When “Violence Interrupters” Threaten Violence

The movement to defund the police is not new. While it gained traction in 2020 following the death of George Floyd, it has been the mantra of civil rights groups and race-hustlers for decades, and is rooted in the fiction that the entire criminal justice system is systemically racist.  One of the alternatives to police pushed by progressive academia has been to replace police officers with “violence interrupters.” For the past several years cities controlled by democrats including Chicago, Minneapolis and Los Angeles have diverted funds from police departments to non-government organizations (NGOs) which employ ex-gang members to interact with local street gangs, supposedly to counsel for non-violence and “restorative justice” programs. Restorative Justice is an alternative to punishment which involves putting crime victims and the criminals who attacked them together with counselors to help them heal emotionally and forgive each other. In places that have diverted funds to these programs law enforcement decreased while crime increased.

Howard Thompson of Fox 9 News reports that when the Minneapolis City Council was considering cutting funds to a NGO program called “21 Days of Peace,” operated by black activist Rev. Jerry McAfee, the Reverend showed up and threatened council members. During a five minute rant, McAfee told one member “come from behind that podium”—which the council took as a threat. “I don’t make threats, I make promises,” the reverend shot back. He said if they tried to arrest him, his “people” would come. As he left the meeting room, he told the council members, “I’ll see you again; that’s a promise.”  In a later social media post McAfee wrote, “McAfee ain’t hittin’ nobody. I ain’t shot nobody. However I will if I have to. I don’t want to.”

A article in Liberty Unyielding discusses what can happen when tax dollars are diverted from real law enforcement to feel good programs:

Violence interrupters do not seem to have done any good in Minneapolis, either. Its crime rate has spiked even as crime has fallen in some parts of the U.S. Newsweek reported in August that “carjackings in Minneapolis are up 548 percent” in the last several years. Murders have risen much more in Minneapolis than in the country as a whole. Minneapolis had 76 homicides in 2024, compared to 48 homicides in 2019.  Chicago hired “violence interrupters,” and its crime rate went up even as the crime rate fell nationally. Chicago pioneered the idea.

The notion that arresting, prosecuting and punishing criminals does not reduce crime has been disproven several times including twice nationally since the 1960s. The Liberty Unyielding article provides some recent data:

Keeping criminals in prison keeps them from committing crimes. Also, holding inmates in jail longer results in some of them aging out of crime and some others no longer committing the most serious crimes. Most inmates commit more crimes after being released, but older inmates commit fewer crimes after being released, and they tend to commit less serious crimes than inmates released at a younger age. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 81.9% of all state prisoners released in 2008 were subsequently arrested by 2018, but only 74.5% of those 40 or older at the time of their release, 56.1% of those age 55 at the time of their release, and 40.1% of those over age 65 at the time of their release. (See Bureau of Justice Statistics, Recidivism of Prisoners in 24 States Released in 2008: A 10-Year Follow-Up Period (2008-2018) (Sept. 2021), pg. 4, Table 4).  So longer prison sentences do reduce crime, reducing the rate at which violent crimes such as murder, robbery, and rape are committed.

The growth of mostly unaccountable NGOs receiving millions of taxpayer dollars to promote racism, gender dysphoria, socialist propaganda, climate hysteria, illegal immigration and alternatives to true criminal justice has been enormous over the past two decades.  Much of this money-laundering will likely be exposed over the coming months and, in addition to ending these damaging programs, hopefully some of the money will be returned to the taxpayers it was taken from.