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The Guardian
2 days ago
- The Guardian
How Baltimore's violent crime rate hit an all-time low: ‘This is not magic. It's hard work'
The end of violence in Baltimore is a litany of stories that weren't told in 90-second clips on the evening news, about shootings that didn't happen. The untold stories sound different, said Sean Wees: 'The guys had guns pointed at each other. We got in between.' One summer afternoon, two years ago, two men emerged from a corner store at Patapsco Avenue and Fifth Street, steps from Wees's office at Safe Streets, in Baltimore's Brooklyn neighborhood. 'They had a little face-off in the store,' Wees said. 'Words were exchanged when they stepped out the store.' A woman in the neighborhood saw what was about to go down and banged on the door of Safe Streets, a longstanding city-run violence-prevention program and a fixture in Baltimore. Wees knows his community, and knew one of the men well – a guy with a high potential for violence. A shooter. The other guy was new, Wees said. The neighborhood was still reeling from a mass shooting that June. Safe Streets had de-escalated five fights at a Brooklyn Day block party, but weren't on the scene when a gunfight started there late that night. Two people died, 28 were injured and Wees was on edge. He and his co-worker Corey Winfield rushed outside to find both men shouting at each other with guns drawn. 'We stood in between,' Wees said. 'Corey was talking to one, and I was talking to a guy that was from the community.' Wees and Winfield carefully talked them back from the cliff. 'That's why having that rapport and being very active in your community is real important with this work,' Wees said. 'Because if you don't have that rapport, you're not going to get them to put away those guns, because you don't know what this man is thinking. You don't know if he had that respect for you, enough to not blow your brains out along with the next man.' Violent crime in America's big cities has been receding from pandemic highs for about two years. But even in comparison, Baltimore's improvement is breathtaking: fewer people have been killed in the city over the last seven months than in any similar period in the last 50 years. As of 15 August, the running 365-day total for murders in Baltimore stood at 165 dead. Assuming the city remains on that pace, its murder rate would finish below 30 per 100,000 residents for the first time since 1986. If it remains on the pace set since 1 January, it would finish 2025 at 143 murders, a rate of about 25 per 100,000, last seen in Baltimore in 1978. It confounds Baltimore's bloody legacy. An army of social workers, violence interventionists, prosecutors, community leaders, and even cops all pulling in the same direction for once has made David Simon's stories from The Wire or Donald Trump's exasperating trash talk less relevant. But this metropolitan renaissance is born of agony. Before Ahmaud Arbery or Breonna Taylor or George Floyd, there was Freddie Gray, rattled to death in the back of a Baltimore police department van. 'We had, if you will, a head start with our uprising in 2015,' said Dr Lawrence Brown, a Baltimore historian and health equity researcher. Gray's death in April 2015 of spinal injuries set off an earthquake of protests against police brutality across the country, with none as consequential or long-lasting as those at the epicenter. Protests in Baltimore turned into riots. 'Since 2015, there's been here in Baltimore this acknowledgement that equity needs to be a priority,' Brown said. The riots were as much about the conditions of poverty that led to Gray's death – people losing their homes in foreclosure to water bills, for example – as they were about police brutality, Brown noted. But the heavy-handed response by cops to the protests and failures to hold police accountable for misconduct eviscerated the relationship between the Baltimore police and the public. Baltimore's state attorney Marilyn Mosby laid murder charges on the officers involved, and Baltimore's police union closed ranks in response, eviscerating the relationship between police and politicians. And a series of scandals at city hall and the state attorney's office – and the failure of Mosby's charges to result in convictions – eviscerated the relationship between politicians and the public. Violence skyrocketed. Three months after Gray's death, Baltimore's homicide count set a 42-year record high. Baltimore's mayor canned the police chief, then abandoned her re-election bid. In the previous year, 211 people had been killed in Baltimore, about 33.8 per 100,000 residents. That was high at the time relative to other large US cities, but reflected incremental improvement by Baltimore's historical standards. After Freddie Gray's death turned the city upside down, the count rose to 344 in 2015 – a 63% increase and a multi-decade high – bucking a long national trend of declining violent crime. The rate at which police made arrests in homicide cases cratered. The gun trace taskforce (GTTF) scandal in 2017 exacerbated problems. Baltimore's police culture revolved around statistics-driven measures of productivity, which Baltimore street cops often achieved by busting whomever happened to be convenient without concern about the quality of an arrest or the real criminality of a suspect, according to an internal report in the wake of the scandal. The GTTF had a reputation for aggressively pursuing arrests and putting up big numbers, insulating it from internal scrutiny. But a federal investigation revealed that the taskforce had long abandoned its mission to track down the source of illegal guns and had instead become a criminal gang prowling the street to rob drug dealers. Its officers planted guns and drugs on suspects and fabricated testimony to cover their tracks. More than a dozen police officers went to federal prison. Baltimore had tried more than one way to attack violent crime, from zero-tolerance 'broken windows' policing to relying on neighborhood crime statistics to motivate police officers into making more arrests. Efforts to get guns off the street backfired spectacularly from political interference, incompetence and, with the GTTF, corruption. The scandal destroyed whatever public faith in Baltimore's police department remained. By 2017, Baltimore's homicide rate had risen to the highest of any large city in the US. 'We had a police unit that was committing crimes. They were contributing to the crime,' Brown said. This history makes it hard to attribute the city's current gains to police work, he added: 'Who do I give credit to? Police are the lowest on my scales. It may be 5%. In some cases, at least with that gun trace taskforce, it's negative.' Snake-bitten, adrift and in a state of profound civic despair, Baltimore's leaders came to a fundamental consensus: reducing violence had to take priority over everything else. It was defining the city and was the only thing voters cared about. The first time Brandon Scott saw someone get shot in Park Heights, he wasn't quite seven years old. Scott, a former city council member, had long been a keen observer of violence-prevention strategy before becoming mayor in 2020. An academic consensus looking at research done in Chicago and elsewhere about violence had long suggested that a dollar spent on policing reduced violence less than a dollar spent on intervention. But political leaders find it hard to justify cuts to police budgets under the best of circumstances. And Baltimore in 2021 did not have the best of circumstances. Scott had been mayor of Baltimore for about three months when the American Rescue Plan Act (Arpa) passed in Congress, giving him an option to supercharge his violence-prevention strategy without a massive political battle. The $1.9tn economic stimulus package passed in March 2021, sending $1,400 checks to taxpayers, paying unemployment benefits at a higher rate and granting money to cities to recover from the pandemic however they saw fit. Using Arpa money, the city could fund the new data-driven project without using the police budget, sidestepping the thorny 'defund the police' rhetoric that had hamstrung previous efforts around the country. 'When we said we were going to reduce violence by 15% from one year to the next, folks laughed at me,' Scott said. 'Folks said that we couldn't do it this way. The only way that we could do it is we went back to zero-tolerance policing, which actually didn't do it in the first place.' Against a Baltimore police budget topping half a billion dollars – the largest police budget per capita of any large city in the US – Baltimore's political establishment gave its new millennial mayor room to experiment with $50m in Washington's money. Trust was in short supply after years of scandal. The first step was to get everyone on board – the cops, the hospitals, the jails, the schools, the social services teams, the state government and the feds. Scott appointed Richard Worley as the city's new police commissioner in June 2023; Worley was a life-long Baltimore officer picked in part to bring the rank and file in line with Scott's antiviolence program. Scott emphasizes partnerships as an important part of the plan's successes. Other federal grants, from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, emerged in 2022 to help support the network of non-profits needed for the plan. The funding came from the first federal gun-control legislation enacted in 28 years, with the support of 15 Senate Republicans and $250m over five years for community violence-intervention programs under the Department of Justice. Baltimore's approach is tailored and personalized. The social worker who knocks on someone's door carries a letter written for that person from the mayor, with an offer of help – and a threat. 'We focus on the individuals and groups that are most likely to be a victim or perpetrator of that gun violence, and we go to them,' Scott said. 'They actually get a letter from me. And if they don't do that – if they don't take us up on that help to operate their lives in a different way, to not put themselves at risk of being a victim or perpetrator or get involved in illegal and violent activity, then we remove them through our law enforcement partnership with the police department that obviously works at my direction, or with our attorney general, our state's attorney and our federal law enforcement partners, and we're holding people accountable.' Crime charts start showing the decline in September 2022, when the comprehensive plan had been up and running for about a year, Scott said. About three out of four people offered services by the program accepted them, and the city today has less violence than at any point in his life, he said. 'Of the folks that we've been able to work with through our partners … 95.7% of them have not been re-victimized, and 97.7% of them have not recidivated,' Scott said. 'You're talking about, in any city, a very relatively small group of people who are at the highest risk. For us to be intensely focusing on them, and to have that few of them become victims again, or recidivate into their previous life, is very impressive.' No one got killed in Baltimore last week. Also, the local paper's reporters are quitting in droves. Surely, this is a coincidence. Summers bleed Baltimore. School is out. People congregate. Tempers flare. But between 27 July and 2 August, the homicide line of the Baltimore police department's weekly crime report posted a shutout. Baltimore's strategy revolves around focused deterrence. Take the kind of targeting advertisers use to put an ad up on your phone for mouthwash on a day you forgot to brush your teeth, and apply it to murder. Only, instead of an ad, someone at high risk for violence gets a case worker knocking on their door. 'We're talking about young people at elevated risk,' said Kurtis Palermo, who runs the youth violence-prevention non-profit Roca in Baltimore. 'We're not talking about the young person who says F-you to his teacher, or tells Mom, Dad, Grandma they don't want to do XYZ. We're talking about kids who literally have probably two tracks: jail and death.' Palermo knocks on doors while a cop is carrying the mayor's letter. As often as not, he has to knock on a door a dozen times before he finds his charge. The process often begins after a shooting. Case workers at local hospitals treating gunshot victims will take note of a patient's history and their friends and family. The data is combined with school records, police records, social services records and whatever else might be relevant; then the violence-prevention team will have a quick meeting. When they determine someone has enough risk factors, they intervene. 'It could be anything from information that is gleaned on jail calls, video evidence, you know, whatever it is, and then the connections to other people,' said Terence Nash, chief of the group violence-reduction strategy (GVRS) in the mayor's office of neighborhood safety and engagement. About 570,000 people live in Baltimore. If 200 people are murdered in the city in a year, the average person's risk would be about one in 2,850. But almost all the violence is concentrated among a tiny, impoverished and identifiable subset of that 570,000: 2% or less of the city, Nash said. If 80% of 200 murders are in this cluster, then most people are facing a murder risk of a bit less than 14,000 to one, while the high-risk cluster's odds are about one in 71. There's no single factor that is perfectly predictive, Nash said. But as connections accumulate with other people at risk for violence, a threshold is crossed. The process is epidemiological, treating violence like an infection to track. Two types of people are most vulnerable, Nash said: people in their early 20s who are feuding over trivial matters, 'someone looked at somebody wrong, somebody bumped into somebody'; and older people in the drug game, 'more around violence that has to do with their criminal enterprise, and so it's much more calculated'. Critically, it's not every young person with an Instagram beef, and not every Sandtown neighborhood street dealer that rises to their attention. The risk factors create a reasonable, articulable – and legally defensible – basis for contact. The team looks at each person individually, and crafts an approach for each one, Nash said. 'This is not magic. It's hard work,' Nash said. 'It takes attention to detail.' Jaylen was in a hospital bed recovering from a gunshot wound when a life coach with Youth Advocate Programs (YAP) approached him. Jaylen had, he said, been in the wrong part of West Baltimore at the wrong time. He wasn't especially receptive at first to a life coach, of all things, he said. 'I thought there was a catch,' the 20-year-old said. 'I thought I'd have to pay them back in the future.' Jaylen couldn't say much about his life or where he was: people might still want to hurt him. But it took a couple of months of outreach for the offer of help from Teshombae Harvell, Jaylen's life coach, to look real. It took consistency. 'It's about the follow-up,' Harvell said. 'Today they might say get the F out of here. Tomorrow, they could be wanting services, because something tragic happened where they need change.' When someone gets shot, Jaylen expects someone to retaliate, he said: 'Back and forth, back and forth. It's never-ending.' What Harvell offered – what no one had offered in a credible way before – was a plan for the future, and perhaps the realization that he had a future. Jaylen had thought about killing someone before, he said. He felt as if the prospect of surviving long enough to have a legit life wasn't worth considering. Now he has a driver's license and wants to become a plumber. Helping fix some of Baltimore's stubborn oversupply of abandoned houses would be a living, and ironically would be paying back the city for its help. 'The only way programs like YAP or GVRS are going to be successful is for people to buy in,' said Harvell. 'They can't be spectators on the outside, looking in, wondering if it's going to be a success or a failure.' Brandon Scott's approach offers benefits to get people out of the street and off a violent path: housing, victim assistance, drug treatment, mental health services, job training. 'There's the carrot and stick,' said Ivan Bates. 'We're the stick.' Bates had a pretty good track record of getting drug dealers off the hook before winning election as Baltimore's state's attorney – what most places call the district attorney and chief prosecutor. Baltimore's history of light prosecutions for handgun cases is a legacy of questionable policing practices – weakly supported cases landing in court – and a negative view of mass incarceration by prosecutors. 'I was the one who was beating the brakes off the state,' Bates said. 'Look, my law partner and I went 25, 26 straight jury trials against Baltimore city prosecutors representing some pretty rough people, you know. And when I come and say that the street – the criminal elements – do not respect that approach, I'm not saying it because I read in a book. I'm saying it because I lived it.' After defeating Mosby and assuming office in January 2023, Bates immediately reversed her policy of non-prosecution for low-level offenses like drug possession, prostitution and trespassing. He successfully lobbied the Maryland legislature to increase the penalty for illegal gun possession from three years to five years. And he started putting people in prison. In Mosby's last two years in office, 2,186 people faced felony gun charges. Mosby dismissed about 34% and another 30% received plea bargains, mostly without imprisonment. In Bates's first two years, the number of cases increased a bit, to 2,443. Bates only dismissed 19% of the cases, and only 10% received plea agreements. The rest were convicted – an increase of about 1,000 people sent to prison – which includes a 70% increase in homicide convictions. 'Everybody has a plan. The mayor had his plan. The police department, they have their plan,' Bates said. 'And when I came and I ran for office, I had my plan. The plans have to work together as one.' Bates is quick to attribute the city's reduction in violence to a team effort. For example, without victim assistance – which is supported by a federal grant – prosecutions that would have fallen apart in previous years concluded in convictions because witnesses could be found to appear in court. Police now are actually focused on removing illegal guns from the street, he said. It also requires people to have an out. Without a path off the street, people on the edge in Baltimore will do what they must to survive, he said. He rejects the suggestion that his approach is a return to mass incarceration. Prosecution is not zero tolerance and it is not indifferent to a defendant's conditions. 'We have focused on violent repeat offenders, not the first-time kid,' Bates said. 'Remember, 5,000-6,000 individuals are doing this type of behavior. So, we're not here to go back to mass incarceration.' But he's sensitive to how this approach plays out in five years. 'My No 1 worry is, when individuals come home, we have to have something for them,' he said. 'Did we actually prepare them to come home? … Look, I believe everybody pays a debt to society. We move on, and then we as a society put them in a place that they can win. And if we didn't, then we're going to see these numbers bounce back up.' Sean Wees from Safe Streets said stopping a shooting might come down to noticing that a kid on a street corner has holes in his shoes. 'So we asked the little kid, are you hungry?' Wees said. 'That could lead to a conversation where you find out this kid is not eating. But we have the resources, or if we don't have them at that time, we find the resources to help this family out. And now that key individual, that target individual, is the father of that child … We fed his child now, we've started to build a rapport with this guy, because he's going to be appreciative of the work that we just did. That's how this works.' One might think that the thing that prevents expanding the work is personnel. Very few people have the street credibility, the devotion and the nerve to be successful. But Wees said the constraint is actually money. 'I love this work, because I'm always trying to save an individual life,' he said. 'I'm good with this work. The time and the money don't match right now, but guess what? I still do this work … You get more money, people will put in more time.' For the first time in forever, Charm City's leaders are all pulling in the same direction, and crime is falling through the floor. They've placated violence in inventive and predictable ways. They are, of course, justifiably concerned that Donald Trump will undo their successes on Republican 'screw cities' general principles. Trump closed the White House office of gun violence prevention on the first day he took office. Three months later, the Department of Justice cut the $300m allocated to community violence-intervention grants in half, including many in Baltimore. The cuts were part of a larger $811m culling across the office of justice programs, Reuters reported. Funding for gun-violence victims' services, conflict mediation, social workers, hospital-based programs: gone. Scott blasted the cuts to the program's partners as dangerous and reckless. 'You're talking about an administration who has said for years that they want to drive down crime in these cities,' he said. 'The truth is no one cares if the mayor is a Republican or Democrat in any city when it comes to gun violence.' The youth antiviolence organization Roca had three grants terminated, one in Baltimore with about $1m left unspent. The termination letter said the grant did not align with its priorities including 'directly supporting certain law enforcement operations, combating violent crime, protecting American children, and supporting American victims of trafficking and sexual assault'. As applied to Roca, the rationale is absurd. But they could see it coming, said Dwight Robson, a Roca executive. 'Initially, it was a huge blow. We were estimating that we were going to serve roughly 60 fewer young people a year,' Robson said. After an outcry, funders outside the federal government, including the city itself, started to step in, who 'made it clear that they don't want to lose momentum' in Baltimore. Support in other places, like Boston, is fleeting, in part because they've done their job too well, Robson said: 'Boston is the safest big city in America. And you know, the homicides and crime just aren't on people's radars to the degree that it is in Baltimore.' Roca has appealed the decision to cut their grant, and a coalition of non-profits is suing the Trump administration, arguing that the cuts were made unlawfully. The real threat posed by the cuts is continuity, said Stefanie Mavronis, director of the mayor's office of neighborhood safety and engagement (Monse). The violence-intervention plan has worked in part because it has been consistent. People are so used to the presence of Monse staffers around crime scenes and in high-violence neighborhoods that some people have come to expect a knock on the door after a shooting. If Monse's partners start disappearing, and if they can't back up promises of help made to victims – or shooters – then things may fall apart, she said. 'We've got to make the investment in the service side of things,' Mavronis said. 'We can't just make empty promises to folks who we are telling we have the services for you to change your life.' Baltimore's leaders, both in city hall and in the streets, have been putting their reputations and capital on the line, in some cases risking their lives. Budget cuts while they're winning makes it look like they want Baltimore to lose. The exasperation is plain. 'We have the lowest amount of violence that we've seen in my lifetime, and I'm 41 years old,' Scott said. 'If everyone says that they agree that this is the top issue, that we have to make sure that more people are not becoming a victim of these things, why change it? Why disrupt the apple cart, if the apple cart is producing the best results that we've seen in a generation?'
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Yahoo
'We need everybody': Detroit leaders mobilize after child, teen killed in triple shooting
Samir Josiah Grubbs, 4, didn't have time to even make it up the slide's ladder at the Skinner Playfield next to Denby High School in Detroit before he was shot to death. He beat his mom, Jasmine Grubbs, out of the car once they got to the park on June 27 — "that was his thing," she said — and raced towards the slide. They'd only been at the playground for a minute before gunfire erupted. She remembers everything in slow motion: Samir climbing, then shot in the back. Grubbs feels empty now, because to everyone else, Samir was a 4-year-old boy, but to her, "Samir Josiah Grubbs was my everything. He was my world," she said while she returned to Skinner Playfield days after her son was killed, holding a small toy car he left in her bed. In response to the bloodshed, Team Pursuit, a community violence intervention group in the area, mobilized CVI leaders from all over the city to Skinner Playfield on Monday, June 30 to demand more from the community — including themselves, parents, lawmakers and decision makers — to help the city's youth, to prevent more loss of life. "We're going to touch every single household in this community. We are hitting the block — today," Quincy Smith, executive director of Team Pursuit, told the crowd at Skinner Playfield. Samir wasn't the only victim of Friday's triple shooting. An 18-year-old boy, Daviyon Shelmonson-Bey, was killed, too. His father, Joseph Shelmonson-Bey, said the teen was always helping others, so he wasn't surprised to hear from witnesses that his son pushed a friend out of the way, the fatal rounds hitting his son instead. A 17-year-old was also shot but survived. Detroit police had two people of interest in custody shortly after the shooting, but they've since been released, the department confirmed Monday. They're asking for anyone with information to come forward. "We are still asking the community for their help in providing any information, video footage and anything additional that can assist in the investigation," said Jasmin Barmore, a spokesperson for Detroit police. More: 4-year-old child, teenager killed in triple shooting at park by Denby High School More: Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison: 'We're going to have a clean and safe summer.' The violence intervention groups at Skinner Playfield had flyers with information on resources, like Team Pursuit's summer youth engagement program called "Protect the Zone," to hand out to neighbors. But before they set out, Smith recalled the moment he heard the news of Friday's tragedy. "I said, 'another 4-year-old?'" Smith said. "My heart broke because I'm tired of it. You should be tired of it ... No more staying at home and watching the news and saying 'that's a damn shame.' We need everybody." Joseph Shelmonson-Bey said he doesn't want another father to have to lose a child like he had. For him, that requires accountability. Shelmonson-Bey and Grubbs went to Skinner Playfield with violence intervention groups to share what it's like to lose a child − "I can't even explain it," the father said. "As community, we need to hold ourselves accountable ... We need to speak out," Shelmonson-Bey said. More: $200 dispute may have sparked shooting that injured 2 during Detroit fireworks, police say Before the group assembled at Skinner Playfield went door to door, Maurice Hardwick, known as "Pastor Moe" made a promise to Detroit on behalf of the CVI leaders at the park: "Change is coming. Now, now, now." Phillip Sample, joined by dozens of others who have been doing the work for years to ensure their neighborhoods are safe, was energized when the group took to the streets surrounding Skinner Playfield to pass out flyers. He gave them to everyone he saw, like those in the three cars pulling out of the Family Dollar on Payton and Morang. As for the homes that went unanswered, he left flyers at their doors. Sandy Turner of 4820Live, a longtime organizer in the neighborhood, was energized, too. What brought her to the streets that day isn't different from why Skinner Playfield was built in the first place. It was built by the community in 2016 with safety as its purpose, she said. "We built the playground for these babies ... Who would have thought that somebody was senseless enough to shoot by a playscape? A playscape," she said. But when they reached the playground where the shooting occurred, Sample, Turner, and the rest of the group became solemn. Sample said where they now stood was hallowed ground — it was the spot where a dispute ended in bloodshed, taking the lives of Samir, who loved to play and jump on his mother's bed in the mornings, and Daviyon Shelmonson-Bey, who took anyone in need in as a brother or sister, who his father loved raising. So it was there that Sample decided the group would pray for the lives lost, for justice and for peace. Pastor Moe was one of the clergymen who led a prayer. When he did, he got on his hands and knees, other men followed suit. "We touch this ground, this blood on this ground. We honor the life of this baby. We honor the lives of our children," he cried aloud. Sample was among the men on the ground, now in tears. The group would chime in: "yes, yes." It was Dujuan "Zoe" Kennedy of Force Detroit, though, that wouldn't let the group leave without remembering what Daviyon Shelmonson-Bey's father had demanded. "Look who's out here right now," Kennedy said. To those who didn't show up: "Hold them accountable," he said. Turner, Sample, and others will be back in the neighborhood on Tuesday, passing out flyers and sharing resources. Team Pursuit will have officially launched its "Protect the Zone" youth program. And Grubbs and Shelmonson-Bey will still hope their grief will actually prompt change. Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. Contact her at asahouri@ This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit leaders mobilize after child, teen killed in triple shooting
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Yahoo
Metro's violence prevention program marred by subway fight and subcontractor's RICO indictment
In November 2022, two men connected to a Metro safety program beat up another man on a station platform. Video footage, which The Times obtained last week, shows one of the workers squaring off before striking the man while the worker's colleague wearing a black shirt that says 'security' jumps into the fray throwing fists. The man fights back, is pushed down onto the Metro platform, and ends up on the tracks. Still held by one of the pair, he tries to yank away and throws punches until he is let go. The two "community intervention specialists" — unarmed community members who have experience with at-risk populations and gang intervention — were hired to embed within Metro's 'street teams' to de-escalate and prevent violence. It's unclear who the third man is. Metro has touted the multimillion-dollar safety program as an integral solution to its fight against crime amid a surge in attacks throughout the rail and bus system, while trust in law enforcement has waned. But the 2022 incident involving the two men and a recent indictment of the co-founder of a community group also affiliated with the community intervention specialist program has raised questions about the oversight of Metro's plan. In January, Metro expanded its operation and awarded a three-year contract for nearly $25 million to the Lee Andrews Group, a public relations firm, to manage Metro's community intervention specialist program. The firm also manages Metro's street teams — a group the transit agency has described as station greeters who often distribute materials, such as PPE during the pandemic. That program complements Metro's robust transit ambassador teams, who also liaise with the public. These community-based programs have been proved to combat violence, Metro said, crediting these teams with a "15% reduction in violent crimes per boarding systemwide from 2023 to 2024" and a notable reduction in violence along the K Line. The Metro board directed the Lee Andrews Group to continue working with community organizations to combat violence by deploying specialists to "hot spots" throughout the system. One of those groups was Developing Options, co-founded by Eugene 'Big U' Henley, who is described as a former gang member who became a community advocate. Henley was indicted in March on federal charges of fraud, robbery, extortion and running a racketeering conspiracy. Allegations against Henley also included fraudulently obtaining funds through a gang reduction and youth development program overseen by the L.A. mayor's office. Developing Options received nearly $2 million and stopped working with the Metro program March 25, Metro said, 'almost immediately after news surfaced about the organization's leadership.' A representative for Henley could not be reached for comment. Another community organization subcontracted by the Lee Andrews Group was Able Solutions — the organization affiliated with the men in the video, Metro confirmed. Since 2022, the organization has received more than $3.2 million for its work with Metro and while the men in the video were removed from the system and are no longer connected with Metro, the transit agency said the organization remains affiliated. Able Solutions has not responded to requests for comment. Metro's Customer Experience Cabinet oversees the program, but the transit agency does not vet the groups involved. That task falls to Lee Andrews Group and the community organizations, Metro said. The groups are expected to recruit members who have "lived experience with gangs, trauma or violence," according to the board report. According to Metro, Able Solutions requires a background check of all individuals through the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services' guard card system and a state Department of Justice Live Scan. The group also conducts a Megan's Law search. Lee Andrews' vetting process is 'rooted in on-the-ground credibility,' Metro said. 'They consult with local leaders, stakeholders and community coalitions to ensure that every individual representing the project has the necessary relationships, cultural competency and trust to operate effectively and responsibly in sensitive areas.' Since 2022, Metro said that eight people have been arrested who work as transit ambassadors, street team members and community intervention specialists. The programs have employed a combined total of nearly 800 people. Metro's top security officer in 2022, Gina Osborn, said her department was not involved in the oversight of the community intervention specialists or street teams and said that she had raised concerns over a lack of oversight. 'If you have a public safety ecosystem and you speak about it publicly, why is the entire ecosystem not under one person? Why is it compartmentalized in such a way where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing?' Osborn sued Metro last year over an allegation that the transit agency fired her in retaliation for filing a complaint with the Office of the Inspector General following a bus hijacking. The lawsuit described a tense relationship between Osborn and Metro Chief Executive Stephanie Wiggins over differing views on how Metro's system should be secured. Scott Decker, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University who has studied criminology and gang intervention, said that public agencies' collaborations with these these types of community-based programs has helped reduce crime in cities like Chicago. The data isn't "cut or dry" when it comes to assessing whether they work better than law enforcement to prevent violence, Decker said, but "there's not much evidence that shows police are demonstrably better." Metro on Thursday approved a $9.4-billion budget that included a nearly 2% increase for Metro's public safety budget. The community intervention specialist program is cited as a key priority to the 'multi-layered approach' included under a nearly $400-million bucket. Osborn had been critical of how outside law enforcement patrolled the bus and rail system and pushed for more in-house security. Earlier this month, Metro named its chief of the transit agency's new in-house police department that will oversee all of Metro's safety operations. Under a $193-million-a-year plan, sworn officers would work with Metro ambassadors and crisis intervention staffers, as well as community intervention specialists. Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
