For all the anger and mistrust swirling around the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice and the release of a critical U.S. Department of Justice report on the use of excessive force by Cleveland police, voices are being raised in clear expectation that meaningful change can be achieved.

These voices come from within the community and from City Hall, where Mayor Frank Jackson has become increasingly forthright about his determination to negotiate a meaningful and -- from his perspective -- fair consent decree with the Justice Department.

The public's input is equally important, and it is heartening to see the Greater Cleveland Congregations, a collection of faith communities, join the dialogue over police reform. They've made a number of recommendations they would like included in a consent decree.

The Greater Cleveland Congregations, a group of churches from all over Northeast Ohio, presented four main reform ideas to city, federal and county official Tuesday night.

More than 1,000 people packed a Cleveland church Tuesday to present these reform ideas which include: constitutional policing that focuses on treating everyone equally, community engagement, financial sustainability and reorganizing internal accountability.

David Hemenway, a public health expert at Harvard, says that the way forward is for police departments or the military to buy smart guns, creating a market and proving they work.

An interfaith group of religious leaders is also appealing to gun industry leaders, ahead of the huge annual trade show in Las Vegas with 65,000 attendees, to drop opposition to smart guns....

Leaders of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, the Metropolitan Organization and members of the community and law enforcement officials attended a public meeting Sunday morning to address crime in north Pasadena and to request more police presence in their neighborhoods.

The meeting was organized by TMO...

 Do Not Stand Idly By (“DNSIB”) is different for two big reasons.

First, it’s a faith-based initiative spearheaded by Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders (although it welcomes people of other or no faiths.) Framing the argument of the need to reduce gun violence in religious terms will undoubtedly move many—possibly even some on the right.

Second, the focus of DNSIB is going to the source. No, I’m not talking the Book of Genesis. I mean the actual gun manufacturers. DNSIB’s mission is to convince gun makers to voluntarily (or by way of some friendly economic pressure) impose changes in its business practices that will hopefully save lives.

Battles over gun control in America are not always loud and filled with angry back-and-forth rhetoric. Some of the skirmishes are quiet — and perhaps not skirmishes at all.

That is the goal of a North Jersey rabbi and a group of public officials, including some mayors from Bergen County, who plan to show up at the offices of gunmakers in several states and at least one investment firm in Manhattan that has deep ties to gunmakers to discuss controls on weapons.

Hundreds of TMO leaders gathered to hound their public officials on why children of De Zavala Elementary School don't get the protection they need from packs of stray dogs roaming their campus....

“The idea of a smart-gun maker who has lots of experience making guns is intriguing because he’s not just some fly-by-night guy trying to do this,” said Rabbi Joel Mosbacher, a member of the group [Metro IAF] that met with Mauch. “Law enforcement officials have been quietly saying that if he comes over, they’d be willing to meet with him.”

One of us is a pastor and the other a rabbi of congregations in and near Boston. We both had identical reactions when we first learned of the Boston Marathon bombings last year... 

Rabbi Joel Mosbacher starts his Oped with the following: 

"On the one-year anniversary of Newtown, and approaching the fifteenth year after my father was murdered with a handgun in Chicago, I felt something I hadn’t felt for a long time regarding gun violence in America: optimism...."

About the work of East Brooklyn Congregations in New York City.

New York City’s unprecedented crime reduction has been remarkable for its scale and persistence. But our city has the bad habit of either taking its successes for granted or losing sight of why and how progress was made. Both supporters and critics of recent police practices — stop-and-frisk in particular — have repeated these mistakes. Supporters incorrectly hold the tactic responsible for building a safer city; critics would have us sacrifice the effective response of the NYPD at the altar of reform.