Funding to violence interruption groups is subsidizing gang activity on Chicago's streets
By the time Chicago Police arrived at Grace and Peace Church at 1856 North Leclaire in the North Austin neighborhood to respond to shots fired in the late morning of April 22, the gunmen had fled.
A neighborhood familiar with threats lurking around every corner and exhausted by random gunfire, as officers begin their investigation into the latest shooting incident in the area, investigators swiftly established two masked men had stepped from a gray Alfa Romero — likely stolen — to target a man who had exited Grace and Peace Church. An institution which shares office space with the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, it did not take long for the Chicago Police Department to speculate the alleged target was a street outreach worker, a “peacekeeper.”
As CPD proceeded with their probe and took statements from witnesses, officers surmised the alleged target had left a peacekeeper training session at Grace and Peace. Yet, when officers sought to interview the alleged victim of the shooting, police were unable to locate him, and outreach workers withheld the victim’s name and refused to assist law enforcement as they sought to complete a police report documenting the event. Aggravating matters, police say no one involved with the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago — including officials with the program — were willing to cooperate with CPD.
Far from the first time CPD has found peacekeepers a hindrance to improving the conditions on Chicago’s streets, whatever the story, it is complicated — because peacekeepers are complicated.
A concept founded in the mid-1990s, Community-based violence intervention (CVI) is advertised as communal violence prevention strategy. According to their staunchest supporters, peacekeepers are a class of street-level samaritans who mitigate violence by recognizing presumably lethal disputes and, through their direct familiarity with a neighborhood and relationships cultivated, reduce gun violence and improve public safety in high-crime areas.
Part of a plan to displace the criminal justice system with social services, the most effective technique to fight crime, progressives insist, is to strip CPD of funding and finance community-led alternatives to police-centric responses to crime. The “reimagining” of public safety, peacekeepers are funded by the federal government through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG); by the state through the Illinois Department of Human Services Community-Based Violence Prevention and Intervention Program (CBVIP); and by an assortment of grants doled out by the City of Chicago through the Government Alliance for Safe Communities (GASC).
Throughout Chicago, numerous “non-violence” groups — Cure Violence, Chicago CRED, ALSO, Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, UCAN, among others — accept millions in funding from the federal and state governments and the City of Chicago to accomplish their goal of reducing violence. Though these groups offer a broad range of programs, mainly job training, behavioral health, legal aid, or spiritual guidance, an emphasis is placed on street outreach.
“Violence interrupters,” — known colloquially as “peacekeepers” or “FLIP workers” — are considered a formidable pillar of the fight to end to the horrors of Chicago’s crime epidemic. However, an overwhelming number of those employed as violence interrupters are former gang members and ex-convicts. The assumption in progressives’ line of thinking is previous gang affiliation, past criminal behavior or time incarcerated grants a certain street eminence or reputational weight which enhances peacekeepers’ effectiveness in settling disputes, which otherwise would lead to gang violence and the inevitable retaliation.
Though peacekeepers have been lauded as an inestimable asset in reducing shootings and killings by Mayor Brandon Johnson and apple-polishing sociologists, some CPD members maintain peacekeepers are of low value and achieve little regarding reducing violence. Contrary to the mayor’s assertions, officers say many of the peacekeepers accept the paid positions, return to the streets, and resume gang activity.
According to CPD, peacekeepers often socialize with or engage in a range of non-violent but illegal activity — selling drugs and/or firearms — with gang members while “on duty.” This behavior, all of which occurs despite a “zero-tolerance” policy in effect for peacekeepers, is relatively minor in comparison to the criminality peacekeepers have engaged in elsewhere.
In a span of six weeks in the summer of 2023, peacekeepers were involved in violent crimes. Over Memorial Day weekend 2023, a peacekeeper, who was on parole at the time, was arrested for robbery, aggravated battery, and unlawful vehicular invasion following his role in beating a motorist in Little Village. Weeks later, two peacekeepers were shot in Little Village, one of whom was wearing an Electronic Monitoring bracelet while awaiting a court hearing for illegally possessing a firearm.
Elsewhere, police say they have witnessed known peacekeepers looting during the 2020 riots and extorting a business owner on the city’s West Side. In other instances of unlawful activity, an officer recounted a peacekeeper who installed emergency lights in a tinted, non-police vehicle provided by an anti-violence group to defy traffic controls. Peacekeepers have also been found to be in possession of stolen CPD radios, and on several occasions, officers tell of peacekeepers intervening on behalf of motorists and harassing CPD at traffic stops. Aggravating matters, officers say peacekeepers are known to appear at crime scenes for the purposes of hamstringing police from conducting investigations.
In another — and even more serious instance — a “violence interrupter” in a gang-infested South Side neighborhood followed detectives and officers who were canvassing an area interviewing witnesses following a high-profile murder. Police observed the CVI who had turned out at the crime scene questioning witnesses to the crime over conversations they had held with police and demanded specific details related to the crime. Doubly troubling, police later learned this ostensible “violence interrupter” had told the residents to share information only with CVIs and to limit further contact with CPD.
Of all the legitimate complaints aired by CPD concerning the role peacekeepers play, officers deliver most of the due opprobrium for the absence of any accountability peacekeepers take for their illegal behavior.
Let CPD handle the enforcement of the law on Chicago’s streets
While the concept of violence interruption initiatives was once worth consideration, the record peacekeepers have established has been, at best, erratic and inconsistent. Despite gaining support among lawmakers and news media and glowing endorsements from researchers, if peacekeeping success relies on selecting the “right” participant, the recruitment and hire of "ex-gang members" to the program has rendered the entire notion of violence interruption a complete failure.
While it has long been claimed peacekeepers would somehow serve as partners with Chicago Police in a collective effort to eradicate street violence, the most detailed picture of CVIs show they are unreliable, corrupt, lazy, often treacherous, uniformed, licensed bandits. Far from an initiative which intends to assist police in curbing violence and mend fissures between CPD and citizens, violence interruption groups are part of a stealth campaign to discredit CPD and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office. CVI groups' true aim is to serve as a form of political patronage using tax dollars to create a pool of anti-government activists. In close collaboration with Chicago's network of radicals, CVIs maintain relationships with street gangs — an evolved form of organized crime — who then fulfill the role of participants in forms of election activity — canvassing neighborhoods, handing out political fliers — who are used interchangeably as protesters in “spontaneous” or planned rallies and acts of civil disobedience and disorder for the purpose of chipping away at the rule of law.
The City of Chicago already has violence interrupters, the Chicago Police Department. If Chicago aims to fund a program which will serve as a bridge to residents, federal, state, and city assistance to violence interruption groups should be redirected to the Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS). Though the CAPS program is imperfect, at a minimum it returns tax dollars directly to neighborhoods, rather than subsidizing ostensible “ex-gang members” who are continuing to engage in gang activity or worse, on Chicago’s streets.
