Some days, words mean nothing.

"If anything comes back to me, that's on you," the dealer named Jon-Jon* had warned his girlfriend. She was planning to help steal another guy's hidden drug stash. Jon-Jon didn't want to get mixed up in any of that action. He walked away. Left the block.

It didn't matter. Minutes later, Jon-Jon realized it was on him.

The other dude, Snaz, seeing his stash gone, had asked a few questions. Somebody mentioned Jon-Jon's girlfriend. Snaz figured Jon-Jon was behind the heist, so he gave Jon-Jon a call. But he didn't mention being ripped off; he just asked Jon-Jon if he could buy some smack from him. And when Jon-Jon showed up, bags in hand, Snaz grabbed them and ran.

Staring down at his empty hands, Jon-Jon saw red. He didn't know Snaz had come after him in retaliation. All he knew was that now he'd been robbed, and in his world, that led to only one thought.

I'm ready to kill him.

It was the code of the street. The same code that kept him alive and respected.

Only this time Jon-Jon changed the code. He reached for his cell, dialed a number, and stopped a bloodbath.

These days, in this neighborhood, words mean everything.


In a second floor office on monument street in the McElderry Park neighborhood, a half-dozen outreach workers gather on a March afternoon. Garbed in black-and-orange hats that read "Safe Streets," they are preparing to walk the block until way into the wee hours, trying to accomplish what a parade of policing strategies have failed to do for the last twenty years: stem the epidemic of shootings and murders plaguing the city.

The program is known as CeaseFire in its native city of Chicago, and it's the brainchild of Dr. Gary Slutkin, a onetime World Health Organization infectious disease specialist who spent years in Africa working on outreach programs aimed at lowering another epidemic—HIV/AIDS. Slutkin reasoned that violence, like any other unhealthy behavior, can be fought by changing social norms. When he applied his epidemic outreach model to inner-city shootings beginning in 2000, the results were spectacular: on average, a 69 percent drop in shootings in twelve different Chicago hotspots.

Slutkin's approach has been exported to Newark, Kansas City, and Baltimore, where it operates under the Safe Streets name. Funded by the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and administered by a partnership between the city health department's Office of Youth Violence Prevention and the Living Classrooms Foundation, the Safe Streets program in McElderry operates on a simple premise: Take ex-offenders who have turned their lives around and put them back on the streets. Only this time, they've been trained as mediators to use their survival instincts and relationships to sense trouble brewing and intervene before it can escalate.

In a small back office upstairs, one of the outreach workers sits with a client. In truth, the relationship they share is much closer. Jon-Jon, the young dealer who got ripped off, looks with a mixture of awe and appreciation at Tard Carter, the man who was on the other end of his frantic call that night. Carter is more like a big brother—he's been looking out for Jon-Jon for years, long before Safe Streets started last June and Carter recruited him as a client.

The kid reminds Carter, who's 31 years old, of his former self: street smart and street successful. Intense. Quiet. Respected. No bullshit. Jon-Jon doesn't deal for kicks, but to eat: He has to support four siblings, his mother, and a niece. The same way Carter and most of his fellow mediators had to hustle as youngsters.

Carter knows the odds are against the young man surviving the streets, just as they were against him. He ticks off the milestones, one finger at a time. "16. 18. 21. 25. 30. On each one of those birthdays I cried," he says. "I'd beaten the statistics." Carter, who served time on drug possession charges, says that he always wanted to find a way to help, even as he was hustling. In Safe Streets, he has found a more productive application for his skills.

The program trains its mediators in objective thinking: looking only at the facts of a situation, as opposed to making hostile assumptions that can lead to dangerous conclusions and feed the kind of street paranoia that fuels violence. "[Carter] taught me how to look at things from different points of view," says Jon-Jon. "Don't go with the first instinct. Ask, ‘Why is this happening? What's going on?'"

The young man pauses, thinking back on what went down. "[Carter] got me right that night," he says. And then he resumes the tale of what happened that evening, a few blocks away from Safe Streets' offices. 


What Carter heard from Jon-Jon over the phone about the drug rip-off didn't quite add up. He knew the young man well, knew he wasn't afraid to fight if it was warranted. "I know he's no punk, no chump," says Carter. He sensed something was missing from the story, and it was: Jon-Jon hadn't mentioned his girlfriend's plan to act as a lookout when Snaz's stash was taken. Because Jon-Jon had left the street before that rip-off took place, it still hadn't occurred to him that Snaz had come for payback. Carter, acting as a mediator, was about to wade into a dispute with only half the facts. 

"Let's see what's going on," said Carter, walking around the area with Jon-Jon in tow. No Snaz. So he called one of Snaz's people and told him to let Snaz know he wanted to meet and settle the beef.

Minutes later, Snaz rode up on his bike. To Carter, he was a familiar face, a dude who liked to cop a tough-guy attitude. With the street swarming with the curious, the nasty, and the affiliated, Carter's first task was to get Jon-Jon and Snaz away from the onlookers for a little one-on-one, so no one would act out for the crowd. "Snaz is looking me in the eye, he's respecting me, but he keeps saying ‘Look, yo, somebody took my stuff,'" Carter recalls. "I'm not believing him, but I still swallowed it." Carter told Jon-Jon to do the same.

For a moment, Carter's old street instincts warred with his new role as he addressed Snaz, who insisted on sticking to a story that, unbeknownst to Carter, was true. "I told him, ‘You're acting all tough and stuff. I'm talking to you. What I'm feeling, I don't want to talk to you. I want to hurt you. The next person that comes around ain't gonna talk to you.'"

Snaz considered. As far as he was concerned, he got the drugs back, so they were all square. As for Jon-Jon, he followed Carter's lead. Both sides agreed to let the beef slide. It wasn't exactly a touch-feely mediation, but it worked.

For about ten minutes.

After the three men emerged from their powwow, they were engulfed by onlookers. Carter could see some of Jon-Jon's family joining the crowd. He knew what was coming. The family would go after Snaz for payback. As far as they were concerned, the beef wasn't settled. Jon-Jon's uncle, one of Carter's old acquaintances, was particularly worked up. He went up to the house where Snaz was hanging and called him out.

Snaz was confused. "We took care of that. It's over," he told the uncle, who in turn looked back at Jon-Jon.

"You get your money back?" he asked.

Carter knew both the answer—no—and what the uncle's reaction was going to be. He quickly laid his hand on the uncle, whose fists were about to come hammering down.

"Oh, no, no. Don't do that," Carter said.

"Huh? What's up?"

"For me. Don't do that."

Looking his old friend Carter in the eye, the uncle's hands dropped, about the same time Snaz pulled a knife and a cell phone. He dialed his posse and within minutes everyone was there: The streets were thick with shouts and anger and Carter found himself a lone voice of reason, talking, cajoling, using every bit of savvy and intuition at his disposal to buy seconds.

Carter purchased just enough. One of Snaz's friends suddenly jumped out of the crowd and pleaded with both parties. "Look! I'll give you the money for it!" He looked at the potential combatants one at a time and waved his offer like a talisman. "He ain't gotta do nothing," he said, pointing at Jon-Jon. "And he ain't gotta do nothing," he said, pointing at Snaz. "I will do it."

And he did, walking up respectfully to Jon-Jon's mother and handing her a handful of cash for the drugs that were stolen from her son. With that, the conflict was over.

Carter was grateful but still mindful. He wanted all sides to leave with their dignity intact and with an awareness that a peaceful resolution had just occurred. The code had just been rewritten. He slowly walked up to the peacemaker, shook his hand so everyone could see, and said, "That was some cool shit, yo. Good thing." Then he got Jon-Jon and Snaz to shake hands.

Later, sitting in the Safe Streets office, Jon-Jon reflects on the intervention. "That let me know that you can be bigger than the situation," he says. "Don't let nothing get you so mad that you want to do something that you know is going to turn out to be stupid. You're supposed to do something in this situation, 'cause everyone does something in the situation. If you don't, people look at you differently. It's how the 'hood thinks. But it made me realize you don't have to care how nobody looks at you. At the end of the day, I had more than he took. I was still living."


Early indications are that safe streets is having an impact. In the three years prior to the arrival of Safe Streets East, post 221—a roughly twelve-square-block area bounded by Patterson Park Avenue, Monument, Fayette, and Linwood Street—saw twenty-five shootings and nine homicides. It was, in police parlance, a "hot area." After Safe Streets opened its doors, things cooled off. There was a six-month stretch with no shootings and no homicides, according to police records. The program was so promising that a second post in neighboring Ellwood Park was added in February. Overall, after nine months of operation in Post 221, there have been more than two dozen mediations. There have been six shootings, no deaths.

The streetside mediations are only the beginning of a dialogue that's equal parts passion, commitment, redemption, and opportunity. Five nights a week, Safe Streets' nine full-time and two part-time paid outreach workers walk the streets, responding to potential violence and offering a more peaceable way out to gang members, dealers, and their soldiers. Between them there isn't a player on the street in McElderry Park they don't know, or can't find out about with a call or two to their network. This friend-of-a-friend grapevine is an invaluable resource. On the intervention side, it gets outreach workers where they need to be in minutes. Once there, it turns would-be combatants into future clients. Seeing a familiar face, someone who understands their life, is the difference between discussion and dismissal. "To have this job, you have to be respected by the shooters, by the killers," says Jermaine Lewis, 34, an outreach worker. "In the streets, shooters don't talk to people they consider clowns."

The conversation pretty much comes down to "What do you need?" The answer might be a G.E.D., a job, drug addiction counseling, or a host of other services. The outreach workers are also trained as case managers, which accounts for about half their work. The client relationship is intense, calling for four face-to-face visits a month and numerous facilitations, such as providing transportation to meet with a parole officer or access city services.

Recruiting isn't easy, given suspicion of anything that reeks of an official "program."  It often takes weeks or months to convince young men to stop in. "We're trying to foster a situation where they can come in as clients on their time," says Safe Streets East Program Director Leon Faruq (who was also a participant in the 2008 Urbanite Project). "We identify people. Sometimes, a young boy, he's still trying to prove himself. Over time, we engage him in a respectful way. You want to say something to express your concern. He's not a client yet, but he begins to soften, become more and more receptive."

In the staff's opinion, people are more receptive because this is a public health program, not a police initiative. There are no identifying records in case files; anonymity is zealously guarded. "As soon as you're attached to the police, nobody is going to come," says Safe Streets East Violence Prevention Coordinator Jerrod Lewis, 35. "We might get people cutting school, but we're not going to get the killers. The program would be ineffective."

But perhaps the greatest lure is the workers themselves. In a neighborhood bereft of hope, they are recognized as something almost no one sees around here, and certainly not on the streets: a future.

For many of the twenty-seven years he did in prison on a murder rap, Leon Faruq had dreamed of being able to show young men that there was something on the other side of 21 besides a grave. Much of his initial work dealt with prisoner reentry, but he was also looking for a way to inculcate hope into the streets. With three college degrees to his credit, Faruq understood that education could help people reconstruct their lives. In Safe Streets, Faruq found a program that matched his mindset, a place that offered both new skills and new thinking. "It's a mission for me," he quietly admits. "I see it as a revolution. The frontier of the mind."

Each member of the team receives an intensive forty hours of initial outreach training that capitalizes and expands on their natural communication and survival skills. "We gravitated to Leon because we already knew the streets, been in the streets, lived the streets. At one point in time we loved the streets," says Micah Mitchell, a former dealer who rose through the ranks before doing time. "What Leon did was put structure to the passion we had for the streets. We also had a passion for change: This program brought out the capabilities we didn't realize we had."

At 27, Mitchell is one of the youngest members of the Safe Streets team. Most, like Carter, are in their 30s. In other words, they're OGs—original gangstas, in street slang—which lends them a certain respect among BGs, or baby gangstas. "I was wilding when I was young, 21. I was in a fog," says Jermaine Lewis. "These kids see us, they see what's on the other side of that fog. They say, ‘I really can come out of this madness without having to kill. While keeping my respect.'"

Tard Carter bluntly sums up the desperation for viable role models this way. "How do you expect a young black man from the ghetto to be a man when he don't know what a man is? He sees a drug dealer, a contract killer, a dope fiend, a crackhead. That's men? They have hair on their face. They are males. But are they men?"

The Safe Streets team members, some legally working for the first time, can be the face of the future. "We become a shining light," says Micah Mitchell. "[They think,] ‘They came from where we are now.'"


The procession of forty staff, neighbors, and supporters is marching into the sunset on McElderry Street, chanting in response with Safe Streets' Jerrod Lewis, who is on a bullhorn.

"WHAT DO WE WANT?" he asks the throng.

"STOP THE SHOOTING!" they answer.

"WHEN DO WE WANT IT?"

"NOW!"

Over and over the voices echo off the rowhouses as the crowd makes its way over to North Curley Street, up to Monument, across to Robinson, and back down to McElderry, to the scene of a shooting a few days earlier.

These street rallies—"shooting response" is the technical term—are part of Safe Streets' program for getting their message heard. This includes reaching out to local clergy, engaging area businesses for support, holding celebratory barbecues marking "no shooting" milestones, even utilizing large billboard ads. "We're going to put baby pictures on billboards that say ‘Don't shoot. I want to grow up,'" says Jerrod Lewis. While his younger brother, Jermaine, focuses on recruiting clients, Jerrod interacts with community leaders, ministers, and local businesses. "We're treating these murders and shootings like an epidemic. Like a stop-smoking campaign. They made it uncool to smoke. It's going to be real uncool to commit an act or harm another person by shooting."

Judging by the response to the march, the community is ready. As they hear Jerrod's bullhorn, neighbors rush to their doors and windows, fearing the worst. When they catch a glimpse of the bright orange Safe Streets signs, the anxiety melts from their faces. "Safe Streets?" asks one woman. "Praise the Lord!" A knot of young men hanging out on their stoop quiets as the march passes by.

Clearly, this program and these people are hitting a nerve in an area desperate for calm. "To me, it's as if the neighborhood feels as if somebody finally listened, and that life is being cared for in a way that it hasn't been cared for before," says Pastor Karen Brau, who has worked in the neighborhood since 1996 at Amazing Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church. "That has a long-term powerful quality."

Pastor Brau's not the only one to notice. City Hall has set aside a $1 million to expand the Safe Streets initiative, which now operates in two posts in East Baltimore, with another program coming on line in the Southwest this spring. Dr. LaShawn McIver, Safe Streets director in the Baltimore City Health Department, says they're looking for an additional $1 million from public and private sources.

In the meantime, the buzz keeps building. "I get phone calls on a weekly basis from community groups that want to see it in their area. The word is definitely getting out," says McIver, who is awaiting the program's first official statistical report, due in December. "There's a lot riding on the success of the sites we have now."

A quick fix for a bleeding city? No. It's slow work: one neighborhood, one street, one individual at a time. But, as Jermaine Lewis told one of his clients, he's in it for the long haul. "I told him something my mother always told me: ‘Success is falling seven times and getting up eight. Falling nine times and getting up ten.' As long as you're in the fight, I'm good."

—Mat Edelson is a frequent contributor to Urbanite.


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Click the image below to see a video about the SAFE STREETS initiative!