Pittsburgh mayoral candidate State Representative Ed Gainey says the gun violence in the city cannot be solved with over-policing.
Gainey told NewsRadio KDKA's Marty Griffin that we need to treat the problem more like a public health crisis than a public safety crisis.
"We're not going to be able to incarcerate our way of this violence," Gainey said. "We need to deal from a public health perspective. There's reasons why people are out here shooting.
"If we don't address those root reasons, then we're not going to get out of this. We're going to continue in a cycle. Crime may go down for a little bit, but then it's going to spike up.
"There are root causes to violence that we have not addressed and we can't address all of it through public safety. Some of this address has to come through public health and how we really deal with the root causes to help stop this violence."
Last week, six people were shot in less than 10 hours.
