An organization that trains violence interrupters in D.C. is pushing back against a call from the city’s police union to pull the funding from violence interruption programs.
Marcus Ellis, executive director of Peace for DC, called the union’s comments both “shocking” and “unfair.”
The union is calling on the city to make the move after Ward 8 D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. was arrested last month on a bribery charge.
Like other industries, Ellis said there can be misdoings made by individuals, but he doesn’t believe all programs should be paused because of the case.
“Are we going to stop the police department while they work on all of their active investigations?” Ellis asked. “We don’t say ‘shut down the banking industry, shut down politics,’ right? So we should get the same respect as these other professions.”
The police union called for the programs’ funding to be pulled and all programs that receive funds from the city to be examined and their effectiveness measured.
Ellis said violence interrupters serve an important purpose, preventing crimes from happening by spotting situations and intervening before they become violent.
“One thing that we know is that a police officer is typically called after an incident takes place,” he said. “Community violence intervention, as I spoke to earlier, we aim to get in front of (the incident).”
The union raised concerns about background checks and whether program employees can hold positions despite having criminal records. To that point, Ellis said in many cases, individuals who have turned their lives around can use their experience to help others choose a different path.
“The background checks may not prevent a returning citizen from doing the work the way a lot of other professions do, but there are background checks required with this community-based organizations and within government,” he said.
He said while police and violence interrupters may not always work hand-in-hand, they play an important role. But he said he believes that D.C. needs a plan that would allow everyone in the public safety ecosystem to work together.
“I think that oftentimes — unfair to the police — we expect them to solve everything. And completely unfair to community violence interruption, we expect them to solve everything. We are a resource-rich city, but we are coordination-poor. So that is a real thing and those are the conversations that we should be having versus pointing fingers,” Ellis said.
Asked if he believes the call from the union will be acted upon by lawmakers, he said he isn’t concerned about that happening.
“We’re going to keep focused on saving lives. And I think that we’ll be fine,” he said.