(New York Post) San Francisco will soon pay some potential criminals $300-a-month not to shoot people.
The city’s Dream Keeper Fellowship will give monthly gift cards to 10 people deemed to be at high risk of gun crime if they refrain from taking part in the city’s alarming surge in shootings, officials told the San Francisco Examiner.
As well as $300 for staying out of trouble, those in the pilot program can make an extra $200 if they meet other benchmarks, such as attending parole appointments and finding a job.
The pilot — which starts in October and plans to expand to around 75 people a year — is part of the mayor’s two-year initiative to invest $120 million in the city’s black community.
It will be funded with taxpayers’ money, as well as private donations and a possible federal grant, according to KGO.
The program was inspired by one run in neighboring Richmond, California, in 2016 that studies have said reduced gun crime by up to 70 percent, officials told the local station.
But it had also faced serious controversy — with a 22-year-old member, Dawaun Rice, getting sentenced 40 years to life after admitting murdering two people, including a 17-year-old boy, in two separate shootings while in the program, The Mercury News reported at the time.
Yolanda Ficklin-Prothro, the grieving mother of one Rice’s victims, blamed the program organizers for her 29-year old son Javonte Prothro’s death.
“You didn’t take their guns. You were giving them money to buy more guns,” the mom said in a 2016 interview with KGO.
