REBROADCAST / American Diagnosis / Gangs

Hi everyone, I'm Dr. Celine Gounder. I'm the host of The Epidemic Podcast. Thanks for listening to the show. We're on break this month, but we'll be back with new episodes after Labor Day. In the meantime, we're replaying some episodes of our sister podcast, American Diagnosis. Formerly known as In Sickness and in Health. Uprisings this summer in support of Black Lives Matter have some politicians calling for zero tolerance approaches to protesters. But zero tolerance approaches to law enforcement often erode a community's trust in the police. They apply the same level of aggressive policing to a whole population instead of just the people causing trouble. But what if there was a way to reach those few who are at high risk of committing crimes and turn their lives around. In this episode, we're looking at an innovative approach to gun violence prevention the city of Cincinnati tried that did just that. Thanks for listening. Now here's the show.

How is it that someone could be laying on the ground bleeding and you told to keep your mouth shut?

We know who you are, we know what you're doing, we're not going to let this continue. We are focusing on you because you are the most violent group in the city right now, and therefore you have gotten our attention.

That's a real dangerous mentality to have. To just not care.

We know that you're going to have to make a choice one day, and hopefully that choice will be a positive one.

Welcome back to Insignificance and Health, a podcast about health and social justice. I'm Dr. Saleem Gounder. This season, we're looking at gun violence in America. Back in 2006, Cincinnati was cracking down on crime. Several white suburbanites were shot and killed while buying drugs in downtown Cincinnati. The police responded with a zero-tolerance policy. It was called Operation Vortex.

They got results, but that was, that was, that was no way of doing things.

This is Stan Ross. Stan manages a gun violence prevention program called the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence, or CERV. When Operation Vortex was getting started, police relations with the Black community in Cincinnati had long been in shambles.

Mostly young crowds were on the streets for a second time in 12 hours today, protesting the latest shooting death of a Black man by police.

Just a few years earlier, in 2001, riots raged for 3 days after police shot and killed an unarmed Black teenager named Timothy Thomas.

It just took off like a wildfire. I've never seen nothing like that in my life.

This is Gamba Abba. He was 19 when the riots broke out.

I hated the police. I hated the police at that time. I mean, I was strongly active in the streets then. I already had a disregard for authority at that time already, and that was just like, okay, that's the green light to really go there.

Operation Vortex confiscated guns and made arrests, but the homicide rate didn't drop.

The police understand that they can't arrest their way out of the problem, so the community has a role, a big role that they play.

The authorities in Cincinnati realized they needed to try something very different. They got police, parole officers, social workers, and community leaders to invite gang members in for a chat. So is getting one of these letters like getting a party invitation? Invitation, or is it like being served a warrant?

No, well, you know, I think it's, it's, it can be both. Um, but you know, as far as the party invitation, because naturally they don't know, you know, I mean, there's some distrust that's going on, um, you know, kind of on both sides.

Gamba was 26 when he first met Stan Ross at one of these meetings. He'd just done 5 years in prison, and he was not excited to get one of Stan's party invitations.

I didn't have an open mind because I was, for one, I was forced to go.

I was forced to go.

I didn't want to be there. And it was held at the federal courthouse then. And it was set up to where it was two sides in the courthouse. One side was Stan Ross and a lot of resources and all of the— so many people that can help us that's in so many different fields. And on the other side of the courtroom was a multitude of different fields of law enforcement. U.S. Marshals, federal prosecutors, regular prosecutors, federal agents, state police.

CERV is based on the idea that small core groups drive most of the violence in a community. If you can reach those groups and convince them to stop the shooting, you can dramatically reduce gun violence.

You had a message from CERV, you know, we're trying to help you get your life together. And if you don't get your life together, the other side of the room explained the repercussions, you know, of not getting your life together, transitioning out of certain behaviors in the way that you think.

Repercussions like ending up in prison again or getting shot. The idea is to be as candid as possible about what law enforcement will do to them if they don't stop the violence, while also giving them the help they need to leave that life behind.

Really, the long and short end of it Dr. Saleem is, how do you get guys to participate in their own rescue?

Gamba heard what Serb was saying.

I really did listen to the help side and Stan Ross and all of the people that, you know, that he got together and, you know, that's here to help us and things of that nature. I really, you know, I did get that.

But he wasn't ready to change his life, at least not yet.

I was defensive. My thought process was, I'm gonna be defensive, man. I don't, I don't like the police. I don't care what they tell me. Talking about. You know, I don't even want to be here. I got stuff to do.

What stuff did you have to do in your mind at the time?

Sell drugs. People calling my phone. You know, I'm missing money. You know, I'm looking at it like I'm missing money and y'all making money.

Gamba wouldn't be ready to leave that life and start over for several more years. But his story helps explain how we can target those small groups behind most of the crime. In today's episode, we'll look at how programs like CERB approach gun violence and the people behind it. And like Gamba's story will show, why it's never too late to make a change. When Gamba was growing up, he was a good student. He played a lot of sports. But then his parents split up. His mom struggled with alcohol. She even lost custody of Gamba and his siblings for a while. Gamba started getting into fights.

6th grade, I really started fighting in school a lot, you know, fought in the neighborhood as a kid, but I started fighting in school a whole lot.

Gamba eventually ended up in a neighborhood gang.

We were selling drugs and, you know, had a gun or two and burglaries, B&E's, I mean, these are the things that we did as hobbies, going to neighborhood parties, knowing that this neighborhood don't like our neighborhood, but we ready to fight and get into whatever it is that we going to get into because we making a name for ourselves. Growing up in that environment, it's almost like eat or get ate. You got to survive. To be passive in that environment means that you basically were somebody's lunch. You know, somebody, you know, people can do anything that they want to do to you because you're not going to do nothing.

With everything Gamboa was facing— poverty, trouble at home, living in a violent neighborhood— you might not be that surprised he ended up in a gang.

One would think from that everybody in the community is kind of doomed because those risk factors are unfortunately extremely prevalent. You'd think that all the kids are on a conveyor belt to becoming, you know, violent offenders and violent victims.

This is David Kennedy. He directs the National Network for Safe Communities at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

The root causes and the risk factors would predict much more much higher levels of violence than we in fact see. The fact is that almost everybody will grow up and not be part of that tiny high-risk population.

Gun violence spreads like a contagion, but it's not like the common cold. It spreads more like a sexually transmitted disease within social networks and groups.

When one realizes this most central fact about serious violence, which is that it is suffered by and produced by very, very small numbers of high-risk folks, it kind of changes everything. It means that we should turn our idea that there are bad communities full of bad people absolutely upside down.

If you want to stop gun violence, you need to target these vectors, these small groups, what a lot of people would call gangs.

When people couch that as gangs, the idea of a gang usually brings with it notions of organization and hierarchy and leadership. The reality is, on the ground, nearly all groups like this do not have that kind of organization and purpose. They're not hierarchical. There's no real leadership. Their membership is undefined and fluid. And most of the violence is not in any way aimed at making money or at group interest. It's overwhelmingly street code stuff and kind of honour culture issues around respect and disrespect and reciprocal vendetta and that sort of thing. Most of the high-risk folks are more traumatized and scared than they are predatory. It's probably more meaningful to think about them in terms of their victimization. A lot of us just don't worry about gangs or gang membership or what a gang is or gang definitions anymore. We just look for these high-risk groups and networks.

So how do you reach these high-risk groups? First, we'll have to go back to Boston in the 1990s.

Please, Boston, record emergency 510.

The homicide rate was jumping higher and higher every year.

We have to stop the violence and come together, man. I mean, this is getting out of hand.

The police and community were both at a loss.

The result: racial tensions soared in a town already wracked with troubles.

But eventually, police, parole officers, and community leaders started to piece together what was driving the violence: small groups of high-risk individuals. So they tried something novel. They got them all together in one place and asked them to stop.

Nobody ever done such a thing before. This was really put together like, you know, honestly, a piece of community theater or something like that. It was scripted, it was blocked, people had their roles, they'd rehearsed.

The first group they reached out to was the Vamp Hill Kings, a gang in Boston. Probation officers made some Vamp Hill Kings attend the meeting, but outreach workers on the street persuaded others to come too.

On the day, in fact, there were a goodly number of Vamp Hill Kings in the room, and we were able to close the door and get on with it. The message was simple: Violence will not be tolerated. And not only is there a way to get out of the life if you want to, but also there will be consequences for certain acts of violence.

These meetings led to some realizations contradicting much of what we think about these so-called gangs.

It's very, very common for groups to do terrible things, you know, up to and including killing people. And when you talk to the group members behind closed doors, they hate what's going on, but they think that everybody else likes it. And so the group continues to do horrible things. Group members will say, you know, I don't mind going to jail. Jail's a cost of doing business. Nobody wants to go to jail. But as long as they think everybody thinks that jail's okay, then people are going to go to jail.

Gamba felt this firsthand.

That was the mentality that we adopted. And it was like, you know, we never stopped to think like, well, maybe this don't really sound right. Nah, like the behavior just kept progressing and progressing and progressing. And The levels of danger and the risk became so much greater as we got older. But this is a normalcy. We see this every day. People being shot, people being hauled off to jail. You know, this was every single day.

These meetings gave gang members a chance to break with these beliefs and behaviors and even gracefully leave that violence behind.

You just have to say, "Look at what happened to the last group that shot somebody. They're in big trouble. And I would love to go with you and shoot up this house, but we'd really better not. It's not worth it." And you can do that without burning any of your bridges and not losing face. And that's what we came to see as an honorable exit.

All this sounds like it shouldn't work. Violence interrupters in places like Chicago go out of their way to avoid interacting with the police. It's seen as killing their street cred.

Everybody who knows anything about street work knows that that's right. The mistake comes when that's then assumed to mean that there can be no legitimate and effective and even professional relationship. So having outreach workers not be perceived and not in fact act as informants for the police in no way means that they can't work together effectively. And that turns out to be the best way to do it, is to have correct relationships.

This is a delicate balancing act, and not just for that small group of people driving the violence.

What is becoming very, very, very clear is that criminal justice is a lot like chemotherapy. Chemotherapy may save your life if you get it just right. But it's also highly, highly toxic, and it will always make you sick. It will make you worse, and it will even kill you. We want law enforcement to do as little damage as possible in the course of producing public safety.

Crackdowns like Operation Vortex in Cincinnati come out of a desire to stop the shootings. But they criminalize entire communities when most people aren't breaking the law. And that kills trust in the police.

The work that I've been part of is built on resetting relationships with communities at large, making it very clear even to high-risk folks on the street that their safety is of absolute central importance. Alive and free is the phrase a lot of us use. We want people alive, unhurt, and in the community, not dead or wounded or in jail, that the police and other parties are there first and foremost to keep people safe. And in the course of doing that, one is going to do the absolute minimum of actual law enforcement necessary to produce that safety.

The lessons that came out of David's early work in Boston eventually gelled into a program called Ceasefire. Its basic tenets—focusing on the small core of violent offenders, explaining the consequences, and giving them the resources to change—Davids brought these ideas to other cities across the U.S., including Cincinnati. CERV, the program that Gamba went to, it was an outgrowth of a Ceasefire Project. But after that first meeting with CERV, Gamba wasn't ready to leave the violence behind. He ended up in prison again.

Just a few years later. Conspiracy drug charges and firearm charges.

I ended up doing 6 years.

That was 6 years in a federal prison. Gamba says it left him a changed man.

The federal justice system is a whole nother ball game. You know, there's a lot of, lot of guys in there doing a lot, lot, lot of time, and You know, I started realizing that I wanted something better for my life and especially for my kids. I came home 33, I had 7 kids.

Gamba made up his mind to break with his past, but this was scary. Gamba had never faced anything like it before. I was afraid.

I was 33 years old with no work history and 7 children, nowhere to go, homeless. What do I do?

Gamba's first step into a life without violence was his parole officer.

She, you know, introduced herself and she was, you know, like, you know, I'm here to help you. How can I help you? It was really maybe like, um, the first time that I really, really recognized that somebody cared.

So you didn't feel like there were people who cared about you up until that point?

I didn't recognize it, you know, from the mentality of being in the streets and, you know, people trying to set you up to be killed and things of that nature. It guards you. It has you feeling guarded. It's like, why is this person being so nice to me when in all actuality this person really cares? But you don't recognize it. It was actually my federal probation officer that reintroduced me to Stan. I slowly but surely started to recognize that people cared about me, and Stan was one of those guys.

Today, Gamboa works with SIRV. He's a mentor with the Positive Influence Team.

There are federal judges involved, there are police involved, there are prosecutors involved. I never thought I would have relationships with people in the criminal justice system, you know, because in my old mentality, I hated the criminal justice system, anything or anybody that represented the criminal justice system. We mentor, I said, at-risk teenagers. We have groups that we do with the federal probation department. I'm in some of these groups with guys that I know from my neighborhood, from neighborhoods all over the city. And I'm seeing, I'm seeing evolution.

Efforts to reduce gun violence need to start with the neighborhood and before the neighborhood. It took the deaths of whites from the suburbs to bring real attention to the violence plaguing downtown Cincinnati, but that didn't turn things around. It took a show of concern for everyone. The city stopped cracking down on whole neighborhoods. Instead, they policed the small groups responsible for the violence, offering them a carrot and a stick—real help to turn their lives around and real consequences if they continued to terrorize their communities. Cincinnati has seen good results. Shootings are at an all-time low since CERV came on the scene. But these programs aren't magic. If they're not done right, you don't see results. Even Ceasefire in Boston, David's first group violence program, isn't as effective as it used to be.

For all of its success, as time went by, naturally people moved on. They got promoted, they moved to other jobs. There was not the kind of institutionalized attention to maintaining it that there could have been.

The long-term sustainability of Ceasefire was never ensured, and things fell apart.

Boston has never really put it back together, not, not in a fully fledged and correct way. There was competition for attention and careerism and grants and credit. There were some personality conflicts that became pretty serious within the group. And when those things started to stress the operation, there was not the institutional backup to survive. Survive that. And it fell apart.

In our next episode, we'll look at a tale of two cities. We'll see what went right and what went wrong when group violence reduction strategies were rolled out in Oakland and New Orleans. That's next time on In Sickness and in Health. Today's episode of In Sickness and in Health was produced by Zach Dyer and me, Our theme music is by Alan Vest. Additional music by the Blue Dot Sessions. If you enjoy the show, please tell a friend about it today. And if you haven't already done so, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps more people find out about the show. You can learn more about this podcast and how to engage with us on social media at insicknessandinhealthpodcast.com. That's insicknessandinhealthpodcast.com. I'm Dr. Celine Gounder. This is In Sickness and in Health.