violence by engaging directly with those most intimately involved in and affected by gun violence to keep them safe, alive and free; supporting them in their daily lives; communicating community norms in support of everybody's safety and success; and where necessary, creating swift, certain and legitimate accountability for violence.The plan will evaluate 10 Safe Streets sites, ROCA and other violence interruption efforts. It will add 20 violence prevention contacts, seeking funding from federal and state government and private philanthropy.The plan calls to hold gun traffickers accountable. "The gun trade fuels violence in Baltimore. Tackling gun violence means addressing the upstream and downstream effects of violence, including the supply of illegal guns that are used in violent crime in Baltimore. For the first time, Baltimore will take a data-driven approach to investigate, identify, and end the flow of illegal guns that make their way onto our street," the plan stated.The plan states that, "Historically, Baltimore has over-invested in punitive approaches when young people act out or make a mistake." Scott believes prioritizing youth is the cornerstone of a safer, more equitable Baltimore."Out of the six DJS regions, Baltimore saw the highest percentage of intake into DJS among Black youth at 95.6%. Complaints were formalized or referred to the DJS court for more than 80% of youth in Baltimore. This exceeds the statewide rate of formalization, which is 38.9%. Simply stated, Baltimore is two times more likely than the surrounding counties to introduce its young people to the criminal justice system," the plan stated.A Sidestep Program will be piloted in the western district in 2022 as a first attempt at pre-arrest diversion for youth. Under the community health and trauma informed practice section, the plan stated it will expand 911 diversion program to divert more calls to non law enforcement response. Under the re-entry section, the plan will make it easier for people to work for the city by suspending drug screening for non-sensitive positionsSuccess of the plan will be measured by the percentage of 911 calls diverted to a non-law enforcement response; percentage of Black youth diverted to community-based alternatives to arrest and prosecution; number of Black youth provided with social-emotional learning supports; and number of mediations performed by violence interrupters.Pillar Two - Community Engagement and Inter-Agency CoordinationWatch a recap of pillars one and two belowThis part of the plan triples the current number of violence intervention programs, like Safe Streets, and includes the academic, business and faith-based communities as well."The scripture said when you take care of sheep, you're supposed to smell like sheep. And I don't just pastor people in my church, I pastor people in the community," said Kingdom Life Church Pastor John Watts said."Given the opportunity, you will see I'm the prime example of that, of what we can do if given the chance. But get those kids before someone else gets them," said Corey Winfield, of Safe Streets Brooklyn. "We need to get back on love. It's too much hate in this city. It's too much hate. An argument can get you killed." Pillar Three - Evaluation and AccountabilityScott talked about the third part of his crime plan, addressing evaluation and accountability at Coppin State University.This pillar focuses on government and police transparency by tracking it all by the data.City officials said many of those efforts have already been in the works with a bi-weekly meeting, solely on police data, that the mayor attends."He's there reviewing the data, personally, in these meetings asking the tough questions and pushing, in this case the police department, but I know with this wider plan -- all of our partners to do better for the city," said Dan Hymowitz, director of the Mayor's Office of Performance and Innovation."The work of restoring the public's trust in city government, for me, is an act of love. But it is not easy work. It's an act of tough love to be more specific. But it's essential. If we are able to build a safer Baltimore, if we're going to build a safer Baltimore, fixing the structures, that have been broken and neglected for far too long, must be done," Scott said. ​