NYC ‘violence interrupters’ try to temper rage

Save Our Streets enlists former gang members

NEW YORK — David Gaskin steps into the street armed with a bullhorn. Cars swerve. He glares.

The former gang member raises the mic to his lips and preaches the message emblazoned on his T-shirt, on his orange baseball cap, on the rubber bands around his wrist and on his Adidas tracksuit: “Stop Shooting. Start Living.”

“If you’re ready to stand against gun violence, let me hear you say, ‘I’m ready!’ ” he yells to a gathering crowd.

“I’m ready!” they respond. Gaskin staked out his spot in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood because that’s where a 27-year-old man was shot three days earlier. His rally was part of the playbook for Save Our Streets (S.O.S), one of a growing number of taxpayer-financed “violence interrupter” groups in the nation’s largest city that enlist former gang members to attack shootings like outbreaks of a disease that they must keep from spreading.

This summer, amid a recent uptick in the killings of young people, the violence interrupters have been working overtime: stoking outrage over violent crimes to keep them from being accepted as normal, hanging out in high-crime spots to watch out for trouble, and even personally stepping in to mediate fights, in some cases after guns have been drawn.

“We’re the foot soldiers,” says Rudy Suggs, a former drug dealer who supervises the violence interrupters for S.O.S. “We’re the ones that come out here late at night, looking for the at-risk youth that’s out here selling drugs, gambling, doing stuff that they shouldn’t be doing.”

These troops mostly come from the ranks of each neighborhood’s former gang members, many of whom have served time for their crimes. There are currently 18 violence interrupter groups in highcrime areas across the city, with four more planned, part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to maintain historically low rates of murder and gun violence while also improving the police’s relations with minority communities. Chicago, Baltimore and Philadelphia have similar groups.

“It’s less and less the police who are discouraging bad behavior and more and more these organizations that are encouraging good behavior,” says Elizabeth Glazer, director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, which has a $34 million annual budget to pay for these and other programs.

Police similarly respond to a shooting by sending in extra officers, and violence interrupters coordinate with them precinct by precinct, although both are careful not to step on each other’s toes. Sometimes the police will step back to let them mediate a tense situation, but once the police move in, they don’t interfere. And perhaps most importantly, violence interrupters keep their relationships and conversations confidential from the police, so they can maintain the trust of the community.

“We work together. We speak on a bi-weekly basis,” says Deputy Inspector Hugh Bogle, who leads a police unit that patrols public housing. When a shooting happens, they let the violence interrupters know whether there may be retaliation, so they can interfere.

Seth Wenig The Associated Press David Gaskin of Save Our Streets uses a megaphone during a shooting response July 24 in the Brooklyn borough of New York.