Knoxville turns to ‘interrupters” to break the cycle on gun violence
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After an 18-month rollout of $1 million in programs aimed at slowing the pace of gun violence, an ambitious street outreach targeting Knoxville’s highest-risk individuals is up and running.
Turn Up Knox is a violence interrupter program designed to connect those proven to be most at risk for gun violence with the resources they need to break the cycle. Two months into its pilot year, Turn Up Knox staff members are deep into conflict resolution training, making themselves known to the community at football games and public events, and showing up at shooting investigation scenes. The group’s first hosted event, a party at Skatetown, is scheduled for Friday.
The program’s genesis was sparked during a period of devastating gun deaths in 2021 that claimed the lives of nine teenagers, including six who attended the same high school. In all, Knoxville experienced 41 homicides last year, an all-time high.
In the midst of the outbreak of murders, Knoxville’s City Council approved $1 million to stem gun violence, with the money going to the Community Empowerment Fund. By April 2022, only half that money had been allocated. But in mid-June, during a sometimes contentious City Council meeting during which some expressed concern over the program’s lack of specifics, Turn Up Knox was granted up to $450,000 for a trial run.
“We are a community in trauma right now because of everything we have experienced,” City Council member Gwen McKenzie said during the meeting as she expressed her support for funding Turn Up Knox. “We have to do better. We have to start somewhere, we have to stop the bleeding.”
What is a violence interrupter program, and are such programs effective?
Simply put, violence interrupter programs aim to reduce gun deaths through mediation and deescalation. The programs are centered on community outreach and direct interruption or mediation of neighborhood conflicts by trained people known and trusted by residents.
At their core, the programs rely on paid outreach workers to develop relationships with individuals at high risk for committing crimes or being victims of violence. Intervention teams connect participants with services, including job training and housing support.
Over the past two years, Indianapolis and Savannah have started similar initiatives. Programs that have been in place for years longer, in cities such as Oakland, have shown promising results.
Oakland experienced declines in shootings and homicides for five consecutive years, starting in 2012 when the city’s Gun Violence Reduction Strategy was launched, according to a 2018 study authored by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform.
A 2020 study by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice found strong evidence that violence interruption programs can work. The approach is difficult to evaluate, the report said, but noted one early study found significant declines in shootings in five of seven sites operating programs in Chicago.
Knoxville to put its own spin on violence interruption concept
The decision to invest the city’s tax dollars in a violence interruption model came after more than a year of discussions with community stakeholders, Knoxville Office of Community Safety Director LaKenya Middlebrook said.
Middlebrook said the city’s violence interrupter program will use “credible messengers” and will be data-driven, adding, “It’s important to know who the folks are, who are at highest risk. I like to use the term ‘proven risk’ individuals.”
Part of what the program will rely on is data analysis from the police department that shows where violent incidents are concentrated, and when shootings are most likely to happen, Middlebrook explained, adding that anecdotal information from community members will be factored in.
Using terminology common to outreach programs, Middlebrook said Turn Up Knox will work to meet those at risk for perpetrating gun violence “where they are,” a tactic used to engage people in their space, without expectations.
“Turn Up Knox is about having direct engagement, more one-on-one support, kind of a cross between mentorship and case management,” she said. “It will be about having wraparound support on an individual level.”
While that kind of work can be labor intensive, it is the best way to make a difference, Middlebrook said, adding, “If that’s what it’s gonna take, that’s what needs to happen. We have to be able to take those individual approaches. … We don’t want them falling through the cracks.”
Turn Up Knox staff to include seven part-time ‘interrupters’
The one-year pilot program will involve nearly a dozen staff members including an executive director to be paid $50,000, a case worker to be paid $35,000 and a part-time administrative assistant at $25,000. Seven part-time interrupters will receive $20,000 each.
Program costs, which include materials and supplies, are budgeted at $110,000. Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development, which previously received $25,000 to develop and provide gun violence program recommendations to the city, will be paid $90,000 in administrative fees to act as an “incubator” for Turn Up Knox.
That means helping Turn Up Knox become a 501c3 nonprofit organization, as well as staff development, said JD Jackson, chief operating officer for Socially Equal Energy Efficient Development, commonly called SEEED.
Why SEEED? Middlebrook said the organization, which started out as a jobs training program in Knoxville, was part of the planning process and advocated for street outreach early on.
“They serve a similar demographic, also they already had a track record for working with the community and had the capacity to build the organizational support,” she said.
Similarly, the city chose community activist Denzel Grant to lead Turn Up Knox because he “showed a lot of leadership” during the planning process, she said.
Where will Knoxville’s violence interrupters work and what will they do?
Middlebrook said outreach will focus on three locations: the Lonsdale and Mechanicsville neighborhoods; South Knoxville and Montgomery Village; and East Knoxville.
During this first year, Turn Up Knox leaders have been tasked with meeting with the city twice a month, with SEEED providing monthly reports. Grant told Knox News he meets with city staff weekly.
A summary of the reports generated so far shows the steps the organization has taken to get established, as well as some of the work it plans to do in the future. The group has established a charter, applied for nonprofit status and chose a board that includes local attorney Caesar Stair and activist Zenobia Dobson.
In August, Turn Up Knox began scheduling its staff in weekly shifts, got a hotline up and running Fridays through Sundays at 865-214-7046, and partnered with Drums Up, Guns Down at the Kuumba Fest. Staffers interacted with victims of gun violence, in one instance mediating the fallout from a drive-by shooting.
A midyear and end-of-the-year report will be required, but the program has no specific benchmarks to meet, an omission that raised concerns for some.
“I haven’t heard any metrics,” said Rick Roach, a longtime activist who attended the June council meeting where the program was approved. “If you can’t say what the expectations are …”
The one goal the city is focusing on is a 10% reduction in the number of homicides year over year, Middlebrook said.
“This is a pilot. We want to give the program space to build and grow,” she added. “They are still building what the day to day work is going to look like. It can be hard to wrap your mind around this, it’s not traditional programming. It’s about relationship building and community engagement.”
Grant’s goal: Bridging the communication gap
Grant gained attention as a community activist following the 2019 fatal shooting by police of Channara Tom “Philly” Pheap, speaking out on Pheap’s death and others, including the 2021 police shooting of 17-year-old Anthony Thompson Jr. in a bathroom at Austin-East Magnet High School.
Grant was born in Knoxville, moved away in eighth grade and returned in 2017 after a six-year stint in the military. He cites his sister, labor activist Theresa Reed, as an inspiration for his activism. He also says the death of his cousin Andre Stenson in police custody in 1998 as a reason he steps up.
Grant told Knox News his thought process about activism has shifted in the past few years to building more relationships.
“I’ve noticed the progression in my work, and I’m actually getting things done,” he said. “I’ve learned to just to have the conversations. You may not agree, but either way you leave with a different level of understanding. … We (all) really want the same thing. I think we’ll get to where we need to be.”
The genesis of Turn Up Knox dates back to 2019, Grant said, when stakeholders came together to address violence within the Black community. The rash of teen shootings in 2021 accelerated the push, he said.
“Turn Up Knox is new, a lot of one-on-one,” he said. “We feel like we can make a change in our community. A lot of times it’s just communication, knowing if a person is in a situation and they’re out here on the streets. And we know them personally, because … especially within the Black community, you’re one person from knowing somebody else, if you don’t already know their uncle or mom or who their brother is.”
Grant said he hand-picked interrupters who have a “certain level of influence” and are well-connected in the three parts of the city that are the program’s focal points.
“Some of them have done time, they’ve been incarcerated, so they’ve been through the system, that understanding of how it works,” he said. “They’ve had those experiences to be able to share those stories.”
Another interrupter is Terry Walker-Smith, who lost two of her children to gun violence and has a lot of experience with grief counseling, Grant said.
Grant acknowledges Turn Up Knox and its staff will have to navigate mistrust both within the Black community and law enforcement.
“You have this huge bridge, where we’re just standing on both sides of it and screaming at each other,” he said. “You have Turn Up Knox that’s in the middle of the bridge … saying, ‘Hey, this is what the community is needing, hey, we got to let them do their job to make a safer community.’ And with that, there’s going to be friction.”
Turn Up Knox looking for office space and planning community events
Now Turn Up Knox is searching for its own space.
“Right now we’re looking for an office, my main thing is having it be accessible,” Grant said. “I want (clients) to be able to come in here and … feel comfortable enough to be able to really keep it 100 with me.”
Training is being provided by Community Mediation Center, a nonprofit based in Knoxville, and includes active and empathetic listening, problem-solving strategies, strategies for deescalating conflict, building trust and rapport, interest-based bargaining and restorative practices.
“Once I get my interrupters properly trained, that’s when I can really start diving into the street outreach work,” Grant said, adding they already have started showing up to recent homicide scenes.
“When we get there, our job is to get as much information as we can, maybe console the family once they get there, because they need that familiar face sometimes,” he said. “Then, we’re figuring out the facts, trying to see if any proactive measures need to be taken, as far as retaliation.”
Outreach is going to always be a top priority, Grant said.
“We’ve been popping up to the football games and stuff like that, and handing out materials, just pretty much kind of introducing ourselves to the community,” he said.
Turn Up Knox is sponsoring upcoming events, including a youth vendor showcase on Oct. 8, and will have a tent set up at the annual Mechanicsville homecoming Oct. 1.
It’s Facebook page is up and running.
“I don’t want to turn anybody away,” Grant said. “I want to be well connected and well plugged in with certain organizations to where we can plug (callers) right in and create a pipeline.”
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