"It's Open Hunting Season for Black and Brown Men": An Examination of Community Violence Intervention Worker Perspectives on the Interface between Law Enforcement and Street Outreach

Background and Purpose: A growing body of research supports community-based violence intervention (CVI) programs as effective strategies to reduce shootings and homicides in urban neighborhoods with the highest rates of violent crime. CVI programs prioritize street outreach as a core programmatic component, which involves hiring ‘credible messengers’ to conduct proactive street-based outreach to individuals at highest risk of gun violence victimization or perpetration. The same areas where CVI workers implement programs are characterized by a heavy police presence, evidenced in research that describes these neighborhoods as ‘over-policed and under-protected’. Empirical studies have yet to examine the dynamics and interactions CVI workers and police in the micro-public safety ecologies of urban neighborhoods.

Methods: The study involved in-depth, semi-structured interviews with CVI workers and their supervisor in Chicago in 2021. The interviews centered around work-related challenges, traumatic stress, and supports necessary to enhance and sustain the impact of CVI programs towards violence reduction. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using a modified grounded theory approach, thematic analysis and constant comparative methods.

Results: Qualitative analysis of CVI worker interviews identified 3 core themes pertaining to CVI workers’ perspective and experience of interfacing with law enforcement in their respective communities. First, CVI workers’ conceptualized their role as disrupting a community-to-prison pipeline of Black and Latinx men at heightened risk of violence exposure. Subsequently, in their conceptualization of pipeline-disrupting work, CVI workers compare and contrast their client engagement and community outreach strategies with policing efforts in their communities. Lastly, thematic analysis characterized the frequent interactions with law enforcement as both triggering of past traumas for CVI workers and detrimental to their clients.

Conclusion and Implications: The results present the first empirical examination of the interface between street outreach and policing from the perspective of CVI workers. Analysis highlights how CVI workers conceptualize their role and contribution to their neighborhood public safety ecology in the presence of law enforcement, which is largely characterized as reversing trends of punishment, trauma, and intergenerational harm through their embodiment of change and hope. The results should be critically considered local governments interpret violent crime trends and consider viable public safety strategies to reduce violence in communities disproportionately burdened with firearm violence.