Government announced plans to initiate a “sustained, collaborative approach by multiple stakeholders” to curb gang violence in Bermuda.Just back from a recent trip to Boston, Families Minister Glenn Blakeney held a press conference yesterday with Governor George Fergusson and Permanent Secretary Wayne Carey.Mr Blakeney has been appointed as chairman of the Inter-Agency Gang Task Force (IGTF) Ministerial Committee comprised of the Premier, Paula Cox, Attorney General, Kim Wilson and National Security Minister Wayne Perinchief.The IGTF Ministerial Committee meets on a regular basis “to discuss several new policy initiatives that take a prevention approach”. The initiatives will be made public as they are developed and implemented.Governor Fergusson told the media: “The lessons we saw last week of inter-agencies working are definitely not beyond our reach here and it was both a pleasure and privilege to be there with the Minister who is now the Chair of the task force.”Talks were held with a number of helping agencies and the Boston Police Department.The Governor noted that he was in familiar territory as he had “the fortune to be Consul General in Boston over ten years ago,” and had “dealings with the police there and some others”.“I think that in Bermuda although these issues run across constitutional lines we have here between the Governor’s responsibilities and the responsibilities of the elected Government,” he said.The group also met with representatives of “the Street Safe Boston organisation to gain firsthand knowledge of how that organisation is set up, and its role in gang intervention in Boston.“Several of the stakeholders we met exchanged information on gang-related activity on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.“There was clear recognition of the need for and importance of preventive measures to bring about long-term positive outcomes for youth,” said Mr Blakeney.“Building long-term relationships with gang members is viewed as critical to getting them to change their lifestyles.“It is equally clear that more impactful and effective community policing is an important ingredient in anti-gang prevention and intervention efforts,” he said.Mr Blakeney noted that he was most impressed with the Ten Point Coalition, “an ecumenical group that addresses issues affecting black youth, and which became a model for other initiatives elsewhere in the USA”.And he thanked the Governor for “kindly arranging for us to meet with Pastor Ray Hammond, the Co-Founder and former Chairman of the Ten Point Coalition”.“We intend to pursue further discussions with Pastor Hammond in the near future,” said Mr Blakeney.“I cannot stress enough the benefits of a fact-finding trip like our recent trip to Boston in terms of networking with a cross-section of agency representatives who are tackling gang problems in their community.“This has yielded much useful information which will assist us in assessing our options for moving forward, including developing sustained initiatives that have prevention at their core.”Moving forward he said any initiatives to combat gang violence will “have to be a holistic, all-in community approach notwithstanding the dysfunctions that we have in various areas of our society, notwithstanding the impact that victims have suffered and those loved ones of victims”.“The kind of violence and antisocial activity that we have seen in our community in recent years is not Bermuda, it is not Bermudian.“And there are core issues that are deep below layers that I believe has now come to the surface and manifesting itself in particular ways relative to the acting out of these heinous violent crimes,” said the Minister.The Governor added: “Nobody has actually got all the answers to this.“The Boston Police Department have been among the leaders in the US for some time, if they had all the answers they wouldn’t have a problem at all you could say. But they have been innovators in this area.“We have slightly different problems from the ones in Boston, but there are things that they have learned which we can learn from.“I look forward to the day when people from Boston, Birmingham and even Auckland either come to Bermuda or look us up online to see what we’ve done right and there’s no reason why that shouldn’t happen.”