New York life | Profession: violence interrupter

Once a month, our journalist Richard Hétu immerses us in current events in New York, where he has lived for nearly 30 years.

(New York) Taronn Sloan, a violence switch in Brownsville, Brooklyn’s most dangerous neighborhood, wasn’t even working that night. Nevertheless, leaving his HLM to go to the local Popeyes, he noticed the presence of a guy wearing a balaclava.

“I said to myself that he had to watch out for the young people who stood in the entrance hall,” says the man who inherited the nickname “Tree” because of his tall stature.

When he returned, the hooded guy was gone. But the young people were still in the entrance hall.

“I told them what I saw outside, then walked back to my apartment using the stairs instead of the elevator,” Tree continues.

As he began the second flight of stairs, he saw, on the upper landing, the guy with the balaclava, who must have entered the building through a back door. Pointing a handgun at him, the individual fired a shot. The bullet entered Tree’s chest and exited through his lower back.

The switch of violence had just been in turn the target of the scourge that he is trying to contain within the organization BIVO (Brownsville In, Violence Out). Thank goodness, as he says, none of his vital organs were damaged.

“I’m grateful, because it could have been worse,” he said during an exchange along a commercial street in Brownsville, not far from BIVO HQ. “Four teenagers could have died in the entrance hall. The shooter was patient. He waited. He was determined to do what he had to do. »

But Tree took a bullet for the youngsters.

Defuse conflict

The story goes back to February. The 22-year-old shooter has since been arrested – he wanted to settle a beef, a dispute – and Tree has been honored by the mayor of New York for his “relentless efforts” against gun violence.

Now considered a hero on the streets of Brownsville, Taronn Sloan says he never thought about changing jobs after being shot.

“I won’t lie, it’s one of the best jobs that I had,” said the former security guard at a SoHo store.

BIVO, her employer for a year, is one of more than 20 organizations funded by New York City to combat gun violence in red-light districts. Modeled after the Cure Violence program emanating from Chicago, the NGO recruits community members, particularly people with gang backgrounds, to act as mediators capable of defusing interpersonal conflicts before they turn violent. .

The clientele targeted by BIVO: 15-24 year olds.

“We don’t have weapons, we don’t have bulletproof vests,” said Darren “Mello” Scriven, BIVO’s deputy director and former inmate.

But changing minds remains a constant challenge.

“It’s been very difficult lately because of social media, rap and videos that show drugs, murders and all the other things that young people watch,” says “Mello”.

Easy targets

It’s 1 p.m. Tree and three other BIVO violence interrupters begin the first of their two daily rounds. Until 3 p.m., they will visit on foot the four areas of the neighborhood where their organization operates. Each of the zones has a low-income housing complex where thousands of people live.

At 4 p.m., they will return to BIVO HQ to write a first report. At 5 p.m., they will head out for their second round, which ends at 7 p.m. During the rest of the evening, they must be available on call.

The four men exchange complicated handshakes with the young people they meet and hear from them. They ignore the police on duty at street corners.

“If we want to maintain our credibility, we cannot interact with them,” says Nyron.

The switch of violence introduces his interlocutor to a young 22-year-old nicknamed “City”.

Still, gun violence has dropped in New York City over the past year. In the Brooklyn area including Brownsville and part of Bedford-Stuyvesant, the number of homicides fell by 40% from May 21, 2022 to May 21, 2023, and the number of shooting events fell by 26.3% .

High risk guys

“We have to do something right,” says Dushoun Almond, director of BIVO, referring to New York City Police (NYPD) data.

“I can’t speak for other organizations, but we have a good handle on our guys. They’re not going to shoot people. I don’t mean we have perfect guys who don’t carry guns. I’m not going to say that because we have high risk guys carrying guns. »

Dushoun Almond was once one of them, as the smoking gun he got tattooed on his neck in another era reminds us. Today, he boasts of helping 18 boys and girls pursue college education.

Such an assessment tends to confirm the rather positive conclusions of a report published in 2017 by researchers from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who studied two NGOs similar to BIVO in New York.

“Just theoretically, it makes sense for people to engage in violent behavior when they don’t have a natural reluctance to hurt others,” says Jeffrey Butts, director of this research. “A policeman would say it’s because they’re not afraid of being punished. But a social scientist would say that people behave well when they care about other people around them, when they feel connected to the community and when they feel respected. This is the theory behind these programs. »

Reality is sometimes harsh. One evening in May, the BIVO team joined other organizations in denouncing gun violence. A few days earlier, a member of the community had been shot and wounded because of a simple “beef”.

Megaphone in hand, a switch of violence nicknamed “C-Bo” lectured the crowd gathered in front of an HLM where the shooter and his target grew up.

” Come on, bro, launched C-Bo. Every quarrel doesn’t have to turn into a funeral, every argument doesn’t have to be Afghanistan. »

That evening, Tree was not working. He was celebrating his 36th birthday. Thank God.