Anti-crime programs in the District are heavy on government bureaucracy and short on human interaction, according to a new coalition of neighborhood leaders who see mentorship and direct intervention with troubled young people as more effective.
The volunteer members of CREWS, or Communities Respecting Everyone’s Will to Survive, say the blueprint for reversing a record year of homicides and carjackings in the District starts with mending the internal wounds of the city’s most violent residents.
“There’s no way we can change the condition of the people until we first change the way they think, see and feel about themselves because how they see themselves now is encapsulated in a discharge of pain,” said Edward Tate, a founding member of the Southeast-based coalition of concerned Black men, including aid workers, business people and clergymen.
“They’re reacting to that pain and making unhealthy choices and decisions that are then borne out of that pain,” he said.
CREWS members say easing their pain starts with building trust.
The group operates its own version of the D.C. government’s Safe Passage program, which stations adult guardians outside and near schools so students can get to and from the buildings in peace.
CREWS members have been shepherding students to and from John Philip Sousa Middle School in Southeast since the beginning of the school year.
Tyrone Parker, a founding member of the Alliance of Concerned Men who came out of retirement to help get CREWS off the ground, said the group eventually wants to speak with students in an assembly format.
As CREWS builds rapport with youths and parents in the Greenway neighborhood, Mr. Parker said, the immediate plan is to speak with members of the 37th Street Crew. The local gang’s beef with the Simple City Crew in the nearby Benning Terrace housing development is the source of many lethal shootings in the community.
The playbook is familiar to Mr. Parker, who helped broker a truce between warring crews in Simple City roughly a quarter-century ago. The most significant determinant of mediation success is whether the right people are involved, he said.
“You’re going to be talking to kids that may be willing to kill someone,” Mr. Parker told The Washington Times. “You’re going to have to have particular people that’s got the demeanor and the spirit to be able to deal with that — no ego, no image, and be open to being cursed out and all that other stuff.”
Mr. Parker said CREWS hopes its model provides an outline for the city to follow: Gain trust by having a consistent presence in the neighborhood and parlay that trust into quelling feuds that inflame violent outbursts.
Mr. Tate said the coalition has trained nearly 15 men for gang intervention. They will try to make some inroads with the 37th Street Crew in the coming weeks.
Much of CREWS’s ability to show that its independent model can succeed will depend on funding.
Volunteers run the coalition for now. Almost all of the manpower comes from the operators of mom-and-pop aid organizations, members of local churches and the Nation of Islam.
CREWS members say the ideal is for the coalition to be entirely privately funded, much like the Civic Coalition to Save Lives in Philadelphia.
The D.C. coalition is starting from a different place. The Civic Coalition to Save Lives was the brainchild of executives from nonprofits and philanthropic organizations with deep ties to City Hall, said Philadelphia Foundation spokesman Ted Qualli.
Mr. Qualli said social and political capital helped the coalition raise more than $6 million for its efforts in the first year alone, without government funding. The coalition distributed that money to aid groups and anti-violence service providers.
CREWS members, on the other hand, are primarily service providers in the District.
Mr. Qualli suggested that CREWS would improve its chances of financial backing with a clear sales pitch to investors.
He said the Civic Coalition to Save Lives was “methodical and very disciplined in making sure that every person we talked to had a baseline understanding of what it is we were talking about.”
Mr. Tate said CREWS’s message is simple: The District’s rising violence is bad for business.
The owners of law firms, medical practices and large corporations with outposts in the city should want to fund a group that will be more responsive and effective with their investments than the D.C. government, he said.
Local businesses are feeling the financial burden of the crime wave.
Burglaries and violent incidents along the H Street corridor in Northeast contributed to the closures of the Pursuit Wine Bar & Kitchen and the Brine Oyster and Seafood House in the past two months.
Axios reported that the Surfside taco stand in Dupont spends $4,000 a week on security.
Hospitality group Fish & Fire Food Group, the parent company of restaurants such as Ivy City Smokehouse, increased its security spending by $200,000 in 2023 in response to crime.
David Muhammad, executive director of the National Institute of Criminal Justice Reform, said CREWS should not shy away from government funding.
He said city funding helped his center identify violent perpetrators in the nation’s capital and determine what could curb deadly shootings.
Outside of funding, Mr. Muhammad said, CREWS should look at the city as the best resource for information on the people it is trying to reach.
The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and other city agencies have intelligence departments that monitor the social media accounts of violent offenders. Intelligence officers can find hangouts and cohorts.
That information can lead to more targeted efforts. Mr. Muhammad said one nagging issue is that the local government does not get its violence interrupters to the right places.
“If all the violence interrupter is doing is canvassing the neighborhood three times a week, that’s not going to be enough. There needs to be more of a person-specific strategy,” Mr. Muhammad told The Times. “Some of these guys are doing heroic work and are working hard and passionately. They just need better management.”
Mr. Muhammad said the District needs an anti-violence czar to implement a citywide strategy and plan program objectives.
He said agencies such as the Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, the Office of Gun Violence Prevention and the D.C. attorney general’s office’s Cure the Streets program are doing good work.
The problem is a lack of coordination in their shared goal of lowering violent crime rates, giving CREWS a “hell of an argument” for interested financiers, Mr. Muhammad said.
As CREWS works to bring in more financial backing, Chris Thomas and other coalition members are focused on showing up for Greenway youths.
Mr. Thomas, the chief of staff for aid organization 100 Fathers Inc., said his main goal is to form a positive relationship with the youths. That includes getting them haircuts, taking them on excursions to Northern Virginia or getting them food — bags of Takis, specifically.
He said they are eligible for assistance but aid workers depart once grant money dries up. This short-term cycle often exacerbates abandonment issues.
Mr. Thomas said being a frequent presence in the children’s lives and being honest about expectations allows him to infuse them with more wholesome values.
“One of the biggest things is really just being transparent, consistent with them,” Mr. Thomas told The Times. “A lot of them are standoffish in the beginning. But over time, they will wake up, and they will really talk to you. They just have to really, really trust you. So many people have let them down. It’s hard for them to do that.”
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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