Neighborhood. Porch. Living room. That's where James Clark, head of the St. Louis Metropolitan Area De-escalation Center, says we must go to talk about gun violence within communities. And that's where his outreach workers have been going for the past two and a half years.
The black community is facing an internal crisis, Clark says. "African-Americans have to look at the fact that African-Americans kill African-Americans every day in every major city. We can't ignore that. Not to address it is passing it on to future generations."
His goal is to build coalitions to address gun violence head on, so that future generations can say: "There was a time when African-Americans killed African-Americans. But African-Americans mobilized. We no longer kill each other." Clark believes it is the next chapter of black history and that it must be brought to immediate action.
Clark, who was born and raised in St. Louis, became interested in community development when he returned in 1989 after four years in the Army to an altered neighborhood. "The neighborhood I left was full of passion and was nurturing," he says. "I never knew a bad day growing up. But when I came home from the military the spirit had changed. I became interested in combatting it."
He joined Better Family Life, a NeighborWorks network organization, as a volunteer. After several jobs, including with the St. Louis Role Model Experience Program and serving as assistant to the first African-American mayor in St. Louis, he came back to Better Family as director of community outreach. He currently serves as vice president.
In 2017, gun violence in St. Louis had reached a 20-year high with 205 homicides, according to John Hayden Jr., commissioner of police for the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
People had become numb to it, as they had in other major cities, Clark says. That's the year the de-escalation program began with yard signs, black text on a white background that said, "We must stop killing each other."
A phone number was at the bottom and calls followed.
"My sister's old boyfriend does not like her new boyfriend."
"My cousin got into a fight at the club with a bad dude."
"My friend knows the guy who stole his car."
"Somebody's going to get shot."
"We found ourselves de-escalating conflicts," Clark says. "After about the fifth call we sat down and asked ourselves 'What have we learned?' It became clear that third-party people who knew about a conflict were willing to come forward and put the information on the table, let it be known so the conflict could be de-escalated."
Over the past two years, Clark has built up his staff to 10 to respond to a 24-hour hotline. They hit the streets in tan shirts and cargo pants in the spring, black in the winter months and some days in "street clothes." The community knows them, which is key, he says. He selects staff members who were either formerly in the military or formerly incarcerated, a street-smart staff that includes men and women, short hair, long hair, dreadlocks, tattoos.
When they get a call, he says, they have a meeting to decide the right person to mediate and how. They contact friends and relatives and peers of each adversary. Then they sit down, separately, with the adversaries, meeting them at home or church or outside a barber shop or restaurant.
"Each situation is different," Clark says. "If you approach it wrong it's hard to re-engage. We've got one opportunity."
Since January of 2017, they've de-escalated 144 cases. Eighty-nine of them are being evaluated by Washington University. "We're excited about the findings of the evaluations. Over 80 percent of the conflicts were successfully de-escalated," Clark says. His expectation, aside from preventing homicides, is that it will have an impact on the incarceration rate.
"As a society, we have to come up with a solution," he says. "This gives people who know about a conflict a chance to come forward. It's a new and innovative model for addressing gun violence in the urban core."
Hayden, of the St. Louis police department, says that when he took office in 2018, the city stepped up patrols, focusing on a zone with traditionally violent neighborhoods. He says there was a substantial decrease in violence – 23 fewer homicides in that zone, 77 fewer robberies and 113 fewer assaults with firearms. "Part of the success was Better Family Life with de-escalation," he says. "James Clark went to churches and had them set up de-escalation centers, neutral zones."
Hayden says the third parties who call Better Family Life are less likely to call police about potential conflicts because those conflicts might implicate a friend or relative. "They're not going to say, 'My son and this other gentleman have been shooting at each other,' because they just want to tell on the other guy. Because Mr. Clark has been involved in the community for so long, they're comfortable telling him – a family partner who can work on both sides of the argument."
In cases where de-escalation isn't possible, the de-escalation center's outreach team tries to relocate one of the people involved in the conflict. Sometimes, the individuals move out of the neighborhood to stay with a friend or grandparent.Sometimes they move out of state. So far, the de-escalation center has relocated 22 people. "We have an angel donor that says, 'Let me know when you need a one-way bus ticket,'" says Clark.
Hayden says his intervention officers offer support during those times, to help make sure the transfer goes smoothly and safely, and that adversaries keep their distance.
Statistically, it's hard to count the shootings or homicides that didn't happen, Hayden says. But Clark can count de-escalations. "I'm happy Better Family Life is involving itself in de-escalation," says Hayden. "The police can't be everywhere, and I know these projects are helping our city be safer. De-escalation and similar interventions are what's going to help us turn around."
Clark describes the process of preparing for a de-escalation as detective work. They look at body language, eye contact, energy. "What's the best way to engage this person? Where's the best place to meet?"
His staff is trained in de-escalation and anger management. "But there's a street mentality that there's no textbook for. They understand the mentality; you can't learn this in a classroom."
St. Louis has been – and is still – at a tipping point, he says. "Not enough is being done. These shootings need not continue to occur at the volume they do. But we're slow to put the necessary resources in place to address this crisis. We have to deliver resources into challenged neighborhoods."
The St. Louis Metropolitan Area Gun Violence De-Escalation Centers are a key pillar of the Neighborhood Alliance Project, which also focuses on the NPL – neighborhood, porch and living room. "That's where we must go to better understand the 'human capital crisis' challenging every urban center in America," Clark says. "It's where you need to go to challenge and then change the culture."
Clark says that since he's become involved with community outreach, he hasn't wavered. "Part of my purpose is to set a flag in the middle of the urban core and challenge the urban community and challenge philanthropy to direct resources to the urban core," he says. "These shootings need not happen. We can cut the homicide rate. We can cut the rate of gun violence. But traditional approaches aren't working. We need to focus on the NPL. Neighborhood. Porch. Living room."
Clark says NeighborWorks helps give Better Family Life the ability to take a wholistic approach to neighborhood development. "We focus on the brick and mortar. But you also have to focus on the human capital." NeighborWorks understands that, he says.
In the new yard signs for the de-escalation center, the word "must" has been replaced by the word "will."
"We will stop killing each other," says one sign. "We will start loving each other," says another.
"I'm working for the day African-Americans say, 'We will never kill each other again,'" says Clark. "That's our next hurdle and we should be sprinting toward that hurdle like our lives depended on it." They do, he adds. "We cannot leave this to future generations. We can't."
03/09/2020
