Interrupting violence in Brooklyn

Milwaukee’s 414LIFE program is treating violence like a public health issue, seeking to interrupt and prevent its spread. The pilot program is a collaboration between the city’s Office of Violence Prevention, local nonprofits, and hospitals and healthcare networks. The initiative works closely with victims of violence to make sure they have the support and resources they need to prevent violent retaliation and employs people who are from the communities they’re responding to in an effort to take a hyper-local response.

Birmingham’s Offender Alumni Association is a group of violence intervention specialists that check in with gun violence patients at the hospital to offer mental health services and case management to prevent reinjury and retaliatory violence. Since launching, the group has taken on 144 clients, providing wrap-around services to victims and their families, including mentoring, emergency relocation and funds for medicine, groceries, rent and utilities.

The four-year ROCA program reaches out to young men in Baltimore at risk of becoming involved in gun violence. Youth workers check in on participants a few times a week and give them opportunities to learn the skills necessary to find a job. The program's lessons are based on cognitive behavioral therapy and remind participants to pause and think before they act.

The Violence Intervention Program at the University of Maryland Medical Center's Shock Trauma Center helps people meet basic needs after they have suffered a gunshot injury. Along with clothing, transportation vouchers, and toothbrushes, the program's social workers also provide talk therapy. The goal is to keep victims of violence from becoming victims again, and the approach is to build trust by giving the help without strings attached. Many people return for the help, and the therapy.

Outreach workers with CRED (Create Real Economic Destiny) in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood are paid under a city grant to de-escalate and mediate disputes among the same gangs that some of the workers once belonged to. Able to win the trust of people who distrust the police, CRED's violence prevention workers also provide therapy to trauma victims and job development help, in order to address the underlying causes of violence in a neighborhood where a lack of hope can breed a lack of respect for others' lives. Fatal shootings in Roseland are down by one-third while up elsewhere in Chicago.

Since the 2018 opening of a trauma-care center near the neighborhoods most affected by Chicago's gun violence, the University of Chicago Medical Center's Violence Recovery Program has helped survivors and victims' families to address the emotional harm that can go untreated when only physical harm is treated. Part of a growing field nationwide, hospital-based violence intervention, the program's nine specialists counsel people through the immediate shock of a gun injury or death. Then they address longer-term needs for services. The goals are both humanitarian and pragmatic, to head off more violence.

In the nation's largest public housing development, 696 Build Queensbridge uses the Cure Violence approach to mediating disputes before they turn violent. In 2017, its first year, there were no shootings in the development where the group does its violence interruption work. In the first 7 months of 2020, there were six shootings, up 2 from the same period in 2019 but far better than the rise in violence seen citywide. "Credible messengers" gain the trust of the community to prevent violence and counsel people to use "tools to communicate with other than violence," and without police involvement.

After two failed attempts, Oakland Ceasefire retooled its approach and since 2013 has been a significant factor in lowering homicides and nonfatal shootings. The program, used in various ways in many cities, identifies young men at high risk of getting shot or shooting others and then offers them life coaching and social services to keep them out of trouble. By de-emphasizing the role of police, pinpointing those most in need of help, boosting community involvement, and forming deeper personal relationships, the program is credited with a 32% reduction in gun homicides over a six-year study.

In New York City, 14 organizations have more than 200 people performing street outreach to intervene in potentially deadly gun crimes in at least 20 of the city's most violent "hot spots." These "violence interrupters" mediate disputes and offer social services in a process that relies on former gang members and others with street experience rather than police. While studies have shown mixed evidence of success, New York's programs have been credited with significant crime decreases. With violence on the rise after a long decline, the city is upping its budget for these programs to $39 million.

On the front lines of the defund-police movement, groups like Elite Learners and Save Our Streets Bed-Stuy mediate conflicts in ways that have lowered violence without the involvement of police, thus reducing arrests and incarceration at the same time. CMS workers often use the Cure Violence approach of "violence interruption," a form of outreach by community members to offer needed social services while preventing violence. The city, which credits these programs with a 15% decline in shootings in 17 precincts in a three-year span, is expanding the budget for this to nearly $50 million per year.