Violence interrupters bring hope to cities struggling with gun crimes

Many American cities are struggling to combat gun violence, and in neighborhoods with high numbers of shootings community violence intervention (CVI) can mean the difference between life and death.

Dante Barksdale, known to his community as Tater, helped mediate conflicts as a violence interrupter. Barksdale, a convicted drug dealer, helped found Safe Streets, Baltimore’s flagship violence prevention program aimed at keeping teenagers off drugs and out of jail.

Barksdale had credibility in the streets. His uncle, Nathan “Bodie” Barksdale, was the real-life inspiration for the drug kingpin in the hit HBO series “The Wire.”

“[Violence interruption] brought out the very best in him,” Barksdale’s sister, Pili Houston, told “Nightline.” “It gave him a platform to be who he was. He opened up computer labs. He wanted the children to be able to design clothing, make podcasts. He gave cookouts so he could stand out there and yell on his blowhorn on how important education is. He was very inventive with his outreach.”

Safe Streets has achieved significant success. A 2023 report by Johns Hopkins found the group reduced homicides and nonfatal shootings by an average of 23%.

“Safe Streets was there for the people that didn't want to come to the police,” Houston said. “They were afraid to because they were afraid for their well-being.”

But the work is dangerous. Barksdale was shot and killed three years ago, at age 46 -- the first of three Safe Streets violence interrupters murdered in the span of a year.

While Baltimore police and the mayor’s office recognized Safe Streets’ value, many governments were reluctant for years to fund CVI organizations due to lack of data showing its effectiveness.

But after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, CVI programs began to get a second look. Chicago, the city that pioneered violence intervention work in the early 2000s, has invested at least $50 million since 2021. New York City is investing $86 million in the 2024 fiscal year. Wichita, Kansas, is using $1.27 million from President Joe Biden’s “American Rescue Plan.”

In 2022, Congress allocated $250 million to the Department of Justice through the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” for CVI initiatives.

“We know these programs can work,” Amy Solomon, assistant attorney general for the Office of Justice Program at the Department of Justice, told “Nightline.”

The Queensbridge Houses, home to hip-hop legends Nas and Mobb Deep, is a public housing development in New York City that has been transformed by CVI work. Historically plagued by violence fueled by generational conflicts among area residents, Queensbridge witnessed an entire year without shootings in 2017, just two years after Community Capacity Development (CCD) was founded.

“Most of the time our phone rings and people say, ‘I'm about to go kill somebody,’” CCD founder and Executive Director K. Bain told “Nightline.” “That's a cry for help.”

CCD’s violence interruption team consists of people who have committed violence or who have been victims.

“I never want to see another teenager go to prison,” said Gary “Wadu” Taylor, a member of CCD who spent 44 years in prison for murder. “They have no idea of what's waiting for them.”

CCD’s success has garnered Biden’s support.

“The only thing [CCD violence interrupters] have on them is their respect for human dignity,” Bain told President Biden when he visited CCD in February 2022.

Meanwhile, violence interrupters at Operation Good in Jackson, Mississippi, where the murder rate is the highest in the nation, according to FBI records, are grappling with challenges.

Fredrick Womack, the founder and executive director of Operation Good, says poverty is a major contributor to violence in Jackson.

“I have young men now who done turned 18 [and] they feel lost,” Womack said. “Hopelessness led to despair, despair led to acting out, and those things are what lead to violent tendencies such as robbing because…‘I ain't got nothing to lose.’”

According to U.S. Census data, nearly 30,000 people have left Jackson, a city with 82.2% Black residents, since 2010. And 1 in 4 residents there live below the federal poverty line.

Resident Jean Smith says she relies on Operation Good as security after her husband was shot and killed on the couple’s porch. Like his contemporaries across the country, Womack patrols the streets without weapons.

Jackson police told ABC News that Operation Good has been essential to lowering the homicide rate from 155 in 2021 to 109 in 2023.

But the group has a notably smaller budget than its major city counterparts, operating entirely on donations, with full-time staff paid about $15 an hour.

The “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” approved by Congress in 2022 is intended to help groups like Womack’s.

“This funding is so important,” said Solomon. It's [a] signal… that the government is in there and that we need to work together across sectors as a community to build up this CVI infrastructure.”

Baltimore’s Operation Respond is using funding from the DOJ for a mobile unit staffed with crisis counselors with the goal of targeting the root causes of violence.

“We run into people every day that have been injured directly, been shot three or four times and never seen a therapist,” said Dante Johnson, the director of Operation Respond and a former Safe Streets colleague of Dante Barksdale. “Could you imagine getting shot and nobody ever walked in the room?”

“Tater is a hero in every good sense of the word,” Johnson said about Barksdale. “Operation Response is a seed of what Tater represents.”

CVI programs have encountered occasional troubles. Last fall, the FBI raided one of Safe Streets’ ten locations, as well as that site supervisor’s home, initially charging him with illegal possession of ammunition. The charge was dropped a few months later.

While the Department of Justice does not fund Safe Streets, they say headlines like these should not take away from the positives of CVI.

Pili Houston believes her brother Tater’s work continues to enact positive change.

“Just as many lives that we’ve seen lost, you cannot count the ones that were saved… What I believe is that it would probably be much more without Safe Streets and brothers like mine.”