Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press

The Detroit Free Press spent a year listening to Detroit’s children, trying to understand their experiences — as many face violence, trauma and instability. With help from a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, we looked both in our own backyard and around the country for solutions that may help children deal with the "toxic stresses" in their lives. Catch up with the series here.​

BALTIMORE — Something remarkable is happening in one of Baltimore’s poorest, most dangerous neighborhoods.

Fatal shootings have slowed significantly in Park Heights, and the neighborhood in the northwest part of the city has twice gone more than a year without a single gun death. That’s even as Baltimore is set to top 300 shootings for the second year in a row. There were 344 homicides in 2015 after the number had dipped as low as 197 in 2011.

The drop in Park Heights is credited largely to Safe Streets, a program run by the city’s Health Department that flips the script on the notorious “no snitch” street culture. on its head. /Heads up: Not sure how this program is turning anything on its head (ie, changing it completely). No Snitch is the idea that you don't talk because (1) you're just going to let the people involved handle it themselves and (2) you don't want you and yours to be retaliated against by either side if someone suspects you talked (in other words, "snitches get stiches" - or worse). This program encourages the people involved to deal with their conflicts -- just in a way that doesn't involve guns and death, and there's still a code of silence. Maybe there's another way to word?

Safe Streets hires ex-cons from Park Heights and other neighborhoods to defuse volatile situations before guns are drawn. The idea: Use the people most familiar with violence — those who perpetrated it, served time for it and are now willing to turn around their lives — to reach out to drug dealers and gang members before their beefs end up in death, working along the way to change neighborhood norms away from violence.

“I’m a true believer in this program,” said Cheo Hurley, executive director of Park Heights Renaissance, a community development agency that sponsors the Safe Streets program there. “Safe Streets is an outside-the-box violence prevention effort. You’ve got to try different ways to make change. This program changes lives. It changes the guys' lives — they have a job. And they're saving lives. That’s a double benefit of this program.”

It’s not hard to see why he’s a fan. On Nov. 4, Parks Heights saw its first gun homicide of the year, the first since Sept. 26, 2015, according to the Baltimore City Health Department. That’s a far cry from recent years in which as many as seven or eight people were killed each year in the neighborhood where storefront businesses and job opportunities are scarce.

The program, funded by grants and government money, requires a sponsor — a community organization to provide in-kind support such as office space and administration of payroll in each of the five Baltimore neighborhoods where the program it now exists. Similar programs are running in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans and other U.S. cities.

Baltimore police representatives sit on the hiring panel, along with community members, clergy, Safe Streets workers and representatives of the city and the nonprofit that sponsors each Safe Streets site. Recruits have to have been in prison on drug or violence convictions. They must be out of prison for two years and have had a job or other positive involvement in the community before being hired into Safe Streets. They undergo several weeks of training, including conflict-resolution techniques. Heads up: Does Safe Streets provide any training? Say people are looking to replicate this... how does the program go about finding people, and what happens once it does?

Despite controversies, Safe Streets has shown results. A 2012 study led by P professor Daniel Webster at Johns Hopkins and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found reductions in shootings — fatal and non-fatal — of up to 34% to 56% in three out of four neighborhoods where Safe Streets operated at the time, and surveys showed declining beliefs in the neighborhoods that it was OK to use guns to settle disputes.

The study found that Safe Streets workers had successfully defused hundreds of situations.

Controversial methods

Safe Street workers maintain a code of silence about the people they interact with, not sharing what they see with police — a strict mode of confidentiality that supporters say is crucial to the task.

James Timpson, Safe Streets’ community liaison officer, said keeping a level of distance between the program’s workers and the cops is the only way to ensure the se so-called violence interrupters can do their jobs effectively.

“We don’t have a badge and a gun,” said Timpson, a Safe Steets worker who doesn't have a criminal background. “The only thing we have is our reputation. So if our reputation gets sullied by people thinking we’re snitches or that we’re giving police information when we get information, that puts our lives in danger.”

Safe Streets is an outgrowth of a program started in the 1990s by Gary Slutkin, a University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health epidemiologist, that regards violence as a disease that must be treated through a combination of mediating conflicts, preventing retaliation and changing community norms so that violence isn’t viewed as acceptable, but rather as behavior that can be changed. /Heads up: I love that you've included this; it ties it to another Solutions theme. I'm wondering, should we say a little more about our story - mention that we did one, to further solidify the relationship between the various stories in the package, even on different days? I know that online we'll probably have a link, but just in case people are seeing mainly the print...

“It’s reducing shootings and homicides — that’s clearly the direct result and the best outcome,” said Olivia Farrow, the city’s deputy commissioner for youth wellness and community health. “But I think what a lot of the team would tell you (is) it’s the beginning to change the norms and behaviors around people. So I think that’s really the long-term effect that we want.”

Safe Streets isn’t without controversy, some the result of the very nature of its design.

But recruiting ex-offenders who sometimes have spent lengthy stints in prison for drug dealing and violent crime concerns some police officers, even if the program is sanctioned by the city. The Baltimore Police Department did not respond to requests for comment.

While top police officials support the program, it hasn’t always trickled down to the beat cops patrolling the neighborhoods.

Timpson recalled a incident in which a patrol officer arrested a violence interrupter after the officer tried to break up a gathering on a corner in Park Heights, an incident that was cleared up only when a commander who knew Timpson and trusted his word intervened after Timpson called the commander on his cell phone. Timpson said the officer had intended to arrest the worker on charges of inciting a riot.

Farrow said Safe Streets wouldn’t succeed without hiring ex-offenders who know the streets and have a level of respect others couldn’t hope to earn.

“That’s the nature of the work,” Farrow said. “We’re using credible messengers who are themselves persons who have caused havoc and chaos in their communities years before. You’re hiring people who have had a past that is contrary to the goals of the program. But I think the program doesn’t work unless you have those people who are the credible messengers — they can speak to the folks on the streets who are committing the violence.”

Safe Streets workers do not discourage people from calling police for help or to report crime.

“Our job is to catch you before you cross that line" into violence," Timpson said. “Once you cross that line and the police have to get involved, it’s on you, because we tried to catch you. , w We tried to warn you and help you before you got there.”

Another concern is Safe Streets workers slipping back into crime. In July 2015, police responding to a robbery raided a Safe Streets site in east Baltimore where police found guns, drugs and materials used in the distribution of drugs. Police arrested two Safe Streets workers, but the charges against them were later dropped, according to the Baltimore Sun. The health department said the two men were terminated from the program. It was at least the third such time that Safe Streets workers were arrested. Safe Streets says workers who revert to criminal activity are removed from employment. /Heads up: Do you know what happened to these workers? Does Safe Streets have any kind of 'morality clause' that says if you go back to crime, you're out?

Farrow said those incidents have led to reforms, including stronger background checks in the hiring process and more support for the workers once they’re hired — through employment and skills training for jobs after they leave Safe Streets, and as well as emotional support and counseling for those workers whose own lives have been affected impacted by violence and trauma.

SUBHED

Funding also remains a concern.

Safe Streets nearly came to a halt this summer as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and state lawmakers fought over spending $80 million in rainy day funding for violence prevention, including $1 million for Safe Streets, a do-or-die chunk of the annual budget of $1.2 million to $1.5 million for the 40 people paid to work in the program.

Persuaded of Safe Streets’ importance after a community outcry, Hogan later came up with $500,000 to bridge the program’s funding gap until incoming Mayor Catherine Pugh, now a Democratic state senator representing Baltimore, takes office in January, leaving it up to her administration and the health department to find more long-term funding.

Farrow said the health department argues that, given the program’s success in reducing shootings, more law-enforcement dollars should be shifted to Safe Streets. The decline in violence — and reductions in health care costs associated with fatal and non-fatal shootings — saves the city and the state money.

“How can we get those entities to contribute in a meaningful way?” Farrow said.

Beyond government funding, the health department also is exploring funding from charitable foundations to a potential local tax dedicated to violence prevention.

“We have to explore all of our options to figure out what is a sustainable funding stream," Farrow said. "That is really the key.”

Program 'is like therapy'

Dante Barksdale knows the streets he helps keep safe.

The 42-year-old — who is related to the real-life man who was part of the inspiration for the character Avon Barksdale in the HBO series “The Wire” — spent 1992-2000 in prison on drug charges. He had been drifting back toward street crime and risked more time behind bars when he began working for the program in February 2008.

Barksdale was skeptical at first about the program. But he said he figured working for Safe Streets would be better than the manual labor and pizza delivery jobs he was able to get after serving time.

“I just ran with it because I knew I didn’t want to go back to jail because I have a wife and kids,” he said.

He said a light-bulb moment came for him soon enough, when he was counseling a young man who had graduated from high school. Barksdale encouraged him to try to go to college. The young man asked Barksdale where he had gone to college. He told him he hadn’t.

Barksdale said both he and the young man made a deal to check out classes at Sojourner-Douglass College in Baltimore. The young man didn’t stick with it, but Barksdale did. He received a bachelor’s degree in social work and a master’s degree in public administration.

“I still see him to this day,” Barksdale said of the young man. “He always lives with the line, ‘I’m the reason you went back to school and got your degree.’ And I’m good with that, because he was my motivation, and I believe in my heart that someday he might just see the light.”

Eight years later, Barksdale is now the outreach coordinator for all of the sites, helping with hiring, recruiting and developing development of violence interrupters as well as doing presentations on the effectiveness of the program for potential donors to the program.

He credits Safe Streets with turning around his life.

“They gave me an opportunity, and when I realized I could get by on that pay scale, I didn’t have to commit no more crimes, I just ran with it,” he said. “For me, this program is like therapy. I get to help the community that I once used to run through.”

Catholics, others help

In March, Safe Streets opened a new site in its Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, which exploded in rioting riots after the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray, who died from catastrophic injuries to his neck and spine while in a police transport vehicle in April 2015. Police had arrested him for having an illegal knife.

The incident became one of the flashpoints in the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Sandtown site's sponsor organization is Catholic Charities of Baltimore. Catholic Charities' executive director, Bill McCarthy, said the agency began talking about how it could make a difference after the Freddie Gray unrest.

"It made me think it was time to do something differently," McCarthy said, and the examples of Safe Streets in other neighborhoods stood out, not only because of the reduction in the violence reductions, but because Safe Streets workers also host community meetings, cookouts, peace walks and other events that strengthen communities.

“Being a part of that was very important to us,” McCarthy said. "I’m a fan and supportive of anything evidence-based to heal our community and to make our community better.”

It’s still too early to gauge whether Safe Streets will show strong success in Sandtown. But Greg Marshburn, 47, the outreach supervisor for the site, said his workers are using the program’s methodology of not only keeping tabs on dealers and gang members, but of staying in contact with all sorts of neighborhood people who have close eyes on the community.

“They build rapport with the older lady sitting on the steps because she’s always there and she sees and hears everything,” Marshburn said. “She’ll give us a call when something’s going on because we’re about prevention. We do our best to stop stuff on the front end.”

It’s the same with local store owners, faith leaders and others, Marshburn said.

“A lot of people are sick and tired of what’s going on, but they don’t know what to do about it,” Marshburn said. “We are the antidote injected into the community.”

Back in Park Heights, violence interrupter Damian McNeil, 39, walks the streets daily on his mission to reduce violence in the neighborhood where he grew up. McNeil is intimately familiar with the neighborhood, where he started dealing drugs at age 13, spent time behind bars for it and continued to deal drugs do it until he was hired a year ago to work for Safe Streets.

Showing how he works on a recent day, McNeil checked in with regulars he sees often as he talked about block parties, basketball tournaments, clothing and food drives, and back-to-school events Safe Streets organizes to promote cohesion among people who live in Park Heights.

McNeil said he keeps an eye out for new people in the neighborhood, folks who are moving in from elsewhere but also men returning from prison, to whom he provides referrals for help with paying bills and, if needed, drug and alcohol addiction counseling. And he checks in regularly with corner dope dealers and others to make sure any beefs are handled without guns. play.

People regularly come up to him to say hello or wave at him from their porches.

"Damian is a fixture in the neighborhood," said Christopher Crockett, a longtime Park Heights resident who supervises a Park Heights Renaissance program that focuses on neighborhood beautification. of the neighborhood. McNeil and his cohorts "have a link with people that police can't have. They brought a rapport to the sensitivity of the neighborhood."

Geisha Graham, an administrator for Baltimore's city schools who has lived in Park Heights for about eight years, chatted with McNeil and called him a "walking testimony" to people's ability to turn around their lives.

the ability of people to turn around their lives.

Graham said she's a strong supporter of workers like McNeil, in a neighborhood she said doesn't get enough attention from police or city hall and, until Safe Streets came in, was too often was the site of shootings.

"Who better to know the streets than the people who grew up on them?" she said. "You give them a purpose, and a way to give back."

McNeil, walking away after the chat, chuckled at the praise, and the turnaround he has he's made, noting of Graham: "She could have sent me to prison several times."

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com or on Twitter @matthelms