PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The Berkshire District Attorney's Office has received a nearly $100,000 federal grant for youth community engagement and law enforcement suppression.

"The idea of this particular program is to reengage community and also to outreach with our law enforcement agencies," District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said during a press conference on Thursday.

"As you know, when I ran for office, one of the things I said I wanted to do was reinvest in the community, that was that pledge, and also to form a stronger partnership with law enforcement, which we've been continuing to do for the last seven months. This grant is going to support our pledge to the community."

The $99,933.99 Safer Communities Grant allocation includes $29,000 for youth programs in the county and more than $25,000 for the Berkshire County Task Force law enforcement overtime.

"This is a two-part grant — 50 percent of it was for law enforcement suppression, the other 50 percent was for community engagement, primarily with youth programming and supporting youth," Director of Community Engagement and Communications Julia Sabourin said.

"Gang and drug diversion was a big push in this grant and we, as both an office and a state, feel like the more we can build protective proactive factors around youth, the better outcome will have with them not becoming gang involved."

Roots Rising, a nonprofit farming organization, received the largest program allocation of about $20,000 for its youth crews. This is designed to help empower youth through meaningful, paid work.

"Roots Rising's mission is to empower youth and to build community through food and farming. We do that through a number of ways. We run the Pittsfield Farmers Market, we have an upcoming youth farm on the horizon, and the focus of this funding will be our youth crews," Executive Director Jessica Vecchia said.

"In our youth crews, we hire Pittsfield teens to work on farms and food pantries and at our own farmers market. It's the first teen-run market in the region. We're very proud of that. We like to say that Roots Rising and our youth crews are more than just a job. It's an opportunity to engage teens in meaningful work, which we define as work that needs to be done and that serves a larger social good and we believe meaningful work leaves our teens feeling purposeful, capable, and connected."

She said that when we invest in youth, they are able to invest back in themselves.

The program provides paid work for teens as well as financial literacy, culinary lessons and other educational opportunities.  

"We provide a transformational experience for our young people and we're also a critical labor force for our local farms," Vecchia explained, adding that the work cannot be done without community partners and funders.

Shugrue is impressed with the teen-led farmers' market.

"The minute I met your students I was just so impressed with it," he said. "So I was so happy we could partner with you because of the maturity level, the independence, the drive that these kids have, you wouldn't even know they are children. They are that empowering."

The task force's $25,000 will go toward addressing gangs, guns, and drug violence. The task force is comprised of the office's detective unit, the assigned State Police, and local police departments in the county.

Some $21,000 will fund eight four-hour undercover patrols and $4,500 will fund two four-hour visibility patrols.

"So people in the community see that we're out making sure that communities are safe and protected and that the officers are being seen within our marginalized communities as partners and not just as law enforcement but as partners in the community," Shugrue said.

"That's very important to us because really what we see the crime is in the marginalized communities so we want to be out in those communities."

Also included in the spending plan is about $7,000 for additional police radios, about $13,000 for cell mapping and cell record analysis training, and about $7,000 for youth transportation for diversion programs and probation.

Shugrue reported that Gov. Maura Healey commended the spending's use in filling gaps in services.

Reid Middle School's peer mediator program received more than $5,000.  

"We're really excited to bring this leadership program back to Reid. It's such a critical time. We are excited," guidance counselor Kristen Shepardson said.

"We are going to be training 18 and 20 eighth-graders and we've chosen our eighth-graders based on leadership potential, students that other kids look up to already, and we're hoping that they can shift and guide student conflict, students that maybe need someone to talk to and they can look up to one of the peers so hopefully that can shape and guide the culture of our building in a positive way."

Another $1,400 was allocated for a re-engaging at-risk youth event in line with the Homeless Education Assistance Act or the McKinney-Vento Act.

North Berkshire School Housing Partnership coordinator Stacey Parsons, who is also a McKinney-Vento regional liaison, explained that the district is looking at the work it is doing this year from the lens of prevention and care.

"We want to be doing as much as we can to strengthen those protective factors and to prevent something from happening but also, as a community of providers between our schools, our community providers, police fire, EMS, that when/if an incident happens that we're able to wrap around that youth and that family to promote resilience and recovery," she said.

"So we are very excited to take a little bit of a model we've used before to offer some family nights at our elementary schools. It's going to build on some of the work we've done this week in our amazing Youth Leadership Camp. Using our North Adams police department, our fire department, EMS, and our teachers to provide an engaging activity for youth while also, since parents are going to be there, taking a little bit of time to offer them a workshop to strengthen them and support them and their role as parents."

The plan is to offer a family-style meal to bring the community together and focus on relationship-building factors.

"Just so that we all know each other better and maybe get a chance to see each other in a different light and then spend just some time having fun," Parsons said.

"We've seen it happen. We've had an amazing four days with kids this week and we've seen huge outcomes so the team has already been built and we're ready to keep it going."

Berkshire Pride was also a recipient of $1,500 to partner with the office for SafeSpace training and Chaos Theory received about $4,000 for its program with the Eagle Educational Academy to get students civilly involved in the mayoral race.

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