Door to door, man to man

INTERVIEW/ Amanda Geppert

Hosted by the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention, the CeaseFire campaign is combating a 'disease' well entrenched the less affluent pockets and inner cities across the United States of America: homicide. Amanda Geppert, a member of CeaseFire two and a half years and currently writing a manual for CF violence prevention coordinators, spoke to Comunidad Segura during her recent visit to Rio de Janeiro.

A grass roots campaign that has brazenly brought down gun deaths in Chicago, it was hailed by criminologists for its innovative work. CeaseFire has grown from 15 to 25 communities in the city in 2006 alone, and is currently taking its know-how as peace brokers to the East coast, starting with Newark and Irvington in New Jersey.

CeaseFire has been credited with reducing shootings in some of Chicago’s most violent neighborhoods by 50 to 75%.

The CeaseFire campaign works in coalitions across communities with police, faith leaders, and residents, as well as other social and governmental initiatives, but it is by going directly to the source of the violence, making contact with the people likely pulling the trigger or caught at the receiving end that has made it unique. That means stepping out into the streets, going door to door and man to man. It also means organizing locals in shooting responses, having midnight barbeques to reclaim public space, and going to the hospital beds of shooting victims to break off the cycle.

“Gary Slutkin our director believes that the issue of gun violence can be resolved entirely through behavior modification. And the fact is that this approach got us the results we hoped for”, says Amanda.

Why is CeaseFire a campaign and not a program?

It is a program in the sense that we implement it in other communities in the United States, and it is also fundamentally a campaign. We treat violence through a public health model, it is about taking information to the people who need it, about raising awareness of the way violence spreads and how it can be diminished and controlled through changes in thinking which translates to changes in behavior.

What is CeaseFire about?

CeaseFire first and foremost is about getting people to see homicide as an anomaly. It is not normal for someone to get killed at your doorstep, down the street, in the neighborhood. We discourage the kind of thought that blames the victim, as is often the case with the death of gang members. It takes some work to change community thinking, and of course it is much easier to rally the community around a child getting shot, while down the other end of the spectrum, shootings by police are always controversial.

That is why we organize community responses. CeaseFire workers go door to door asking locals whether they know a killing happened in their neighborhood, and whether they would like to join in a public event to mark the killing. It is a way to take a stand, to take the first step taking back the neighborhood. 

Violence breeds isolation, people retreat into their homes, and businesses move elsewhere. What makes it possible to reach out to community and even gang members in such a hostile environment?

The neighborhood belongs to the community and it is interpersonal contact that restores community ties. CeaseFire reaches out, makes contact with the agents of violence by contacting and training people who no longer want a part of it.  Most of our outreach workers are former gang members, many have done time in jail, all of them have made a clear commitment to leave that life behind them. They are entrusted with a message that is clear: stop the killing.

What do outreach workers do?

Outreach workers work in pairs, and must have at least 15 “high risk” clients each. They  wear clothing that clearly identifies them and their purpose, and tell gang members that they do not condone illegal activities, but they are there to talk about homicides. It is a clearly marked line, to one side of it are the outreach workers and their message, once a crime is committed, the gang member, or client, has crossed over, and the police takes over.

Who are the clients? How do you identify a “high risk” client?

Clients are people in the community who are likely to be shot or to shoot someone, ranging in age typically from 16 to 25 but mostly are over 20. Having been shot is one criteria used to select high risk clients. It has been found that people who have been shot once are very likely to be shot two more times in the next three years, and to be killed. That is where we want to step in.

What is a typical scenario behind a potential killing?

A typical case that sparks a homicide is for example, a former gang member returning to his neighborhood after spending a few years in jail. He wants to reclaim his place in the gang or territory, but the gang has moved on, assigned his position to someone else, or even split up. The new leaders will not surrender control and instead harm or kill anyone who threatens their authority. Actually it is among new and old leaders that we find many of our candidate outreach workers.

What is CeaseFire's relationship with law enforcement like?

Good relations with law enforcement are fundamental for the CeaseFire project.
Police are our partners and call CeaseFire coordinators to notify shooting so that CF can organize a response within 72 hours. We have regular meetings with them. And we actually divide up the communities we work in, design the daily routes of our outreach workers to overlap with police beats. Thus we are able to take stock of the homicide rate and measure results.

What kind of outlook do outreach workers have?

Peace brokering is hard work, not everyone is cut out for the job. You need to have the skills and the contacts and a knack for it. Whether you are an outreach worker, or a violence interrupter, you are putting yourself constantly on the line, and after 2 or 3 years you are (pretty much) burnt out. After a while we have to take their futures into account, not a simple matter.

Violence interrupters are different from outreach workers?

It is a novel approach we are excited about. Violence interrupters I can best describe as peace brokers. They act in conflict mediation across the city, and are not tied down to police beats or communities. But they have high social capital if you will. They know personally the most important gang leaders in town, and can pick up a phone and talk to them. They will likely hear through the grapevine that a death is being planned and will intervene to stop the killing.

Is the program costly?

Outreach workers earn approximately 35 thousand dollars a year depending if there are benefits or not, (it is comparable to what new college graduates would earn). Our project spends in each community approximately 250 thousand dollars, which is mostly running on bare bones - and would need at least 100 thousand more to adequately cover program needs to be able to achieve a 45-50% drop in a community highly impacted by violence. On the other hand, gun related violence costs the tax payers money; it costs them hospital beds, prison cells, the freedom to come and go. Slutkin estimates that medical costs alone average $39,000 per shooting.

Half of the homicides in Chicago are currently attributed to gang violence, does Cease Fire broker gang truces?

Yes, CF has been directly involved in brokering gang truces. CF has been currently been more successful with African American than with Latino gangs. The impact of violence eradication seems to wear off a little over time, and perhaps that is an aspect of gang life that ought to be addressed, we are now in a position to consider ways to consolidate CeaseFire successes.

Are there jobs for ex gang members?

There is no smooth transition to the job market. Unfortunately after years in prison, -many have spent over half their lives behind bars- you are not prepared with the necessary skills to face a job interview. We have partnered with other institutions in this field, have gotten job openings but it has been hard placing people. The truth is no one has developed the methodology yet. That is a field in which Brazil has a strong tradition, a pedagogy that works with self-actualization, perhaps the way we ought to go.

Another aspect is that half of our workers are 40 or older, older than their clients who seem to be getting younger. Gang culture is changing too, it seems outrageous to say it, but people don’t follow orders as they used to.

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