Seattle Councilmember Maritza Rivera submitted a budget proposal Wednesday asking the city to spend roughly $418,000 over two years on a consulting and training partnership aimed at the small group of people driving most of the city's gun violence. The proposal follows a non-binding council resolution that passed in September, and it now lands in the lap of Mayor Katie Wilson, who has not committed to funding it.
A Resolution With No Guarantee of Action
Rivera's push began in September, when she introduced a resolution calling on the city to pursue an evidence-based gun-violence prevention strategy, according to chronline.com. The resolution passed with seven councilmembers voting in favor, while Councilmembers Dionne Foster and Alexis Mercedes Rinck abstained, as reported by KUOW. But because the resolution was non-binding, KUOW noted that Wilson would have to get on board for it to actually move forward.
That is where the new budget action, posted by the Seattle City Council
on Wednesday, comes in. The proposal would fund a two-year pilot built around a consultant from the National Network for Safer Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, per chronline.com's reporting. The Urbanist, however, reported the same consulting proposal from what it called the National Network of Safe Communities at a cost of $417,000 rather than $418,000 — a discrepancy the available reporting does not resolve.
Targeting a Fraction of a Percent of the City
The strategy at the center of Rivera's proposal is known as focused deterrence, or group violence intervention, which pairs law enforcement with community groups and outreach workers to concentrate resources on the small number of people responsible for most shootings and homicides, chronline.com reported. The Urbanist described the model as requiring three components working together: law enforcement, support and services, and a community moral voice.
Rivera has framed the stakes in blunt numerical terms. She said the people at greatest risk of involvement in gun violence make up about 0.1% of Seattle's population — roughly 900 people — yet account for 52% of the city's violence, according to the same Urbanist report. The model traces back to Boston's Operation Ceasefire in the 1990s and has since been adapted in cities including Oakland, New Orleans and Baltimore, per Capitol Hill Seattle. Rivera has also pointed to cities using the NNSC strategy reporting reductions in gun violence of 40% to 60%, chronline.com reported, though that figure comes from Rivera and secondary reporting rather than an independently verified evaluation.
Wilson's Separate Plan Still Pending
Mayor Wilson has not agreed to authorize the expenditure for the network consultant, chronline.com reported, and she has instead said she planned to announce her own comprehensive, focused gun-violence prevention strategy along with related budget investments in the weeks that followed. Her proposed approach, as described to KUOW, would move $5 million in community-intervention contracts to the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department.
Additional details of Wilson's plan, reported by MyNorthwest, include more than $600,000 in her proposed 2027-2028 budget for a new after-school program at Rainier Beach High School and additional peer mentoring at the Rainier Beach Community Center. The plan would also increase community crisis-response operations by 85%, expanding coverage from 10 hours a day to more than 18 hours, according to the same MyNorthwest report. Separately, Council President Joy Hollingsworth sponsored a mid-year budget amendment adding $250,000 in unused Seattle Police Department funding for Community Violence Interruption ambassadors, the Urbanist reported.
The Numbers Behind the Debate
The funding fight is unfolding against a backdrop of improving — but historically elevated — violence statistics. Seattle recorded 219 shootings and shots-fired incidents so far in 2026, a 20% decrease from the same point the year before, per the Urbanist. The first quarter of 2026 saw the fewest shots-fired incidents of any first quarter in four years, more than 50% below the worst first quarter in 2023, and the city went the entire month of June without a single homicide, according to the same report.
Capitol Hill Seattle reported that the King County Prosecutor's quarterly report found the number of people killed or injured by gun violence in Seattle reached a four-year low in the first three months of 2026. Seattle recorded 37 homicides in 2025, down 36% from 2024 and 46% below the 2023 record of 69, the outlet also reported. Still, a 2025 city auditor's report found a significant increase in gun violence over the past decade, including a sustained, postpandemic increase in shootings across the city, chronline.com reported — a longer-term trend that the short-term 2026 declines have not been shown to reverse.
Whether Rivera's $418,000 pilot survives the budget process now depends largely on Wilson, whose own strategy and its funding details have yet to be fully laid out in available reporting. For a city watching its shooting numbers fall even as the underlying decade-long trend remains troubling, the outcome of that negotiation will shape how Seattle spends its next two years trying to reach the roughly 900 people both sides agree matter most.
