Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler declared a state of emergency Thursday due to the city’s historic levels of gun violence.

He said the goal is to reduce fatal shootings by 10% during the next two years by increasing community-based interventions.

“I intend to restore the safety of the Portland community,” Wheeler said at a City Hall news conference. “We will not stop until we bring peace back to those Portland neighborhoods too often caught in the crossfire.”

The mayor tapped Portland’s former Fire Chief Mike Myers as incident commander of the city’s emergency efforts to intervene in the lives of those responsible for shootings plaguing the city and those at risk of becoming victims.

About $2.4 million already set aside in the city’s budget has yet to be distributed to community agencies to support violence intervention programs aimed at people who at greatest risk of being involved in shootings or falling victim to gun violence.

So far this year, there have been 52 homicides, putting the city on course to meet or exceed last year’s record-breaking annual count of 92 killings.

The declaration to support the mayor’s Safer Summer PDX initiative comes during a significant summer spate of fatal shootings that have claimed the lives of five people in less than a week.

It also follows a recommendation by a community oversight group earlier this week that the city adopt the ShotSpotter gun detection technology with 13 controls to avoid unintended consequences. The group also wants the city to allow police to compile a Violent Impact Player list to identify so-called “serial trigger pullers,” for intervention and enhanced attention.

Myers will be responsible for running daily Safer Summer PDX meetings and working to coordinate employees in multiple city bureaus to address the problem, according to the mayor and his staff. Police are encouraged to refer people they encounter to the community-based services, ranging from gang outreach workers to hospital-based support to victims of shootings.

“The primary focus of Safer Summer PDX is to use non-law enforcement interventions directed toward the small percentage of individuals who are most likely to commit or become victims of gun violence, but whom law enforcement is presently unable or unlikely to build a case against,” according to the mayor’s office.

Myers’ Community Safety Division will focus the $2.4 million to support four areas: the city’s Office of Violence Prevention’s outreach work to those at highest risk of firing shots, persuading those involved in shootings to put down their guns, engaging at-risk youth with pro-social activities, and adopting environmental design changes such as added lighting or traffic diversions in neighborhoods most impacted by the shootings.