Children’s Trust designates $250,000 for Cease Violence in the Hood, Alachua County Commission indicates they will also provide resources

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At a joint Alachua County Commission/Children’s Trust of Alachua County meeting on May 6, board members promised to allocate money and other resources to a new organization called Cease Violence in the Hood; the group will partner with a Chicago organization called Cure Violence Global, and former Florida Gator and Chicago Bull Joakim Noah flew down to support the effort.

Cease Violence in the Hood

Jerell Whitehead introduced a new local organization called Cease Violence in the Hood and said the organization wants to collaborate with “everyone.” He introduced representatives from Cure Violence Global, an organization that started in Chicago and has a mission of reducing violence globally using disease control and behavior change methods. Former UF basketball players Joakim Noah and Taurean Green were also present and are involved in groups that partner with Cure Violence Global. 

Due to a technical problem with showing Whitehead’s presentation, Alachua County Commission Chair Mary Alford invited “some extra public comment,” and Pastor Gerard Duncan came to the microphone. Duncan said he had become involved in the effort because he had been asked to bring “justice-involved individuals” to the Gun Violence Summit last summer, and Whitehead wanted to get involved, so they started Cease Violence in the Hood. Duncan said that right now, there are 700 people. 33 years of age and younger, who are on probation, “and often, as we see in our news, and as we see in a lot of the gun violence, it’s mainly those who are on probation.” He said the 700 people are “33 and under, that’s not even juveniles.” He said his organization knows “who they are and where they are, and we need to put our efforts together.”

Duncan said his organization brought Cure Violence Global to Gainesville “for our community… We want to give you all a proposal that’s not going to divide our community, but it’s going to collaborate our community.”

Once the presentation was ready, Whitehead said Cease Violence in the Hood is a “powerful movement that aims to bring together community-led organizations to address the pressing issues of crime and violence in marginalized communities” by identifying and supporting high-risk individuals and groups and providing education and job training and addressing community engagement and social connections. He said that as his group has spoken with people in high-crime neighborhoods, those people have said they want “jobs, community centers, and also real role models inside of their community that they can actually relate to.”

Whitehead said his organization will include “people just like me, who understand the individuals, who can go and knock on doors and they actually go and listen… because I’m gonna speak their language; I look like them… And in the midst of that, they understand that we do mean business because we’re here in the community and we want to see the change because we want to see our kids make it home at night, too.” He said that by establishing relationships with individuals who are on probation in the various communities, the group can “close the gap… between the community and law enforcement.”

Cure Violence Global

Dr. Monique Williams, the CEO of Cure Violence Global (CVG), introduced U.S. Programs Director Cobe Williams and former Gator and NBA star Joakim Noah. She said Noah is an ambassador to the organization and, post NBA, has “dedicated himself to violence intervention work.” Noah’s project in Chicago is called One City, and Williams said, “There has been some interest here in Gainesville around maybe engaging in that type of initiative, along with the violence intervention component that we’re working through right now.”

Monique Williams said CVG is “the pioneer organization, who kind of brought to the forefront the idea of utilizing kind of epidemiologic reversal strategies to violence prevention efforts. So in the same way we’ve tackled things like cholera and tuberculosis and AIDS, those same approaches are being applied to violence.” She said CVG created “what’s known as the Interrupter model,” but that is only one of the three core components of what they do: the others are identifying individuals who are at highest risk for violence and helping with their mindset and behaviors by using “outreach workers” to find resources. She said, “And then, kind of the last leg of the work is changing community norms. It’s not enough to just deal with the individuals, right? We are products of our environment, and you make the choices that you have, right?… And so it has to be a very loud, resounding sound that is unified, that violence is not normal, right?… That’s the program in a nutshell: we deal with health departments or mayor’s offices or coalitions for violence prevention, to help kind of build up the infrastructure necessary.” She said the goal is “reducing shootings and killings, period.”

One City Basketball League

Joakim Noah said he wrote a tweet 15 years ago about a documentary called “The Violence Interrupters,” and Cobe Williams sent him a message saying, “Hey, that’s me. Let’s go have lunch.” Noah continued, “And we’ve been working together ever since.” He said that when he was playing for the Bulls and went into classrooms and asked how many students had been affected by gun violence, “when the whole classroom is raising their hand, this is not… I wasn’t raised like that. I never saw anything like that before.” 

Noah and Cobe Williams started the One City Basketball League, which now has 28 different violence prevention groups playing basketball with each other. Noah said his work with Cure Violence “has been way more powerful than any championship, any win on a basketball court. This is way bigger than basketball – we use basketball as a hook.” Noah acknowledged his platform in Gainesville and said he wanted to support the local efforts, “and I think it’s important also for our athletes at the University of Florida to understand that we do have a social responsibility… I wish that I would have done this earlier… Any way that we can help, we will.”

Monique Williams said her organization would be “the technical assistance and trainers, right, in the model and how to do the work. You know, we pride ourselves on being, like, data-driven, and it’s a scientific evidence-based approach, and so you get results when you’re sticking to, you know, the fidelity of the model.”

Pastor Gerard Duncan

Pastor Duncan said he had mentored Whitehead and that on top of the work Whitehead is doing with Cease Violence in the Hood, he’s a Community Health Worker who “helps facilitate our Food as Medicine program, where he works with over 150 people a week… and he just started doing A1C testing and a lipid test.”

Referring to the 700 people on probation, Duncan said, “They need us – specifically, African American males – we need to come alongside them.” He said that mentors need to be calling or texting them every day, “and that’s what it’s gonna take.”

“This is a day of reckoning for our city”

County Commissioner Anna Prizzia asked Duncan what he needs to move forward, and he said he didn’t want to do it without Cure Violence. He said, “This is a day of reckoning for our city, for us to be able to come together. So the next step is that, you know, we have a conversation.” He said his organization has already talked with John Alexander and Caleb Young with the City of Gainesville, “and we need to come together as men, and specifically as African American men.”

“I think we cannot pass up this opportunity”

Children’s Trust of Alachua County (CTAC) Member Dr. Maggie Labarta said that the issue is already a priority for both the City and the County, and “I think we have a rare opportunity, which is a well-documented, evidence-based… I think we cannot pass up this opportunity; we’ve got to figure out how to resource it, combined, really all of us together, because it’s really all of us who are paying the price for neglecting this and not doing what we need to do to deal with it.”

“We have a real gang problem here”

CTAC Chair Lee Pinkoson asked Cobe Williams, “A lot of people don’t even realize it’s a problem in Alachua County that, you know, there are gangs everywhere. And we have a real gang problem here. So as you’re talking about the basketball,… how do you give an alternative to the gangs, and what do you do?… Because I’m sure there’s resistance from gangs because they’re threatened by the fact that you’re taking their lifeblood.”

Cobe Williams said that when he started doing this work over 20 years ago, he was one of the first Interrupters, working on the south side of Chicago. He said, “I started really seeing it was working… Our approach was just to meet people where they are without judging them: our job ain’t to tell people they shouldn’t sell drugs, our job ain’t to tell people they shouldn’t be in gangs, our job is not to do none of that, just meet them where they are and keep building relationships.”

County motion: Ask staff to explore budget needs to implement Cure Violence model

Prizzia said she has a “love for this model… and I’m excited that y’all are here willing to take the time in the community… I just want to make sure that we don’t lose this opportunity.” She made a motion to ask County staff to work together with the CTAC Board, “and I guess in the future with the City as well, they’re not here today… to explore and put together the budget needs for implementing the Cure Violence model in Alachua County.” There were multiple seconds. 

CTAC motion: Up to $250,000 in immediate one-time funding

Cornell, who is both a CTAC Member and County Commissioner, made a motion for CTAC to immediately provide some unallocated funds “as long as it’s used for [ages] 0-18 and it’s used in coordination with the City and the County’s efforts. And so what I would like to move is that we direct our CTAC staff to work with the City Manager and the County Manager to provide up to $250,000 of one-time funding to enhance the community-based program gun violence efforts… and bring back recommendations within 30-60 days for the CTAC Board to consider funding immediately in this budget.” Labarta seconded the motion “for discussion.”

Prizzia pointed out that Whitehead “brought this proposal to us, and I want to be really mindful of the fact that he’s chosen to take some leadership and step up into that role, and so I want to make sure that that’s honored as we move forward with this, that Cease Violence in the Hood – I want to see a collaborative proposal that works, but I just want to honor the work that Jerell and Pastor Duncan have done.”

Cornell said his understanding was that the County motion specifically included Cure Violence Global. He said he hoped Noah would push the university to get involved in the effort, so “I think we’ve got all the right pieces; we just have to give them the resources and then let them tell us what to do.”

Labarta said CTAC needs to make sure the effort is sustainable, “so we need to… understand that this is an ongoing project for which we happen to have the seed money on the CTAC side.”

Prizzia said the County also might be able to provide immediate funding out of unused ARPA funds. 

During public comment on the motions, Gainesville City Commissioner Desmon Duncan-Walker said, “I’m sitting back smiling, and my heart is happy.” She said that kids in the community have told her they need four things: places to go, things to do, mentors, and jobs. She continued, “That’s who we need to be tapping for this information – we’ve got to tap the kids. Not only do we tap them for information, we put them in charge… The peer pressure and peer encouragement element is very real, and just as it works in a negative way, it works in a positive way.” She advocated for a Cultural Arts Center and a City Office of Neighborhood Safety. 

Both motions passed unanimously.