Outside the Yellow Tape
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Description
Violent crime is up in American cities. Does that mean it’s time to return to the aggressive policing of the 90s? Not exactly. How can we make our cities safer and empower communities with the tools they need to save more lives? This week, we travel from Atlanta to Los Angeles to Chicago to meet seasoned leaders who are taking an innovative approach to harm reduction, violence interruption, and violence prevention. Plus, we explore where police fit into all of this.
Resources:
To learn more about the people and organizations featured in this episode and access critical information about suicide and violence prevention visit: https://lastdayresources.simvoly.com/.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs is the host. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our producers are Kegan Zema and Giulia Hjort. Hannah Boomershine and Erianna Jiles are our associate producers. Andi Kristinsdottir is our audio engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. Our story consultant is Kaya Henderson. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs. This season of Last Day is created in partnership with the Kendeda Fund, The Jed Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Levi Strauss & Co, and Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.
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Transcript
SPEAKERS
Patrick Sharkey, Pres. Joe Biden, Chris, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Randy Smith, Dominic, Andre Christian, Fernando Rejón
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 00:01
This season we’re talking about guns, homicide and suicide. We’ve worked hard to ensure that our storytelling is as safe as possible. But we can address this issue by avoiding difficult details. Instead of warning, who should and shouldn’t listen before each episode, we want to encourage you to press pause, if and when you need two.
Randy Smith
Things happen very quickly. It’s almost like a pit stop when you’re thinking about NASCAR. Right? There’s so many things happening at once. And there’s one person that’s leading the orchestra. And that’s the trauma surgeon.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That’s Dr. Randy Smith. She’s a trauma surgeon at one of Atlanta’s largest hospitals. She’s worked in ERs across the country. But since coming to Atlanta, she has been shocked by the volume of patients that come through the doors every day.
Randy Smith
I can see up to 30-40. And on our worst day 60 patients that come in through our doors that need trauma, or emergency general surgery, that all comes to me, by and large 20% or so of the patients that we see of all trauma patients are those who have been afflicted with penetrating trauma, and gunshots are the large majority of those patients.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
For the most part, Dr. Smith is saving lives. But her job also means occasionally losing them.
Randy Smith
Sometimes they’ve come in and they were dead upon arrival, I you know, I just simply evaluated them and pronounced them dead without any intervention. Other times, I’ve worked really, really hard to try to bring them back. I’ve done procedures that are invasive, where I’ve opened up the chest cavity, and I’ve actually pumped their heart in my hands trying to jump started again. And then I still lose them. And it is incredibly It’s a humbling process for sure. But going and talking to a family member and having them cry or having them get angry, or you know, having them be in shock and not say anything at all. It literally is the worst part of my job. And it rocks everybody’s world you can see the somber faces of the nurses. You know, I’m at a teaching hospital and I work with medical students and residents from all different specialties and everybody in the room is affected by it. One thing that helps me to process you know what’s going on a lot of times it’s in the midst of you know, chaos, there’s a lot going on there are other people that need my attention. But when someone does die in our trauma bay, I stopped. I turned off all the beeps, all the whistles, all the sections, anything that can make noise and I stopped and I pause for a moment of silence. For me, that’s my way of respecting the process that has just happened in front of me. It allows me also a time to just take a breath and then to prepare for the discussion that I’m about to have with the family members. But I’ll tell you that it hurts a lot because a lot of times our patients are young and this is not expected. I’ve talked to other people that have to deal with death and dying a lot. Surgical oncologist, they’re dealing with cancer. There’s some preparation for the death and dying that may occur sometimes, sometimes it’s not. But for me, there’s no preparation at all. And that piece is what makes it difficult. I do think that every time I’ve dealt with this has taken a little piece of me because it is something that’s just not natural.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I’m Stephanie Wittels Wachs and this is LAST DAY. Just hearing Dr. Smith describe a typical day sounds physically and emotionally exhausting. It’s not an easy job, but it’s exactly the job she wanted.
Randy Smith 04:27
When I decided to do surgery, and particularly trauma, I had recently completed my master’s in public health. So I was looking for a field of medicine where I was not only impacting the person in front of me, but I can make a difference on a community level. And there’s so many ways to incorporate public health and trauma surgery that it was just really I was drawn to it.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
The intersection of trauma and public health has never been clearer than throughout the pandemic but Dr. Smith and colleagues in big cities across the country have seen increased numbers of trauma patients coming into the ER with gunshot wounds.
Randy Smith
I definitely think that this is the result of despair, all around despair. And the root causes of gun violence are going to be the same root causes of, you know, opioid abuse or overdose, the same root causes of homelessness and poverty. I mean, it’s the same thing.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
When we started the show back in 2019, we would cite the number of overdoses in one year, which was 72,000. And then to shock people, I’d say that is the size of an NFL stadium. So it has been personally demoralizing to watch opioid overdose deaths skyrocket to over 100,000 in one year. And one of the most shocking things we learned working on Season One is that these ER doctors can see the same patients come in having overdosed four to five times in one day. Turns out, there’s a similar pattern with gunshot victims.
Randy Smith 06:10
So, reentry is a huge problem. And there have been plenty of studies that have looked at this and shown that in some areas, up to 40% of people who are injured by gunshot wounds have been previously injured by a gunshot wound. So we know that it’s the number one risk factor for violent injury.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Basically, just being shot once put someone at risk of being shot again, as depressing as that is, it helps Dr. Smith be proactive with her patients. She’s not just treating the injury; she’s trying to address what caused the injury.
Randy Smith
So I’m a big huge advocate of the hospital being a center for violence prevention, is the entry point where we can actually impact the people that are right in front of us. They’re a captive audience, they’re in my hospital bed. And so I can actually start the process of trying to have some risk reduction resources that are provided to the patients while they’re right here.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Her team is taking a close look at all the factors that landed the patient in the hospital in the first place. Were you a kid who was supposed to be in school at the time? Are you hungry? Are you looking for money to support your family?
Randy Smith
We like to look at all these risk factors, and then we try to alleviate them. And the way that we do that is by partnerships with community-based organizations. So our hospital has built a network of community-based organizations that can help our patients providing mental health services, substance abuse programs, housing and shelter, job readiness, life skills, financial literacy, like literally, I can list so many different things that can help people to kind of get back on their feet. And then it’s also a way for them to engage with other community members. So they feel connected and empowered. So we kind of get everything started in hopes that we are able to do a warm handoff with our community partners, and that we never ever see the patient again in the same circumstance.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 08:14
When people ask me what the show is about, I always say it’s a harm reduction podcast. I started LAST DAY after my brother died of an overdose. And my big question was, how could I have stopped him from doing drugs. But I quickly learned that we’re never going to stop people from using drugs. And the better goal is to make drug use less deadly. It’s a similar thing with guns, chances are, we’re not getting rid of them entirely, ever. And that means we’re a long way away from zero shootings in this country. So how do we control our controllables? How do we take advantage of what we know about the people who are most at risk? And how do we empower the helpers to meet those at-risk people where they’re at? Well, this week, we are traveling across the country from Atlanta to Los Angeles to Chicago to see how people are taking innovative approaches to harm reduction and violence prevention. We’ll look at what’s working and what needs to work better.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
My kind of girl. It’s 7AM and we are standing on the corner of 100 and 3RD and Wilmington in the Watts neighborhood of South LA. Members of the Watts life Car Club are handing out free breakfast to kids walking by on their way to school. We just watched a little girl run over, start grabbing chips and doughnut holes and Capri Suns off the table and cram them into her open backpack. Her mom was pushing a stroller and she nestled to yoo hoo next to the baby before crossing the street, as we got closer to school Time bigger groups of kids started showing up.
Dominic 10:02
Okay, right now we got about six or seven kids come flying across the street for the last doughnuts and juices. And see I don’t mind getting up when the face is no smiling. I’m serious. I do not mind.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Every Wednesday, Andre, Christian, Dominic, Pitts, and the rest of the Watts life crew wake up early to set up shop. They’re standing in front of a strip mall with a laundromat and a donut shop. Across the street. On one corner is a tent where a woman is living. On the other corner, there is a parking lot that actually has a couple of little housing pods and a shelter. Andre and Dominic both grew up in this neighborhood, so they understand just how far one free meal can go. Here’s Dominic
Dominic
it’s hard to go to school and learn in your stomach is growling. Possible. So if we get him a one day a week, a little sunshine.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So all of this was very heartwarming. But it’s worth asking a blunt question. What does breakfast really have to do with gun violence prevention? Well, while I was in Watts, I kept thinking about Patrick Sharkey, the expert we featured in the last episode, he drew a straight line from abandonment to violence.
Patrick Sharkey
This is what happens when you abandon central city neighborhoods. Public space starts to empty out institutions start to wither away and it becomes vulnerable to violence. That’s the explanation for the long-term pattern of concentrated poverty and violence.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So where poverty is concentrated, and public spaces are empty, violence thrives. So just having this group of community elders showing up every week to say, hey, it matters to me that you have food today is a way of reclaiming this space for the next generation.
Dominic 12:07
And then a lot of these kids, though, you don’t know what they see at all. You know what I’m saying? You can see it in their eyes. They don’t want to live like this. You don’t know if they can actually see it. And that’s why it’s so rough. When all you see is negativity. And I get emotional because our kids are our future.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It’s hard for Dominic because he has so much pride in his neighborhood and sees the promise in these kids. But he’s used to only seeing what’s in the news when something bad happens. He was overwhelmed that we showed up to record their breakfast. He’s 58 years old, which I honestly think of as pretty young but here he’s an elder.
Dominic
I’m lucky because I’ve lived this old, guys I grew up, they don’t live to be 58, you know, and you can see the war wounds on them, you know, lowdown muscle all those y’all got war wounds on the street. But the streets kind of rocked the water us, you know what I’m saying, because when we were kids, we just start thinking about gang banging and doing all this stuff. Until we didn’t see no hope. And see we don’t have no hope. And your family’s starving. What are you gonna do? You’re gonna watch your son or daughter lay up here and starve to death. Or are you gonna go out here get your hustle on.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
The residents of Watts have struggled for decades. In fact, the neighborhood is most commonly remembered for the 1965 Watts riots, six days of civil unrest in response to police brutality that resulted in 34 deaths. 23 of those people were killed by LAPD officers or National Guardsmen. Today the neighborhood is still plagued by high unemployment and poverty and multigenerational gangs operate openly in its three largest housing complexes. Andre Christian grew up as a member of one of these gangs and has the scars to show for it.
Andre Christian 14:12
I actually been shot 13 times dealing with the streets it was a 3 the first time and 10 the second time when I got shot three times. I didn’t know if I was gonna live or die. I was praying to everybody I was praying to God, […] Virgin Mary and make sure I get it right if I do die then once I got better, I had just in my head we don’t die we multiply. So I feel untouchable. After and then that’s when I got a rude awakening with the 10 shots and shut me down again. I was back on that same prayer again. Okay, this time I’m for real. I’m really gonna change.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And he did. Andre got involved with various community organizations and as a Peace fellow practicing violence and eruption with the Urban Peace Institute In LA. Violence interruption has been a big idea since the 90s. That’s been getting a lot of attention in recent years. The theory behind it is that people who have been incarcerated or street involved are most qualified to interrupt violence because they’re the most credible messengers.
Andre Christian
I’m from the community. So a lot of times even when people talking in anger, a lot of people really want peace. And they know I’m a peacekeeper,
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Andre leads Watts Life United, which hosts all kinds of community events that may not seem directly related to gun violence, but are getting people connected. In addition to the breakfast, they’ve got these car clubs, where hundreds of people show up to parade their fancy cars.
Andre Christian 15:41
We have these cars that are on hydraulics. They go up and down in the air, they have gone side to side, someone could go on three wheels, turn corners. And it’s a community.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It’s a community that find some common ground in a space that’s often filled with conflict.
Andre Christian 16:03
Now we have conversations, now we have a dialogue and see the thing about that we get together on the weekends, when you see them, saying people through the middle of the week that take tensions down. So that can stop something that would have been a danger waiting to happen.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Listen, when I first heard about violence interruption, I imagined someone physically jumping in and breaking up a fight like a superhero swooping in to save the day. But the more I talked to people, the more I learned that a lot of the work is just establishing trust within the community. If anything, it’s more like the anti-Batman violence interrupters aren’t sitting alone in a dark cave waiting for the bad signal. They are showing up consistently and supporting the community whether or not there’s conflict. This work builds relationships that institutions like the urban Peace Institute can’t possibly do on their own.
Fernando Rejón
We can do legal work, we can do policy work, we can build political will, we can shake narratives. But all that is meaningless if it’s not reflective of the voices on the streets, the people on the frontlines.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That’s Fernando Rejón, the executive director of the Urban Peace Institute, or UPI. for over 20 years, UPI has taken a public health approach to address the root causes of violence in LA. He explained that most violence interruption work breaks down into two categories prevention and intervention. To help us understand the difference. He compared it to a freeway, which is helpful and extremely on brand for LA.
Fernando Rejón
So if we look at a freeway and the freeway have unwrapped, and they have off ramps, at the end of that freeway, there’s you know, it’s either cemetery or incarceration. A lot of times when you’re involved in the cycle of violence, those are the options. So once you’re on that freeway, you know the direction that folks are going. So what prevention does is preventing young people from getting on that freeway.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 18:04
This is where Andre and the Watts life crew fits in. They’re essentially standing on those on ramps and handing out donut holes, and Capri Suns.
Fernando Rejón
So they’re on the on ramps, and they’re saying let me walk you back down. This is not the destination you want to go to because this is where it’s gonna lead, right.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is also how I’d categorize the work that CHRIS 180 is doing in Atlanta, providing trauma training, and reclaiming public spaces for the community.
Fernando Rejón
Primary prevention is really creating safe spaces, parks, schools, where infrastructures where young people can attach themselves to or they can get mentoring, they can get counseling, they can play sports, etc. So investment in those prevention infrastructures are critical.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This work counteracts the abandonment and disinvestment we’ve covered in previous episodes. But a lot of these efforts are for the next generation. What about all the people who are already on Route?
Fernando Rejón
A lot of times, particularly with intervention, those are folks that are already on the freeway. Once folks are on the freeway, you also have intervention workers, there are people who’ve been there, done that they’re on the freeway, just say Hey, slow down, hey, exit coming up that type of thing, but they’re consistent. They’re credible. They know how to navigate that freeway. They know how to navigate the street politics. They know how to kind of manage some of the dynamics that exist behind the walls in prisons, but also on the streets.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Andre is very familiar with the dynamics of the streets and what it takes to get off the freeway. It’s not easy. He says for years, he straddled the fence between his life as a gang member and his work as a violence interrupter.
Andre Christian
When it came closer to 2000, I really kind of got the pitch he was like, you have to pretty much disconnect from that life is like a different page in your life. So you can respond and act on the same thing that you used to act on when he was in the street, gang bank and a part of the problem.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
I think this goes without saying but changed does not happen overnight. This is why it is critical to have as many points of contact as possible, from engaging with kids on their way to school, to providing resources to gunshot victims in the hospital. All of these are opportunities to create an alternate route that avoids the freeway leading to incarceration or death. After the break, we’ll talk about where the police fit in to all of this.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 20:40
We’re back with Fernando Rohan, Executive Director of UPI, talking about policing and La
Fernando Rejón
law enforcement, that’s their world on the inside of the little tape interventions world is on the outside of the yellow tape.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So on the inside of the yellow tape, law enforcement is trying to catch their purpose. They’re talking to witnesses and trying to get the story straight. But in many neighborhoods, people aren’t going to talk to the cops.
Fernando Rejón
Most of them most of the time probably aren’t gonna say anything. So they have to investigate it on their own right? What happens is that there’s no one there to intervene and engage the community. Because what’s happening on the other side of the yellow tape is the committee is talking about, who do you think did it, what happened, they’re trying to find out, most of them are not going to tell law enforcement.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
That’s when the intervention workers step in.
Fernando Rejón
What they’re doing is they’re engaging community, and they’re saying we don’t want to know who did it. We want to know who didn’t do it. Because a lot of people get killed over bad information. And so they’re working their networks in and trying to defuse things and trying to dispel any type of rumors because those catch like wildfire.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is important, because when you’re talking about reputation, and retaliation, rumors can be deadly. So this is actually built into crisis intervention training.
Fernando Rejón 22:00
What we do is we read a story of what happened. So we take five people out of the class, we read the story word for word, it was a red Camaro, this is who was there, very, very detailed. Then we have somebody who’s in the class till the first person that comes in, and then repeat back what they said. And then it’s pretty close. But it changes with the first person by the time you get to the fifth person. It was a yellow, Volkswagen, and five people were shot really was only one, right. So intervention, being able to intervene in that situation. And they’re respected and trusted, and they’re credible. It’s a different conversation, and they understand how rumors can get people killed, and they can untangle information. That’s a critical voice to have during conflict or during crisis in any community.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Again, not exactly Batman kicking ass with a bunch of fancy gadgets. But this work has real impact.
Andre Christian
It’s saving lives, and saving lives on a different level. And saving lives. It’s not just to fire men, even though we love our firemen going in there saving lives. A lot of times it’s a conversation. It’s those peace talks are sitting down at the roundtable.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Andre has found himself in the exact situation that Fernando modeled for his trainees.
Andre Christian
I was walking down a 100 and 3rd and one of the young guys, he told me he was going to go somewhere, do some shooting, because some guy that came through their shoot at it and I said who was it? He told me a particular community that it came from, and I said, did you see him? Did you see the car? Say no, I just saw the color and I know it was there. I say how you just don’t go over there and retaliate? And do something like that. And you didn’t even see a face. You don’t even notice them. You just saw what color jacket they had on? That’ll mean they came from over there. So then I was able to downplay that situation. Find out if there’s really some over there. Let me talk to them guys over there and see what’s going on and vice versa.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 24:06
He convinced the guy to cool off and avoid doing something he couldn’t take back. And then Andre just kept calling him over and over again to check in.
Andre Christian
Nothing ever happened. Because with people in our community, a lot of times, they only stay mad for about a week or two. If you catch him right when it’s hot and heavy. You can kind of talk him down 9 times out of 10 but even a piece of respect.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
So that’s the superhero move. Andre was a trusted neighbor in the right place at the right time, who heard a plan and did something to stop it. This kind of work helps to prevent shootings, but it’s also critical in the aftermath of violence.
Fernando Rejón
When LAPD alone responds to a gang related homicide, the likelihood of retaliation is 24% when LAPD plus intervention in their separate lanes, respond, the likelihood of retaliatory killing dropped significantly to less than 1%.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Dropping the rate of retaliation from 24% to 1%. is pretty fucking amazing because one shooting can set off a chain reaction. Many epidemiologists, including Gary Slotkin, the guy who came up with violence intervention, actually think of violence as a contagion that moves through communities like a virus. And there is a huge cost associated with an outbreak, not only in human lives, but it’s estimated that each gun death costs taxpayers $270,000. So violence interruption is saving lives and millions of dollars each year. But here’s the thing, as amazing as all of this is, it is hard to measure success, because so much of it is about prevention.
Andre Christian
You can’t quantify what didn’t happen, you just quantify what did happen. So when they say crime is up, 20 people got killed, but that would have been 50. If we had a deal we did. But all you really measuring is a 20. That did happen. So not being able to quantify what we do stop. You know, that’s where we get the short end of the state law when it comes certain things.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 26:16
When something violent happens in your neighborhood, that’s what you focus on. Because fear, as we have established is very powerful. And when people get scared, they want an aggressive response.
Fernando Rejón
There’s always a master narrative around. We want law and order; we want to go back to the 90s. In LA, it’s like, folks, a lot of the intervention folks lived through the Navy survived it went to prison, etc. And so we don’t want to go back to the 90s.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Nearly everyone we talked to you about community violence, at some point brought up not wanting to go back to the 90s. It feels especially relevant now because we experience a rise in crime that is reminiscent to what was happening in the late 80s and early 90s. In cities like LA, that crime wave was followed by a decade of draconian policing, and by the 2000s, crime did dramatically go down. So for some that feels like pretty clear cause and effect when crime goes up, respond with aggressive policing, and the crime should go back down. The problem is that the history is much more complicated than that. I won’t try to cram three decades of history into a single monologue. But long story short, the War on Drugs of the 80s and 90s fueled mass incarceration, which decimated communities of color. In an effort to crack down on gang violence. Police forces like the LAPD started both terrorizing these communities and severed trust with the people they were supposed to serve. That all sounds bad. And it was but starting in 1991, the rates of violent crime in America did start to go down. So was aggressive policing the answer? It’s not that simple. Crime did decrease, but no one knows exactly what made the biggest impact for every city that unleashed the police on its citizens. There are plenty of other examples of cities that didn’t but still experienced a decrease in violent crime. Researchers point to more nuanced factors like a drop in the unemployment rate and the reduction of lead and gasoline. I know sounds weird, but Google it. Another notable shift came in the form of community policing, LA experienced a positive shift in policing tactics after the many failures of the 80s and 90s. By partnering with community organizations like the urban Peace Institute, there is still a long way to go. But after all the progress they’ve experienced, you see why advocates like Fernando don’t want to go back to the way it was.
Fernando Rejón 28:56
LA has graduated from that type of mentality and we know what the possibilities are. Law enforcement has an important role in public safety. But it’s also how do they police? How do we change the culture of policing to where the mission of American policing changes towards not an us versus them? It goes from warrior policing to guardian policing, right? So part of our police reform work is you know, that’s a piece of it. It’s how LAPD engages with the community. The mere enforcement of laws does not necessarily ensure safety. We have to really understand what safety means for communities most impacted by violence. It committees most impacted by systemic injustice and institutionalized racism.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
There’s a need for education and training for both law enforcement and violence interrupters. When we met up with Fernando, UPI had just launched their 140-hour 18-week training program for community intervention workers, which sounds pretty official, but he also explained that the trick is to professionalize the field without taking away the grassroots relatable stuff that made these outreach workers credible messengers in the first place.
Fernando Rejón 30:02
We have to go into a burning building, put the fire out and come out like not smelling like smoke. There’s some magic there, right for people that don’t know. But also, that’s the challenge is that you can’t get involved in the criminal element of it, you have to have those strong boundaries, you’re not going to get involved in law enforcement element of it, you have to have those boundaries. What we had to do in LA is there’s Black and White, we had to create a gray area for this work to exist.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
And part of that means not taking a zero-tolerance approach to gangs.
Fernando Rejón
We’re not anti-gang, we’re anti-violence. If you attack gangs, you make them stronger. If identity is gang, violence is behavior. If you address behavior, you’re not judging somebody for their identity, who they are. What you’re doing is that you’re working with them to address behavior that has been learned. If you address violence, there’s a point where neighborhoods could come together and agree that hey, we need to reduce violence for kids. And for the next generation. You had to get law enforcement to buy into that and to understand, the mission is different than just crime suppression and arresting your way out of the problem.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
UPI knows what works in LA, they’ve done extensive research over the years. But it’s only effective when everyone is aligned from politicians to police, to violence interrupters. When thinking about the future, Fernando points to the need to keep professionalizing the field, violence interruption is still in experimentation mode. Historically, these initiatives have received inconsistent funding and support. So it’s hard to really point to it as the primary solution to gun violence. But in the meantime, workers like Andre are on the streets, answering their phones, 24/7. They’re doing the work of first responders just without comparable salaries or benefits.
Fernando Rejón
This is the big thing is that intervention workers in a lot of cities aren’t paid enough. There’s not enough respect for the field. And in LA, they’ve done it, they’ve proven themselves. Over the years, they’ve dealt with a lot. They’ve saved the city millions of dollars, right? There’s some intervention workers that we know have saved like 1000s of lives over the years. They’re not going to get a medal for it. They’re not going to get a lot of recognition for it.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 32:31
that recognition is starting to spread to a more mainstream audience. In fact, President Biden even named checked violence interruption during his State of the Union speech this year.
Pres. Joe Biden
That’s why the American rescue plan that you all provided $350 billion that cities, states and counties can use to hire more police, invest in more proven strategies. Proven strategies like community violence interruption trusted messengers, breaking the cycle of violence and trauma, giving young people some hope.
Fernando Rejón
When you had the President of the United States talk about community violence, intervention, violence interrupters publicly, never been done. It’s unheard of. And so having the White House talk about it, being able to connect with other leaders across the country, and then here in LA is how do we take it to scale and it has to be county city, there has to be state federal funding, but also philanthropy has to step in, to provide funding to support innovation, and growth within the field. So we’re moving, we’re moving in the right direction. Of course, there’s, there’s more work to do. But we’re gonna keep pushing and, you know, this is an enduring struggle for us. And for me, it’s always been just faith in our community’s faith and knowing what we’re doing is right. And that it’s meaningful, that it matters to a lot of people.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
After the break, we head to a city that is putting their money where their mouth is, to give community initiatives, the greatest possible chance to succeed.
Chris 34:20
I was a young man, you know, really entrenched with you know, what was outside of my front window, right. And so I was gang involved. At one point. I’ve been a victim of gun violence. I’ve been shot. I’ve participated in violence. I’ve, you know, I was a high school dropout. You know, it was just like the perfect storm to not succeed.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
This is Chris Patterson, and years ago, he couldn’t have imagined being where he is today. Leading Chicago’s brand-new office of firearm violence prevention. Chris is a natural fit for this job because he knows what it means to navigate violence.
Chris
I grew up with a mother and a father both addicted to substances and drugs. And I’ve been in and out of foster homes. You know, back in the 70s, we were in and out of battered women’s shelters, my mom and I have had bouts of homelessness and, and dumpster diving, you know, I’ve witnessed domestic violence, I’ve seen my mother incarcerated. Seeing the pain and frustration that my parents were going through, and sometimes not always being there with them. So birthdays and Christmas and holidays passing by with no parents, you know, by my side.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Like so many kids exposed to violence at a young age, Chris adapted to the behavior he saw.
Chris
You know, I’ve ended up spending 12 years in the federal prison system as a result of, you know, some of my activities, and never really been able to put my finger on the ability that I have within me to be who I’m supposed to be for society, who I’m supposed to be for myself and family. It was at this incarceration for me that I first met individuals who had a message for me and that was mentorship. In the most unlikely of places.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 36:17
This mentorship paved the way for Chris to feel like he could have a purpose. Once he got out and introduced him to the kind of work he does today.
Chris
You know, I was just so enthralled with this idea that I could have a job and I could get paid for talking to my own people and trying to save them and not, you know, see them in prison or not see them in early graves.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Avoiding early graves is a legitimate concern for many in Chicago right now. And 2021, the governor of Illinois declared gun violence a public health crisis, after gun homicides in the state reached record numbers, as in the highest level in 25 years. Through the reimagine Public Safety Act, the governor established the state’s first ever office of firearm violence prevention, and asked Chris to run it, with a substantial $250 million budget over the next three years. This is a huge deal. It means that grassroots organizations don’t need to be in competition with each other fighting over inadequate funds, they can get all the money they need and work together as a unified network.
Chris
Our governor is calling on those small grassroot organizations to get the support they need in order to be more effective at the job that they’re doing. And at the same time building out and supporting our older, larger legacy organizations that have done this work historically, for a long time. And so it’s a balance of making sure that everyone is at the table and giving everyone a voice so that they can contribute to decrease in this firearm violence that we’re under siege with.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
It is an uphill battle. And Chicago is really representative of one of the biggest obstacles when it comes to tackling gun violence in America. Because your gun laws are only as strong as your next-door neighbors. And Illinois next door neighbor Indiana is pretty lacks.
Chris 38:17
Yeah, we’re thinking about the guns that are coming over the border for sure. Because that is, you know, that’s a huge part of the problem that’s happening in Chicago, Chicago, for many who don’t know, within the borders of Chicago, there aren’t any gun stores. And a lot of people wouldn’t know that. And, you know, Illinois and Chicago have some of the strictest gun policies or laws in the country. And yet we find ourselves in a position that we’re in with, you know, CPD, recovering guns and a 10s of 1000s. Now, right every year,
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 38:52
between gun violence and COVID-19, the pandemic created a collision of deadly crises, and our cities have been the hardest hit. So far, we’ve been talking about Atlanta, and Chicago and LA, but this is a national trend. According to a recent report from every town for gun safety, over 19,000 people were shot and killed in 2020. That is 25% more than just one year earlier. But here’s the fascinating part. Similar trends occurred in cities with so called tough on crime administration’s along with those taking a more progressive approach to public safety. So what was actually driving the numbers?
Chris
So the uptick in violence, you know, I want to continue to push the narrative of the sense of hopelessness when I was a young person on the street involved in gangs there were days that I would go outside feeling like I was gonna get killed that day. Right. And if there’s any young person on the street involved in gangs, drugs like that is a real feeling right? And it’s not it wasn’t unique to just me every time I shared a story I always get head nods people definitely understand. That’s a hard place to be, that level of hopelessness is akin to suicidal ideation, right, and you go outside knowing that today could be my last day. And yet you still go outside, you still participate. When COVID hits, and you hear about how deadly it is, when there’s already no jobs in your community, when you don’t have a place to sleep, because you’re scared, couch surfing or sleeping on the train or in restaurants until you know the 24-hour restaurants. And then you got a worldwide disease that comes and says, Listen, there’s a good chance you may not even make it. It’s easy to throw caution to the wind, and say, You know what, let me enact all my frustrations. And, you know, because I don’t, I don’t have the communication skills, I don’t have the tools in order to walk through my issues and my problems the way that I need to.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 40:58
Think about everything we’ve heard about the dangers that thrive when public spaces are abandoned. Many of these neighborhoods spent decades building up strong resources in schools, churches, community centers, and nearly everything was shut down overnight. So young people are suddenly left without their support systems, but are still coping with day-to-day trauma. Tackling that head on is key to successful violence interruption.
Chris
We cannot allow young people, old people, middle aged folks right to continue to be traumatized without the addressing of that trauma. And so what we want to do is we want to pair young people who have been traumatized because of gun violence with mental health professionals through Medicaid, to make sure that they’re being seen that they’re understanding and learning coping skills to deal with the trauma, the real trauma, the PTSD, that is affecting them on a day-to-day basis. So PTSD is not exclusive to just our soldiers who have been overseas and in war areas. We went and seen a second-grade class a few years ago, and every single second grader raised their hand when they asked how many people had someone in her family incarcerated. Every single young person raised their hand when asked how many of you know someone who’s been shot or killed. And so in order for us to heal the communities, not only is it an influx of funding as we’re doing, but it is mental health support is getting the people the resources they need in order to feel like I have a real chance at making it in this world.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 42:41
We’re still in the very early stages. But the mission of Chicago’s new office for firearm violence prevention reminds me of the magic formula from season one, that magical combination of resources that help prevent deaths of despair, you might remember, the trick about the magic formula is that it doesn’t work with just one ingredient. Like you can go to a 30-day treatment program and get sober. But you probably can’t stay sober unless you also have therapy and a job and community support. It is the same thing here to really address gun violence, you need funding. But remember the freeway, you need to invest that money in both prevention and intervention, in order to make a real impact. You need to address trauma and increase access to mental health services. You need street outreach workers who are credible messengers and a police force that is trained to respect and collaborate with them. It takes all of these elements working together to have a fighting chance. But then, even when you have perfected your magic formula, the possibility for relapse is still there. I mean, it’s kind of an innate part of the cycle.
Chris
The theory of change model shows, you know, contemplation pre contemplation, you know, the actual work being done, but it also it highlights relapse. And people have the best intention. So nobody wants to go to prison. Nobody wants to die because of firearm violence. But it’s hard to break cycles and habits right particularly when your circles and your networks are small. And so it’s about let’s just one create a relationship. Let’s identify where our goals at and oftentimes with harm reduction strategy that you spoke about. We’re not telling people to leave the gangs, when you’re doing street outreach work. It’s not about you know, going from 0 to 100. Let’s leave the gang and all of that it’s about let’s start identifying small goals. Right, let’s get your ID let’s get your birth certificate. Now. Let’s do this resume.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs 44:47
Chris does a phenomenal job walking that thin line between optimism and realism. He will do everything in his power to provide opportunities, but he knows that taking advantage of those opportunities isn’t so simple for everyone.
Chris
Because we understand getting a person a job is not the answer to violence, right? Because I can get you a job. And six months later, I had to get you another job because the trauma didn’t allow you to keep the job. The trauma won’t allow me to take an insult because I’m a reactionary individual who’s traumatized. So we’re on the cusp of making the changes that are needed. But people just need to know that the folks who are under siege, they want the violence to stop in their own communities, and they’re willing to, to put the legwork in, they just need the support. So you lead with, you know, people who are reputable messengers of that message. We out on the street, we connect with young people and show them one that people do care. And that mistakes will be made. And but once those mistakes are made, we’re not dropping you. We’re here for the long haul, right? And I think that’s what makes the difference, that no matter what you do is relentless engagement. Like we’re not going anywhere.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
Relentless engagement sums up so much of this work. And that means writing out the current storm of relentless headlines about urban gun violence. How do you cope with that with the fact that it’s like two steps forward? One step back?
Chris 46:25
Yeah, it’s the coping part is hard. I come with my own baggage and trauma. You know, it hurts when anytime someone is shot and killed. Right. And I hear about it, and it tears my heart out when I think about it being young people. You know, I remember being young, five, six, and being physically abused, and not feeling safe. And it hurts that we lose children to the streets. And particularly, you know, and knowing that other children are seeing this, right? and that they have a sense of hopelessness, which I know too well, to intimate. And so it is hard, right? But I’ve, I’ve seen a lot, I’ve come through a lot, and not just me, I’ve seen a lot of people come through a lot of stuff, you know, that could have killed them. And so I’m hopeful. You know, one of the frustrations I know, that I have in the governor shares is that, you know, we want to put this money out today, you know, so that we can get, we can get programs going tomorrow. And you know, this is not moving fast enough for us. For anyone who cares about the issue. Like, every time I hear someone’s shot, it’s like, I want to go out and I want to run and hug their family members, I want to do more for them. I want to help them in every single way. And there’s organizations doing that. And now my position is how do I help those organizations so that they can actually get that work done on the ground.
Stephanie Wittels Wachs
As long as people are dying, I’m not sure it’ll ever feel like progress is happening fast enough. But I’m glad there are people like Chris Patterson and Fernando and Andre and the entire Watts life crew rolling up their sleeves and doing this work. The truth is so many violence interruption programs fail because they’re not properly funded. The city of Chicago has $250 million to work with over the next three years, which is well above the violence prevention budget of any other city. So all eyes are on them to see what happens next. Chicago is leading the pack. But it’s exciting to see offices of Violence Prevention pop up across the country, as lawmakers realize we are at an inflection point, just in the last few months Atlanta open to their own Office of Violence Prevention, headed up by Jacquel Clemons Moore. They are now one of 48 offices across the country that are eager to fund grassroots programs in their communities like Chris 180 and Gangsters To Growers. We can’t wait any longer, and we can’t go back to the way things used to be. Leaders are looking at cities like Chicago and LA and learning from their history to develop their plan for the future.
CREDITS
LAST DAY is a production of Lemonada Media. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our producers are Kegan Zema and Giulia Hjort. Hannah Boomershine and Erianna Jiles are our associate producers. Music is by Hannis Brown. Executive Producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and me Stephanie Wittels Wachs. We are thrilled to partner this season with the Candida Foundation, The Jed Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Levi Strauss and Co, and Everytown for Gun Safety. You can find more mental health and legal arms restrictions resources along with info about some of the voices on the show in the show notes and at lemonadamedia.com/show/lastday. If you want to hear more LAST DAY, we have two whole other seasons. Please go listen to them wherever you’re listening right now. And while you’re there, I implore you to take a moment to rate review and subscribe. It is the number one way that you can help the show. Join our Facebook group to connect with me and fellow LAST DAY listeners at www.facebook.com/groups/lastdaypodcast. You can find us on all social platforms at @LemonadaMedia. And you can find me at @wittelstephanie. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium on Apple podcasts. I’m Stephanie Wittels Wachs. See you next week.
