While gun violence and other incidents involving youth remain a serious problem in Philadelphia, the nonprofit Philly Truce is bringing back its Peace Patrol to city neighborhoods, including West Philly. Beginning at 2 p.m. this Thursday, Philly Truce will deploy its first patrol of the season from Charles Durham Library at the corner 34th & Haverford Avenue in Mantua. The launch coincides with the 84th birthday of the late Herman Wrice, a community organizer who resided and worked for decades in the same section of West Philly.

Philly Truce and partner Life Outside the Streets have unveiled its community outreach and visible deterrence schedule for what they are calling Safe City Summer. It’s robust. Beginning on Thursday the group will tour 10 neighborhoods using Free Library branches as bases. Three days per week they will hold space for communities across the city to be trained and join a peace patrol on the spot.

In addition to the visible deterrence the patrols provide, Peace Patrol has a new feature. The objective is to continue training the Safe City Boys, a resource team of boys ages 11-15 being prepared for the fall when organizers expect they’ll be ready for service as peer mediators in their school communities. The boys wrapped up Safe City Summit on June 12th at the Parkway Central Branch. The wider community is invited to support the Safe City Boys by providing them with an audience to practice their messaging (Let’s Heal Philly, Save Our Sons) and joining them for a paid Peace Patrol.

A 100-day campaign of Peace Patrol back in early 2022 contributed to 26 percent and 11 percent reductions in homicides shooting instances, according to data. The stats are a comparison of violent activity in the zip codes patrolled (19121, 19131, 19133, 19138, 19140) in the 100 days prior to January 15, 2022 with the active period which ended on April 30, 2022. The 2022 campaign was developed after the Thanksgiving Memorial Truce of 2021 saw a ⅔ reduction over 2020 in shooting incidents citywide during the Thanksgiving weekend, typically a time where violence spikes.

Philly Truce is a movement that helps communities address pressing issues that are wreaking havoc on their safety and well-being. Their model integrates multiple successful interventions to create change, including safety patrols, mentorship, social media integration, social-emotional learning for young people, and skills-based learning opportunities for those at the highest risk for gun violence in our community paired with justice interventions.

In a little under two years, Philly Truce has fielded more than 200 help requests through Philly Truce App, and engaged 3600 Philadelphians in violence prevention service and service opportunities. More than 1500 middle school students have attended Philly Truce assemblies that challenge the notion of “snitching.”

For more information or to donate to Philly Truce, please visit http://www.phillytruce.com. You can also follow Philly Truce on IG or FB @phillytruce.