Shootings have soared in Durham. Could more ‘violence interrupters’ help?

David Johnson couldn’t prevent a shooting at McDougald Terrace last week, though he says he tried his best to cool down the situation.

Now McDougald Terrace and other Durham neighborhoods seeing increased gun violence this year may get more help from “violence interrupters” like Johnson.

There were 421 reported non-domestic firearm assaults in the city as of Oct. 3, a 47% increase over last year at the same time, according to Durham Police Department statistics.

At a meeting last week, City Council members expressed unanimous support for partnering with and expanding the county’s violence interruption and outreach program.

“I think this (program) should be exponentially expanded,” Council member Pierce Freelon said at the meeting, the day after the shooting at McDougald Terrace, city’s largest public housing community.

The Bull City United program works to de-escalate tensions in specific neighborhoods and prevent shootings, though much of its work has been sidelined by the coronavirus, The News & Observer has reported.

The county health department, which funds the group, suspended its usual duties at the pandemic’s onset to follow COVID-19 safety guidelines, wrote Lindsey Bickers Bock, department director of health education and community transformation, in an email.

After months passing out face masks and delivering food to residents in quarantine, Johnson said, the team returned to its regular work on the streets in September.

As gun violence has risen, council members Mark-Anthony Middleton and DeDreana Freeman have pushed the council to address the issue for months. Freelon, who joined the council in late August, has raised concerns as well.

Middleton has repeatedly suggested Durham try a free-trial of ShotSpotter, a gunshot detection system, which the majority of the council has opposed.

Earlier this month, N.C. Central University’s chancellor and two students challenged the council to do more to prevent shootings near the campus.

During last week’s discussion, which included a presentation from two Bull City United members, Middleton backed expanding the program but said the group should not be the only ones tackling the issue.

“There are some things as a government that we have to do, and that’s our responsibility,” Middleton said. “The rise or fall, the success or failure, we’re not going to put it on y’all if it doesn’t work out, but you do have an important piece of the puzzle.”

The Cure Violence approach

Bull City United is a team of six people — three violence interrupters and three outreach workers — who respond to and try to prevent violence in two target areas south of N.C. 147 (the Durham Freeway).

One area encompasses several blocks surrounding Hillside Park in the Southside community and Hayti district north of NCCU. The second contains McDougald Terrace. Each area is under one-half square mile.

The group follows the Cure Violence model, treating shootings and assaults like a contagious disease, The N&O has reported.

BCU supervisor David Johnson and member Ade Mason explained their approach to council members.

The team spots and mediates potentially lethal conflict, identifying “high-risk individuals” who may act out in aggression and trying to persuade them to put down their guns and change their behaviors. They also point individuals to social service programs or connect them to jobs.

“We go into trenches where all these guys hang, where all these guys feel comfortable, and we talk to these guys,” Johnson said in an interview with The N&O. “We try to tell them, ‘you know, man, there’s a better way of life than just shooting.’”

Members meet daily for briefings and maintain a database to track mediation efforts, violent incidents, and community activities, Johnson said.

“Everything is data driven,” said Mason, who helps manage BCU and Project Build, the county’s gang intervention program.

The Cure Violence model is used in Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore, according to its website. A target area in North Philadelphia saw a 30% decrease in shootings over two years after implementing a Cure Violence program, according to a 2017 report by Temple University.

Durham County spent nearly $440,000 in BCU’s first year, 2017, and between $400,000 and $500,000 each fiscal year since, with the exception of 2020. Between July and Oct. 1 of this year, the county spent just over $82,000, according to data from the public health department.

Sidelined by COVID-19

Since the pandemic, the department has limited the group’s physical presence in the Southside and McDougald Terrace communities, Bickers Bock wrote in an email.

Instead of pre-COVID-19 vigils and holiday dinners, members made calls, sent text messages, and wrote emails, she wrote.

“We got pulled strictly off of violence, and we got pulled strictly into COVID,” said Johnson.

Since March, he has stayed in touch with the individuals participating in the program as much as he can.

“A couple of participants got shot, people that we was working with got shot during this COVID-19,” he said.

It has been a challenge.

“You try and do as much as you can on the phone or socially distanced, and it was just hard,” he said.

Conflict mediation and hope

Johnson, a convicted felon in his late 30s who spent over 10 years in prison for assault, robbery and drug charges, said it isn’t easy “growing up in the hood in Durham.”

He and his team members try to instill hope in others.

“We try to get people being stuck in the same thinking that they’ve been doing for the last how many years, that there is nothing out here for us,” Johnson said.

Most of the tensions BCU sees are personal conflicts, sometimes between gang members, according to Johnson’s presentation. The team’s mediation efforts resolved the conflict, “at least temporarily,” in 87% of the cases.

Of the 60 individuals on BCU’s caseload between January and June of 2019, the most recent year with available data, 91% were connected to potential employment and 57% became employed, Johnson said.

About 79% of the caseload showed “gun related behavior change,” according to Johnson’s presentation. The BCU members did not specify what kinds of gun-related changes had occurred.

Johnson said he could reach and recruit high-ranking people in gangs across Durham to work with BCU.

“I know the head of Crips in Braggtown. I know the head of Blood in Cornwallis and the head of Crips in Cornwallis; they got Bloods and Crips in Cornwallis,” he said. “I know it. I got it. I can reach ‘em with the right people and the right staff.”

Neighborhood leaders question effectiveness

Despite the council members’ enthusiasm, two neighborhood leaders question the group’s impact in their communities.

Ashley Canady said she didn’t see Johnson before and after the shooting at McDougald Terrace on Wednesday night.

Bull City United has a workspace at the complex, but Canady, the resident council president, said aside from cookouts for graduating students and vigils for people killed, she has rarely seen team members the past three years.

“Otherwise, we don’t hear or see Bull City United,” she said in an interview with The N&O last month.

In the Southside, Camillia Foust has seen BCU members enter the homes of “difficult people,” she said.

As president of Southside Neighborhood Association, she’s been aware of the group since it arrived in the area. The team would tell her when it planned a cookout or a book giveaway and sometimes attended neighborhood association meetings, she said.

Beyond that, Foust is unsure what difference they’ve made addressing conflicts in the neighborhood over the years.

“I really don’t know whatever they did,” she said.

“It would have been nice just to hear what’s going on,” she said. “How things was resolved, or if things are going to be worse, what we need to look out for. We heard none of that.”

The N&O contacted David Johnson for a follow-up interview but could not reach him to respond to Canady’s and Foust’s criticisms Friday and Monday.

Council members push for next steps

Mayor Pro Tem Jillian Johnson thanked the BCU members for their work. She wants to expand their footprint.

“How big do y’all need to be?” she asked, smiling. “If you were as big as you want to be, how many people would you have?”

“If we could get it up to five or six people in each neighborhood, if possible? Man, that would be tremendous,” Johnson replied.

Council member Charlie Reece asked staff to work “expeditiously” to figure out the city’s next steps.

At the end of the discussion, Freelon began to show tears.

“This conversation has been so uplifting because when you think about our budget, you know, we spent $70 million on policing, and we spend $500,000 on violence interruption,” Freelon said. “That disparity is mind boggling to me.”

Durham County officials haven’t received a progress report on BCU this year, said Wendy Jacobs, the chair of the Durham County Board of Commissioners.

She believes in their work and expressed support for the program.

“It looks at the whole issue (of gun violence) much more deeply,” she said. “And it looks at it in a way where you’re really understanding the impact that it has on people’s lives. Just like any other sickness, or illness.”

Jacobs is excited about the City Council’s desire to expand the program and said officials may discuss the possibility at the next city-county joint meeting Dec. 2.

This story was originally published October 27, 2020 at 5:50 AM.