D.C. mayoral candidate and At-Large Councilmember Robert White on Wednesday released a list of policy proposals aimed at preventing and reducing violence — the first and most comprehensive plan he’s put forward during his campaign.

The 25-page document — which White unveiled during an event in Brightwood Park — outlines his approach to public safety, which includes an emphasis on non-police methods of interrupting violence, a focus on the root causes of crime, and a plan for making the Metropolitan Police Department more transparent and accountable.

The plan speaks to two of the major issues that have risen to the surface for residents in recent years: concerns about D.C.’s tragic uptick in homicides, along with questions — accelerated by widespread racial justice protests in 2020 — about whether the city’s police department is the most effective tool for keeping residents safe.

“Less than 40% of our homicides are solved,” White said in an interview with DCist/WAMU. “Why? Largely because community members are not talking to the police because there is a trust issue.”

White says his approach to violence and crime prevention does not center on policing, which tends to react to incidents after the fact. Instead, the violence prevention aspects of his plan would professionalize and expand the role of violence interrupters and outreach workers — people who develop relationships with individuals who are likely to perpetuate violence and work with them to make better choices.

“Our best tool for preventing crime is violence interrupters,” said White. “But if you look at the professionalism, the salary, the benefits, the training for police officers — our primary employees responsible for responding to crime — compared to that of violence interrupters, you realize that we don’t take these two tools with the same level of seriousness.”

White also told DCist/WAMU that he feels the city has not invested enough in solving the issues of poverty and trauma that produce cycles of violence in the first place.

“We have for decades been looking for shortcuts around the underlying reasons that crime is happening,” White said. “We can’t do that any longer because there are no shortcuts to be had. We have to make long-term investments in housing stability, in education here in the District of Columbia. The education outcomes for people of color are a tragedy. Mental health resources. We can’t keep trying to run away from that, and it has to be part of our approach to quelling violent crime.”

The Bowser administration and the D.C. Council have in recent months expanded the funding and scope of the city’s violence interruption programs. The Office of the Attorney General’s Cure the Streets program will expand to four new neighborhoods this year, and the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement will add violence interrupters in three new neighborhoods. The city is distributing $750,000 in grants directly to community-based organizations with ideas for combating violence. The funding put towards these efforts, though, doesn’t come close to the Metropolitan Police Department’s $516 million budget.

Critics of violence interruption programs have argued that there isn’t data to support their success, but proponents of these non-police methods of intervention say they’ve helped produce significant reductions in violence in cities like New York City and Oakland. White says he doesn’t feel the District has given these programs enough funding to prove their value.

“We are investing 10% and wondering why we aren’t seeing a 100% return,” White told DCist/WAMU. “At some point, we have got to start investing seriously.”

At a press conference Wednesday, Bowser pushed back against the notion that she hasn’t adequately invested in non-police methods of violence prevention, pointing to a $58 million investment in violence prevention this fiscal year.

“What I call it is a real investment in techniques that we are hopeful will work over time,” she said. “Even the main proponents of these techniques say that it takes time. We’ve been willing to put the District’s taxpayer dollars into that hope.”

Bowser created a new Office of Gun Violence Prevention last year, which has started a program called Building Blocks DC that aims to direct services to families in the neighborhoods most affected by gun violence.

“We’ve created a structure for intense services for individuals who have been identified as most likely to commit crime or be victims of crime,” said Bowser.

White says that evaluating the city’s violence interruption programs would be one of his first priorities if he were elected mayor. He says the Cure Violence model employed by the D.C. Attorney General’s Cure the Streets initiative has the most evidence and data behind it. And he says he does think the city’s violence interruption efforts need to be centralized — but he would want to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of all of the programs before making a decision about how to restructure them.

“We do need to make sure there is a standard floor for training and reporting so that we are comparing apples to apples and giving all of these programs the real resources that they need,” said White.

White’s fellow challenger, Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White, has also voiced frustration with the city’s response to gun violence — an issue that disproportionately affects his constituents. At the beginning of last year, after three teenagers were fatally shot in the month of January, he called for Bowser to declare a state of emergency to combat gun violence. Trayon White has also said he feels the city has been doing violence interruption programs “an injustice” by failing to fund them adequately.

Robert White’s plan comes against the backdrop of a multi-year spike in homicides, one that D.C. officials have had as many difficulties explaining as they have had curtailing. (There were 227 killings last year, the highest tally since 2003.) A similar rise in carjackings has also produced unease for many residents; last week Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) decried what she called a “state of lawlessness” in the city, especially with kids involved in crimes.

Speaking at the event on Wednesday, White similarly worried that the city was “heading back down that road” to the era when it was known as the nation’s “murder capital.” But he also rejected quick fixes like harsher penalties or increasing the size of the police department, which currently has some 3,300 officers — its lowest numbers in decades.

“I think the mayor has been taking the easy way out by saying we will pacify you with more police. That is not a public safety plan. It didn’t work in the 80s and 90s. It’s not going to work now,” said White, adding that he would like to see an audit of the department’s staffing levels and the impact on crime rates.

Bowser — who urged the council to hire more police officers last summer — has also voiced concern about legislative measures that introduce less punitive responses to crime. In a newsletter she sent to residents last week, she took aim at the D.C. Council’s sweeping review and revision of the city’s criminal code, which she says was “moving through without sufficient and meaningful resident input.” And she also wrote that “we don’t want to see hundreds of young people incarcerated, but we do believe it is important that youth who commit violent offenses, using guns that are just as deadly as the guns used by adults, face consequences.”

“When a violent crime happens in our city, we need people paying close attention to what happens along the whole process—from arrest to detention decisions for those awaiting trial. Pay attention to the prosecution decisions by the Office of the Attorney General and the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” Bowser wrote. “Pay attention to the sentences imposed by judges. Pay attention to legislation that the Council is proposing.”

Bowser reiterated a similar message at her Wednesday press conference, where she highlighted a collaboration with Prince George’s County to prevent carjackings and joined D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee in questioning why more young people accused of or arrested for carjacking were not being held in detention facilities.

On Wednesday, White criticized Bowser for these claims. “The mayor has pointed fingers for the rise in crime at everybody but herself and her administration. That’s not what a leader does,” he said.

White also told DCist/WAMU that he has no doubt young people in the District are paying attention to — and affected by — the way that politicians and the media are talking about them. In recent years, a significant amount of media coverage has been devoted to the city’s rise in carjackings and the role of teenagers in them.

“I was once a young person here in D.C. who wore a big, puffy coat… baggy jeans… [and] cornrows in my hair, because all my other peers wore it. And I noticed every time I walk past somebody’s car and they lock the door or someone crossed the street, or what I saw on the news about people like me,” he said. “I know what message these young people are receiving. It is not a message that says we want to help. It’s not a message of concern. It’s a message of finger pointing, and they absolutely are digesting it. Young people are not seeing a city that has their back and supports them in pursuing their dreams. If we were that city, we would not be hanging a mission accomplished banner when 75% of Black children are behind grade level in our schools.”

Martin Austermuhle contributed reporting.