Another teenager is stabbed to death, the 17th in London this year. The police
talk about offering witness protection. The rest of us wring our hands and
wonder where this terrible run of street killings is leading.
It feels as if we have tried everything to curb the violence among young men,
from ASBOs and tougher sentencing to Outward Bound and endless community
outreach programmes. But America, with far greater levels of violence, may
have found something that works. And it is the brainchild not of a
politician or a criminologist but a doctor. Gary Slutkin's prescription for
our stabbing epidemic is to treat it as just that: an epidemic. Urban
violence, he argues, is a disease and it can be treated.
An epidemiologist who spent ten years in Africa working on infectious
diseases, Slutkin is now based at the University of Illinois at Chicago,
where he is targeting the virus of violence. His CeaseFire initiative is
fanning out from Chicago to other US cities and is attracting interest from
around the world because of its success in reducing violence.
The CeaseFire project is focused primarily on guns but according to Slutkin
the type of weapon is immaterial; the principles apply to all violent
disputes on the street and British cities could learn from his experience.
His approach has two key stages. First, as if fighting TB, he tries to “find
those who are most infectious and prevent the transmission”. This means
going after young men most likely to fire a gun and set off a spiral of
further violence and try to stop them pulling the trigger. The longer-term
aim, like treating Aids, is to change the behaviour of the whole group so
that shooting (like unsafe sex) becomes unacceptable in the peer group, even
gang communities.
The key to CeaseFire is using “credible messengers” to stop the transmission
of violence. These include some of the most infamous former gang members in
Chicago with the status, contacts and knowledge of the urban jungle to go
where traditional outreach workers and police fear to tread.
In the vanguard of the operation, targeting the most infectious individuals,
are “violence interrupters” who pick up intelligence of trouble brewing and
intercede to negotiate peace in violent disputes.
These are often between members of rival gangs, although the gang structure
today is very splintered. Often a gang, as in London, is no more than a
small clique of young men. Violence flares when individuals are drunk after
a party or squabble over drugs, money and - very often - women.
The interrupters spend a lot of time racing to hospitals to catch family and
friends of a shot man to prevent retaliations. Or they will get wind of an
ongoing feud and use every argument that they can muster to calm things
down. The basis of it, says Slutkin, is: “Give me one reason that this makes
sense. Give me one sense that this makes anything better for you.” The
interrupters are backed up by other street veterans who maintain
relationships with high-risk young men, nurturing them with the aim of
preventing them from using a weapon. The idea is that if the leaders can be
persuaded to think that guns are unacceptable their peers will learn to do
the same.
Violence in Chicago makes the mean streets of London look like a sleepy
Cotswold village. On one weekend this year there were 36 shootings, seven of
them deadly. There are often more than 20 shootings in a weekend. But
CeaseFire seems to be working. A three-year, $1 million study by the US
Justice Department found that in six out of seven neighbourhoods where
CeaseFire operates the project was responsible for a reduction in gun
violence of between 17 and 24 per cent. Similar declines in shootings were
not registered in neighbourhoods without the scheme to tackle the infection.
I meet Tim White one morning as he is engaged in a race against time to stop a
new outbreak of the violence infection. He has received a hysterical phone
call from a woman he has known for many years. Her son had been in bed with
his girlfriend when two men burst into his bedroom.
One was the girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, unhappy at the end of the relationship
and the arrival of a new lover. He had brought along his cousin, armed with
a handgun. He shot the 19-year-old in the abdomen and backside and the two
thugs escaped.
The young man is in a critical condition in hospital and now the mother is
worrying about the safety of her two other sons. With their brother's life
hanging in the balance, they seem set on revenge. “Her sons are not going to
let it go,” says White. “She doesn't want to lose another son or see him go
to jail.” The shooters are in hiding. “The police are looking for them but I
don't know who is going to get there first.” White knew the man's father
years ago before he was killed in a gang-related incident. Now his task is
to get to his aggrieved sons and stop them seeking retribution for this new
attack on the family. White is armed only with a mobile phone and his wits.
But he has one great asset in this life-and-death pursuit: his past. White
does not just come from the street, he used to own it. As a prominent former
gang leader on the west side of the city and a convicted felon who served a
ten-year stretch in prison, he has credibility in a rough, often lawless
neighbourhood.
In the window of the street-front office of CeaseFire in the west of Chicago a
hand-drawn sign reads: “No one shot in 2 days. Don't shoot!” The longest the
area has gone without a shooting is 22 days, regarded as a freakishly long
stretch. “What we are trying to do is get to a point where you don't want to
break the streak or be related to the person who breaks the streak,” says
Norman Kerr, who runs the office.
Some of his team have violent pasts. One, known as Master, was an enforcer for
the Vice Lords gang If they didn't obey the laws of the organisation? “I
would violate them,” he says. CeaseFire includes killers, although nobody
dwells too long on exactly what crimes they committed. Offences against
children or violence towards members precludes employment by CeaseFire. Only
a handful of recruits have been sacked because they returned to their old
street ways. Slutkin ascribes this to careful selection of reformed
characters, intensive training and peer pressure from other former gang
members. Everyone knows that if they let the side down the whole project
could collapse.
Marnell Brown takes me for a ride around the neighbourhood. There are a lot of
people hanging out on the streets and a white face attracts curious, often
suspicious, looks. He points out local landmarks: “This is a high-risk area.
They kill two people a week here.” Drug deals are taking place in broad
daylight, even on streets where police cameras on poles flash their
presence. Brown says people are so desperate to make money that they act
without any of the discretion and caution of the past. When we stop at a red
light a guy on the street shouts at us “Y'all want crack?”
Marnell, 50, was “one of the top men” in the Vice Lords, which he joined when
he was ten for protection in what was then a majority white area. Back then
gangs fought mostly over territory. “We fought with our hands - sticks,
bottles. Then knives. Then it escalated to some gun violence. The
mid-Eighties was when gun violence got pretty bad.” He is part of the
CeaseFire outreach programme, with around 15 men in his casebook at any one
time, approaching them informally and making sure to meet them at least once
a week. Much of his work is about trying to calm people down and change the
prevailing view, which is also common in British gangs: that a man should
settle a disagreement violently because to do otherwise would mean losing
face. “It's not toughness that makes him violent, but fear,” he says. “Fear
of what people think if he don't use a gun. A guy with real courage will be
humble and walk away.”
At a CeaseFire event on a parking lot there is music, hotdogs and a dancing
competition. Children mill around, adults greet each other warmly, there is
lots of laughter. The reality of life in this neighbourhood is there,
though, in the hollowed-out faces of crack addicts and the flyers handed out
by members of CeaseFire that read: “Stop. Killing. People.” White works his
phone seeking information on the potential vigilantes who are after the men
who had shot the 19-year-old. “This is a critical period. I need to get to
the other sons.” He learns that the brothers have caught up with his
girlfriend. “They got her to say what the dude looks like. No question they
are out looking for this cat. I would be if I was still in that mentality.”
White, 43, grew up in the neighbourhood. The son of a respected pastor, he
found the pull of the street too strong to resist and was sucked into a
local gang. Short but powerfully built, wearing a baseball cap and Prada
sunglasses, he is bright, articulate and charismatic.
He rose quickly through the ranks until he was at the head of an organisation
of 2,000-3,000 people. “I knew everybody.” He went to jail for ten years for
narcotics offences. There he rediscovered God and has since been ordained as
a minister. Towards the end of his sentence he was approached by CeaseFire.
A further motivation for leaving street life was the birth of his son,
Isaiah, now 12, a week before he went to prison. “He didn't know me other
than in the visiting room. He was a big part of it. I didn't want him to
have the same life.
“Of course, I worry about him. I tell him about what goes on. I want him to
know what his father was.”
He says he encounters little animosity from gangs. “They know me. I think they
think there's hope if I got out.” Does he ever get accused of having gone
soft? He laughs. “They know I'm not soft. They think if I made the
transition, they can do it. Most of them want to change, they don't know how
to.” Sometimes he is told to get lost. “They will say ‘This has got nothing
to do with you, man. Stay out of it. This ain't no peace today, Tim. You
have to let it go.'” The mother of the shot teenager pulls up in her car.
Her son has just had his third operation, this time to close his stomach up.
Even if he pulls through he may have to have a colostomy bag for the rest of
his life. “He's not out of the woods yet. He doesn't look so hot. For a
mother seeing her child with that kind of trauma... I wasn't prepared for
that,” she says. She looks washed out. “I'm trying to diffuse something
before it gets out of hand.” White says a prayer and then they head off to
her house because she thinks her sons may be there. The photographer and I
have to stay away. “If they see me with white faces they are going to think
I've got police with me.” A violence interrupter cannot be suspected of
supplying information to the police. “I would be put on ‘no talk', meaning
that no person in the community active in the gangs could talk to me.” He
would be rendered useless.
Ten minutes later he is back. The meeting has not gone to plan. The sons and a
group of about 20 men were gathered outside the house. “They just said ‘F***
you, man. Don't start with that shit. The mother snapped on them:
‘Motherf*****, that's my son. I gave birth to him. It's not up to you to
take revenge.' Somebody had given them a picture [of the ex-boyfriend] and
she ripped it up. I've been here a lot where they don't want to talk. I'll
wait until they've cooled off.”
Laura Bush has visited the programme twice and she and her husband made a
personal donation to support the work. Barack Obama, who lives in Chicago,
has steered clear. CeaseFire has recently been the victim of local politics
and seen its budget cut. Slutkin is a strong character and does not get on
with all the local political heavyweights, and some of the things he says
are controversial. For example, he will not use the word “criminal” which,
he says, is “name-calling, frankly similar to calling Tutsis locusts. It
perpetuates the ideas of non-changeability of people and the overvaluing of
punishment. The words ‘criminal', ‘gang' and ‘gun' carry an emotional
baggage that is counter-productive to getting this problem behind us.” In
areas where the programme has been suspended, shootings have gone up
according to CeaseFire's figures. The funding battle continues and Slutkin
is busier than ever setting up programmes in other US cities and has even
been to Iraq.
The day after White's confrontation with the brothers of the shot man, the
mother calls him to say that her sons have calmed down. “They said ‘Mom, we
are sorry, we just wanted revenge.' The doctors said he's doing well. He
might have to go through some tough times but he's not in jail and he's not
dead.” The knowledge that White was on their case may have made the avenging
brothers pause. “If you can make somebody know that you know about an
incident, it changes a lot,” he says. He is optimistic. “They aren't going
to go after them. If they run into each other at a party something might
happen. But if they don't turn up we could have success. We don't get to
stop all the shootings but we stop a lot.”
Young victims: More than 50 teenagers were murdered in Britain last
year, and 32 already this year.
They include:
Steven Bigby, 22
Stabbed in front of hundreds of horrified shoppers outside a McDonald's in
Oxford Street in May. A teenager has been charged with his murder.
Henry Bolombi, 17
Chased by a gang and stabbed to death on New Year's Day in Edmonton, North
London, as he walked home from celebrating with his friends.
Rhys Jones, 11
The youngster was shot dead as he walked home across a pub car park after
football practice in the
Croxteth area of Liverpool last summer.
Kodjo Yenga , 16
Bled to death in his girlfriend's arms in Hammersmith, West London, after
ambush by youths shouting “Kill him, kill him”. He had been challenged to a
fight by a local gang known as MDP.
Odwayne Barnes, 16
Young footballer stabbed at a bus stop in Birmingham last year. A member of
the Bang Bang Crew, Odwayne had fallen out with a member of rivals the Slash
Crew.
In a throwaway line in this interesting piece, the author says that Barack Obama, who lives in Chicago, the city concerned, "... has steered clear" of the project.
Why? Perhaps the author could elaborate on this.
Chris Lightbown, London,
I think The Lord has to come as soon as possible.
D
d, roma, italia
Great article..too bad I had to read about such a positive program in a Brit paper since I haven't seen anything here in the States on it. Hmm, why I am I not surprised that Barack has steered away from this??
Michca, Huntington Beach, CA, USA
This sounds like it could become a dream come true. In South Africa the violence is out of control - yesterday it was announced that 4 children are being murdered every day.
I hope that someone in SA is listening - the government's way of fighting crime is simply not working.
Bill Gee, Johannesburg, S Africa
I agree with Ray about the need to interact with these problem youths, but equally there are two things that really seem important to me. Parenting and punishment meaning punishment. Too many young parents are disinclined to take responsibility for their kids and who fears the Police?
James Cullup, Oxford,
The Wire only in real life ...
Ben, London, UK
Sounds a great idea - bring it on.
Annie, Bath, UK
I'm a well-off white dude in Dallas. I just heard a gunshot a minute ago; happens every night. It's a nice neighborhood surrounded by several bad. CeaseFire makes sense, maybe we can get it going here. I'd throw some money at it, so I don't have to stay away from the windows. London can do it I bet.
Bob, Dallas, Texas
Why is it that in the UK we are suffering from so much crime caused by young teenagers gone out of control when 3rd world countries dont seem to have these problems. Could it be because they dont respect the law because its a joke "often they will tell you this" and a shameless culture.
MJ, London, England
I grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago in the 60's, known as "the Jungle." There were shootings every week and murders every month. The area was torn down. Fear of those bad neighborhoods isolates the people living there. Brave people talking to them is the way to change them.
Ray, Chicago, USA