Baltimore's Health Department is releasing today an interim report on its Operation Safe Streets program, modeled after a similar program that helped Boston curtail violence and gang activity. One of the most startling details was that not a single homicide occurred in the East Baltimore neighborhood of McElderry Park in the 17 months the program had been in place.

The report by Daniel W. Webster, the co-director gun policy and research at Johns Hopkins University, called the lack of slayings in that one community "a highly statistical reduction" and noted that trends showed that the area should have had four homicides over 17 months. For more, please see my column today.

The program combines law enforcement already being used with mentoring and conflict resolution porgrams. Webster found that Safe Street workers did extensive outreach with "high-risk clients" and held 53 "mediations of potentially-lethal disputes."

Webster said: "Young men in McElderry Park ... were much less likely than in the two neighborhoods that had not implemented the program to hold attitudes supportive of using guns to resolve disputes."

Click on the link above to read the reports. Below is a letter that highlights the results: