Have ideas on how to prevent violence crime in Macon? Take this Bibb County survey

After hosting several forums, Macon-Bibb County launched a survey Monday for additional people to share their thoughts on preventing violence in Macon.

“Each member of this community brings a unique voice in the mission to stop violence in Macon-Bibb,” said Mayor Lester Miller in a news release. “It’s going to take each of those voices to form a plan and put it into action. So we’re asking you to jump in with us and join the team.”

Along with the Emergency Management Agency, the Macon Violence Prevention initiative published an online survey that asks people how they feel about crime in their neighborhood and what they believe will prevent future violence.

Through the MVP initiative, Macon-Bibb County community leaders have hosted public forums across the county to hear people’s ideas on how to prevent violent crimes.

Ideas from basketball games to after school programs were pitched along with words of grief and anger about the increase of violence in the community.

Macon set a modern day record for homicides in 2020 with 51, and the county is on pace to meet that record with 40 homicides as of Aug. 3. The number includes a pair of vehicular homicides as well as the death of a pregnant woman.

The MVP initiative was announced in June with the goal of collecting ideas and information about the needs of specific neighborhoods from forums and surveys and creating a strategic plan to prevent violent crimes in 90 days.

The goal of the initiative was to unite community and government organizations and providing funding for data-driven solutions.

For updates on the initiative, residents can visit maconviolenceprevention.org or follow the Macon Violence Prevention Facebook page. The survey can be found at surveymonkey.com/r/MVP_Crime_Survey.

This story was originally published August 9, 2021 at 2:33 PM.