High Point Community Against Violence
Making High Point safer for everyone
HPCAV congratulates Curtis Cheeks on his new role as High Point’s Chief of Police. We are fortunate to have an already good working relationship with our new chief, as he has been a part of High Point’s long standing efforts to reduce violent crime through focused deterrence. We appreciate his dedication to his city and to working WITH the community to make High Point safer for everyone. We also appreciate his sense of humor. Best wishes for great success, Chief Cheeks.
Each month, the High Point Police Department updates the community on the past month’s activities at the open meeting of High Point Community Against Violence. This information includes overall crime rates as well as activity in specific types of crimes, such as aggravated assaults and burglaries. Key arrests and any federal or state convictions are shared. This meeting allows anyone in attendance to ask questions as well.
These statistics are then shared on the Numbers page of this website.
If you are interested in attending, the open meetings are held the second Wednesday of every month, beginning at 8:30 a.m. at the High Point Police Department, 1730 Westchester Drive, High Point.
Rhonda has joined HPCAV as our first Assistant Executive Director. She is responsible for helping us build capacity around employment. Rhonda has years of experience as a Work First Employment and Community Engagement Specialist in Davidson County. In that role, she also coordinated Davidson County’s Business Advisory Council. She volunteered with Project Safe Neighborhood and the Domestic Violence Intervention Program so she is well acquainted with the mission of HPCAV.
Rhonda will also be heavily involved in our work with other youth service providers as we move our focus into prevention and intervention in violence by youth ages 24 and under. The hope is to improve High Point’s capacity to engage and encourage all of our young people toward a life of purpose and non-violence.
Rhonda is married to Byron and they have an adult daughter, Kayla. They live in Lexington.
We’re excited to take another step forward in making High Point a safer place for everyone.
We’re excited about the new year and our new Executive Director: Robert Martin. Robert is probably best known to his friends as a rabid Appalachian State fan (he’s a graduate). To HPCAV, he’s known as one of our founding members.
Robert was employed as a Community Corrections Officer (adult probation and parole) with the NC Department of Public Safety from 1989 to 2017. He began working in Guilford County. When High Point Regional Hospital (now Atrium Health Wake Forest) completed a needs assessment in the mid-1990’s, Robert joined the task force looking at and working to address violence. Officially representing the county’s Community Corrections office, Robert was a part of the creation of High Point Community Against Violence, Inc. and an active part of the implementation of focused deterrence here.
Robert spent the last nine years of his career in Davidson County and retired from NCDPS in 2017. He was hired as the Project Safe Neighborhoods Coordinator for Davidson County, doing essentially the same work for our neighboring county as he had done as a volunteer with HPCAV. He remained a member of the HPCAV Executive Board and continued to work with us.
When Jim Summey submitted his resignation, Robert was the natural and best choice to be our next Executive Director. He resigned from our Board in November, 2022 and officially began his new position on January 1, 2023. Robert has already laid the groundwork to build on what has been a great partnership
with our police department and our community. He is looking forward to moving us towards
more work with youth, our new focus area. He is a supporter of EKG2, a promising educational program on guns and gang violence for seventh graders, and hopes to see it implemented here.
Robert is as dedicated to his high school, High Point Andrews, as he is to App State. He has been an active HPAHS volunteer and supporter. He is a long time Lions Club member and an active part of the local Fraternal Order of Police. He participates in the High Point Senior Games and you can see him at HPU basketball games. He is truly dedicated to High Point and making it safer for everyone.
Join us in welcoming Robert to his new role with HPCAV!
Meet Elise Coby, a junior at High Point University (HPU), pictured here with Gretta Bush, our Board President and Jim Summey, our Executive Director. Her Persuasive Speaking class required her to give a “Speech of Advocacy”. Realizing domestic/partner violence and violence in general were issues of concern to her, Elise researched local organizations and chose HPCAV as the subject for her speech project. She excelled in her presentation and was awarded first place. She took it a step further and created a crowd funding campaign, raising $765 for our organization.
Elise, we are very grateful for your support and your advocacy for HPCAV on campus and beyond!
The slow down and isolation of 2020 gave some of our volunteers the time to look back and catalogue what HPCAV has done and meant to our city and the people who live and work here. The end result of that reflection is “Building a Safer High Point.” It’s an easy read and will answer many of the questions you may have about what we do and why. And maybe it will inspire you to join us as we continue working to make High Point safer for everyone.
High Point ended 2020 with a double digit decrease, 10 percent, in violent crime. Violent crimes – homicides, rapes, aggravated assaults and robberies – were down 10 percent. Burglaries, break-ins, larcenies and auto thefts were down nine percent. Homicides alone went from 19 in 2019 to 14 in 2020, not the case in many of our neighboring cities. The Department also seized 433 guns last year.
Interim Police Chief Travis Stroud gave credit to High Point’s focused deterrence strategy as one important reason the numbers went down. Focused deterrence uses data to identify the individuals who commit most of the crimes. Police and the community are able to target those individuals, helping High Point to work smarter to stop and prevent crime.
High Point began using this strategy in 1997. The graph below shows the changes in violent crime and population over the years.
You can read more about the strategy here.
In July 2010, local businessman Zaki Khalifa donated the building at 792 North Main Street in High Point to HPCAV. An anonymous donor made it possible for us to renovate the space for our needs. For the first time, HPCAV had a permanent home. A decade later, HPCAV continues to flourish in this location. In addition to providing space for our executive director and volunteers, the large back section of the building is where our Life Construction Program operates. Clients learn basic construction skills as well as general employment and life skills. They build garden sheds and go on to work on homes in the local Habitat for Humanity communities as well as repair work through the City of High Point, Housing and Community Development projects.
We also rent space to the Fraternal Order of Police, ACTS Church and a local dance instructor/DJ. The building is used to “build community” and do good work in a variety of ways.
Thank you, Zaki! We look forward to another decade of working to make High Point safer for everyone.
High Point Community Against Violence (HPCAV) completed the first phase of its new violence reduction project, More Work, Less Violence, in September, 2019. Phase One lasted six weeks, with participants meeting five days each week. Five of the initial seven participants completed this first phase. Four of those five are now employed, one of the goals of the project.
More Work, Less Violence is the creation of Jim Summey, HPCAV’s executive director, and is funded by the High Point Community Foundation. The purpose of the project is to work with some of our focused deterrence violent crime offenders who are hard-to-place, difficult to manage and slow to adjust, helping them develop skills and support that will move them into gaining legitimate employment that can help sustain them and their families. Most of these individuals are in relationships and have children. Most have difficulties securing work and keeping it. They struggle with punctuality, communication, following instructions, and being prepared from day to day, all of which negatively impact and limit their employability.
More Work, Less Violence, Phase One began with a Life Assessment for each individual, separating the facts of their lives from the fiction that had been created. Discussions and assignment topics included: communication (listening and speaking; what is real dialogue); emotions (using truth, not emotions as a basis for reactions, recognizing emotional triggers, responsibility for responses); writing as a way of organizing thoughts, separating facts from fiction, working through emotions; getting prepared for the next day; making action plans; putting plans into action. Work projects (taking instructions and functioning as a team to accomplish a common goal) were also a part of Phase One.
Phase Two, which begins in October, 2019, will work with these individuals and the significant others in their lives (girlfriends, children). The goal of Phase Two is to help the individuals improve their key relationships, reduce family dysfunction, and ultimately reduce or stop the generational cycle of violence.
The last component of the More Work, Less Violence project will be evaluation and follow-up.
HPCAV has been working to reduce violence in High Point for over 21 years. If you wonder whether our work makes a difference, hear what our clients have to say in our newest video.