Mayor Muriel Bowser has appointed Linda Harllee Harper as the Executive Director of the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. She will take on the new role while continuing to lead a separate department: the Office of Gun Violence and Prevention.

Harllee Harper will succeed former director Delbert “Del” McFadden, and relieve the interim director of ONSE Delano Hunter, who is also the director of Parks and Recreation.

“I’m looking forward to expanding upon the foundation built by former Director McFadden and Director Hunter in leading the ONSE,” Harllee Harper said in a release. “I intend to focus on transparency and responsiveness in my new role and ensure that we are serving our residents with the resources they need to keep safe.”

Harllee Harper will be pulling double-duty leading ONSE lead ONSE in addition to her job as Director of OGVP. The OGVP is under the city administrator’s office, while ONSE falls under the Office of Public Safety. Despite sharing a leader, Bowser said, the two offices will remain separate and organizationally, nothing will change for staff as of right now.

“Part of my rationale was to have one of my cabinet members who has been very successful in implementing programs help us figure out the ways to take it to the next level,” Bowser said Thursday at a press conference announcing the appointment. “We’re going to use Linda’s experience with working with both contractors and inside the government to interrupt violence, and so we think it’s a win-win bringing her policy expertise to bear on the operations of this relatively new agency.”

This isn’t the first time one person has carried two jobs in Bowser’s administration. Bowser’s Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, John Falcicchio, also serves as her chief of staff, and Deputy City Administrator Kevin Donahue also served as the Interim Deputy Mayor for Public Safety for a few months before the nomination of Lindsey Appiah earlier this year.

In this case, Harllee Harper’s dual role may be an effort to increase coordination among some of the city’s violence prevention efforts. One of the central criticisms of the city’s approach to violence intervention is that they haven’t been united by a single, clear plan to reach those at highest risk of becoming a perpetrator or a victim of gun violence.

“The District is unique in that it is one of the few cities in the country that has the needed talent, ability, and resources to drastically reduce gun violence in the city,” said a gun violence reduction plan commissioned by the city and released last year. “However, it is lacking the political commitment, coordination, and a coherent strategy to reduce gun violence.”

While the gun violence prevention office is designed to find policy solutions to gun violence, ONSE focuses on the implementation of violence prevention efforts. ONSE was created in 2017 to address violence in the District and assist families dealing with trauma and grief through partnerships with residents, government agencies, and community-based organizations. One of the office’s most notable programs is the Pathways Program, which annually focuses on 50 individuals most at-risk of being involved in violence and connecting them to employment opportunities and training. ONSE also runs a violence intervention program that employs violence interrupters and outreach workers in neighborhoods with high rates of gun violence. (D.C.’s Office of the Attorney General also runs a separate violence intervention program called Cure the Streets.) The gun violence prevention office has six full-time employees, while ONSE employs 74 full-time staffers.

The D.C. government has been funding different initiatives and projects to address violence in the region for the past few years. Despite an overall decline in homicides, D.C. still witnessed 203 murders in 2022—- including 18 killings of teens. As of Thursday, 22 people have been killed in D.C., according to MPD, including the shooting deaths of 13-year-old Karon Blake by a D.C. government employee, and a Metro employee at the Potomac Avenue Station.

Additionally, Bowser announced 25 grantees receiving funds from the Office of Gun Violence and Prevention (OGVP) and new recreation-focused grant opportunities.

These awards consist of $5000 grants and are given to residents or community organizations working to prevent violence within the community (i.e. art therapy, sports programs for youth, career-building workshops, bicycle maintenance, and more). Since its inception, the OGVP has awarded a little more than $1.6 million in grants to 162 grantees. The next round is open for applicants later this month.

Applications are also open for the DPR’s Rec for ALL Community Grants to support programs, activities, and events to engage youth ages 6-18. The grants include:

• • Support Grants – Up to $5,000 that can be used to purchase equipment, supplies, or materials for existing programs.
  • Engagement Grants – Up to $10,000 to support field trips and other enrichment activities.
  • Event and Travel Grants – Up to $10,000 to provide travel to athletic competitions for youth groups.
  • Programming Grants – Up to $150,000 in funding geared toward established organizations to fund the expansion of new or existing recurring programs.

Jenny Gathright contributed reporting.