The violence interrupters intervene in active violent situations, as well as provide services to people in hopes of preventing violence from happening in the first place.
Dallas signed a contract in 2021 with Youth Advocate Programs Inc. to bring violence interrupters to the city. It’s a tactic that was laid out as part of Mayor Eric Johnson’s Task Force on Safe Communities. For about the last two years, Dallas Cred violence interrupters have been fanning out to four crime-heavy areas of the city: Overton and Illinois, Webb Chapel and Lombardi, Loop 12 and Jim Miller, and the areas around Camp Wisdom and Gannon. The members of the team, mostly adults in their 30s and 40s, are either from or currently live in these four areas of the city.
“This is truly a community-driven effort,” Fred Fogg, national director of community safety for Youth Advocate Programs Inc., told the Observer.
The team members are out in the community every day, looking to provide people with helpful services and acting to break up any acts of violence they see when it’s safe to do so. This work could involve getting someone connected to housing or employment. It could also include physically breaking up a fight without police intervention and talking down the people involved.
The contract with Youth Advocate Programs Inc. expired in April, but you can still find the violence interrupters around Dallas. This is because the organization has been able to use donor funds provided by the Communities Foundation of Texas (CFT) W.W. Caruth, Jr. Fund to keep the team going. Meanwhile, Dallas is in the procurement process to find a new team of violence interrupters. A recommendation could be made to the full City Council by January, a spokesperson for the city told the Observer.
Fogg said the funding that was allotted in the city’s current procurement process for a new violence interrupter team won’t be enough to carry on the work of Dallas Cred. That’s why Fogg said the organization will keep using donor funds to pay for the work and will be on the lookout for other funding sources. The team has also had to scale back its efforts to just two parts of the city: Overton and Illinois, and Loop 12 and Jim Miller.“This is truly a community-driven effort.” – Fred Fogg, Youth Advocate Program Inc.
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Dallas Cred tries to focus on people who are at high risk of being involved in violence. According to the organization, that includes people who have recently returned home from jail or prison or are otherwise involved in the justice system; people who are affiliated with gangs; and those who have recently lost someone to gun violence and could potentially retaliate. These individuals are identified with help from law enforcement and the community.
“The goal is to identify these individuals, work with them, you know, fill their basic needs, help give them support and strategies to find alternative means to resolving conflict and de-escalating situations,” Fogg said.
The team also responds to violent incidents after they occur to prevent more violence from taking place. “The interrupters, they get to the scene or get to the location where it happened, try to find out who’s involved and prevent any retaliatory violence from taking place, or an escalation,” Fogg said. “Sometimes, it’s a matter of putting some space and time between the incident and the individual’s reactions.”
One of the challenges with the program is getting people to trust it. He said it can take up to two years for a community to start looking at the violence interrupters as a viable resource. “Community members don’t really dig in and buy in because they think it’s a short-lived thing,” Fogg said. “They’re not willing to invest their time if they think it’s just a one and done. But once the community members realize that this is here to stay, that these folks are invested in the community, it makes a tremendous difference. People know who the guys are with the orange shirts.”
It's reasonable to think that hard-earned progress could be lost with the scaled-back program, and perhaps even more so if a new violence interrupter program isn't found soon.
Fogg recalled once seeing a social media post about a violent incident in Dallas. He reached out to the Dallas Cred team to see if there was anything it could do. It turned out that a family member from one of the involved parties had already reached out to the team for help.
Data from the organization shows that between May and December 2022, 100% of people who received Dallas Cred services after being engaged in a violent act did not retaliate. This time period also marked a 10% decrease in violent crime in the four areas of the city that the team serves, according to the organization.
Also since May 2022, Dallas Cred members were responsible for 63 violence interruptions, worked closely with 75 of the city’s highest-risk individuals with service plans, and hosted 61 community events, including job fairs. The team also saw a recidivism rate of just 2.6% among the people it worked with.
The group’s work isn’t always amplified. That’s because some of it happens in silence, Fogg said.
“There are incidents that take place in the community that we engage in that law enforcement may never hear about,” Fogg said. “The peace, the mediations, that happens in silence. Violence, we see that loudly in news reports. If someone’s shot, if someone’s harmed, that’ll make the news. Peacemaking happens in silence.”
