ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A wild increase in the number of shootings and murders in Rochester this year prompted leaders to organize an anti-violence summit. They’re looking outside of law enforcement for solutions.

“I think mostly law enforcement will tell you for variety of reasons, there are things that they do very well,” said DeVone Boggan, founder of the Richmond, California-based Advance Peace. “This is not one of those things.”

Preventing people from shooting other people — Boggan came to Rochester from California to help people here trying to change that.

“You have to be able to engage all sides of the conflict,” he said.

Mayor Lovely Warren convened the violence prevention summit, inviting outside voices to discuss efforts that have worked in other cities.

“It’s not just a Rochester problem, this is a national issue in terms of the spike in violence,” said Daniele Lyman-Torres, city recreation and human services commissioner. “But what is the Rochester problem is how we're going to solve it.”

There are already some unique approaches to violence prevention happening in Rochester.

“A lot of the violence that we are seeing in the streets is dispute-related,“ said Sabrina LaMar, a Monroe County lawmaker who is project coordinator for CERV,  Community Engagement to Reduce Victimization. CERV is an RIT public safety initiative which works with hospitalized gunshot victims to keep disputes from turning violent again.

“We work with community partners to provide safety plans for them,” she said. “So when they're discharged from the hospital, that particular dispute that they're in there for won’t continue on, or spill out into the community.”

“That's the very individuals we're looking to engage, is the individual that is chronically unresponsive to help and resistant to change,” said Boggan.

Boggan’s Advance Peace is a community intervention program targeting those who are doing the shooting, and trying to get them on the right path though constant engagement with people from have credibility in the communities.

“It’s going to be very difficult to do good work that delivers optimal outcomes in cities when you're not engaging those very people at the center of it,” he said.  

Experts say any anti-violence efforts take time. Just like the problem, the solution is never easy.